How Google Decides Who Shows Up on the Map
Google has said publicly that local rankings are based on three main factors:
- Relevance: how well your business profile matches what the person searched. Your primary category, services and description do most of the work here.
- Distance: how far your business is from the searcher or the location in their search. You can’t change your address, but you can make sure Google knows exactly where and what you serve.
- Prominence: how well-known your business is, based on reviews, links, articles, directory listings and your overall web presence.
Most of our work focuses on relevance and prominence, because those are the factors you can actually influence.
Google Business Profile: Your Most Important Local Asset
For many local searches, your Business Profile is seen before your website. We treat it like a mini website:
- The most accurate primary and secondary categories for what you do
- Every service and product listed with clear descriptions
- Photos and videos of your team, work, vehicles and location, updated regularly
- Weekly posts about offers, projects, seasonal tips and updates
- Q&A seeded with the real questions customers ask
- Review responses to every review, good or bad, within a day or two
We also watch for suggested edits from Google or the public that could change your details without you noticing, a surprisingly common reason profiles lose rankings.
Reviews: Quantity, Quality and Recency
Reviews influence both rankings and whether someone calls you. A business with recent, detailed reviews looks active and trustworthy. We help you set up a simple system to ask every satisfied customer, usually a text or email with a direct review link sent right after the job is done. We also give your team short response templates so every review gets a thoughtful, personal reply.
Everything we do follows Google’s review policies and FTC guidance. That means no incentives for reviews, no gating that only asks happy customers, and no fake reviews.
Local Landing Pages That Aren’t Doorway Pages
If you serve several cities or neighborhoods, you need a page for each, but only if each page is genuinely useful. Pages that only swap the city name are thin content and can hurt your whole site. Our local pages include details that only make sense for that area: the neighborhoods you serve, local regulations or permits, common problems in local housing stock or climate, projects you’ve completed nearby, and local testimonials when you have them.
Pairing Local SEO With Local Ads
Local SEO builds long-term visibility. For immediate calls, Google’s Local Services Ads and search ads put you at the top of the page while your organic rankings grow. Many of our home services clients run both. See our Google Ads service for how we manage Local Services Ads with proper call tracking.
Multi-Location and Franchise Local SEO
Brands with several locations need a consistent system. We set up a profile, landing page, citations and tracking for every location, keep brand standards consistent, and still allow each location to show local photos, posts and reviews. Your report shows every location side by side, so you can see which ones need more attention.