Local SEO: getting found on Google Maps and in near me searches
For any business that serves a place, the map results matter as much as the website, and they run on different rules. Here is what decides who appears in the map pack, the profile setup that takes an afternoon, and the monthly habits that keep you there.
Search for a service and a town, or anything with “near me”, and the first thing on the page is a map with three businesses. Those three get a large share of the calls. Being one of them has little to do with your website’s design and a lot to do with a free profile most businesses set up once and never touch again.
What decides the map pack
Google says three things: relevance, distance and prominence. In practice:
- Relevance: your profile’s category matches what was searched, and the profile and your site both say clearly what you do.
- Distance: where the searcher is relative to your address or your service area. You cannot change this, only make sure it is set correctly.
- Prominence: reviews, their recency and your replies, how complete and active the profile is, mentions of your business elsewhere, and how well the website itself ranks.
The afternoon setup
Claim and complete the Google Business Profile. Completeness matters more than any trick.
- The right primary category, the one that matches your main service exactly, plus secondary categories for the others. Wrong category is the most common reason a good business does not appear.
- Name, address, phone, exactly as they appear on your website and everywhere else. Consistency is a trust signal. The same abbreviation, the same suite number, every time.
- Service area, if you go to customers, with the towns listed.
- Hours, including holidays, kept current. A profile showing “open” when you are closed earns bad reviews.
- Real photos. The front of the building, the team, the work, the interior. Not stock. Profiles with photos get far more clicks and calls.
- Services and products listed with short descriptions, using the words customers use.
- A description in plain language: what you do, for whom, where.
- A link to the right page on your site, the service page for what the profile is about, not always the homepage.
The website’s part
Your site needs a page for each location or service area you want to appear for, with the address, a map, the phone number as tappable text, and the local terms in the title and heading. Schema markup of type LocalBusiness with your address and hours helps Google connect the site and the profile. Our scanner shows whether the site has any schema at all, which is a start.
The monthly habits
- Ask for reviews, after every good job, with a direct link. Steady new reviews beat a burst of old ones.
- Reply to every review, good and bad, in a human voice, within a few days. Replies are visible and Google notices activity.
- Post something once or twice a month: a recent job, a seasonal note, an offer. It shows the profile is alive.
- Check the profile for edits. Google lets the public suggest changes, and some get applied. Wrong hours and wrong categories appear this way.
- Check for duplicate profiles and old listings with an old address. Merge or remove them.
What not to do
Keyword-stuff the business name. Buy reviews. Set up profiles at addresses you do not occupy. All three get profiles suspended, and reinstatement is slow.
What to expect
A completed profile with a few honest reviews usually appears in the map pack for its category within weeks. Moving from position five to the top three is the monthly habits over a few months. For most local businesses it is the highest-return SEO work there is, and it costs nothing but attention.
See where your own site stands.
The scanner checks the things this guide talks about, in about ten seconds, no signup.
More from the guides
SEO for a small business website: the part that brings results
Most small business SEO advice is written for people with a marketing team. You do not need one. A short list of things done properly brings most of the results, and you can do the first half yourself in a week. Here is that list, in order.
Website not showing up on Google: the checks, in order
You search for your business and the site is not there. It is nearly always one of eight causes, and most of them take minutes to find and fix. Here they are, in the order to check, from a setting someone forgot to a site that is simply new.
Rankings dropped after a redesign: why it happens and how to stop it
A new site launches, it looks better, and within a month search traffic has halved. It is one of the most common and most avoidable disasters in web work. Here are the seven causes, in order of frequency, how to find which one hit you, and the recovery order.