Own the map pack in your area.
Most people searching for a local service never scroll past the three businesses in the map. Getting into that box is the highest-return move available to a local business online — and it is won with different signals to normal rankings.
The local SEO work, in order of impact
1. Google Business Profile, done properly
Correct primary and secondary categories (this alone moves rankings more than most owners realise), every service listed, a description written for search, real photos added monthly, products and offers, Q&A seeded, and weekly posts. Most profiles we audit are about 40% complete.
2. A review engine, not a review request
An automated way to ask every happy customer at the right moment, a short link that works on a phone, and a process for responding to every review — including the bad ones, which matter more than you think.
3. Citations and NAP consistency
Your name, address and phone number identical across Yellow Pages, True Local, Hotfrog, Localsearch, industry directories and association listings. Google cross-checks these. Inconsistencies quietly cap how far you can climb.
4. Location and service pages that earn their place
A real page for each suburb you genuinely serve, with local content, local photos and local proof — not the same page with the suburb name swapped twenty times.
5. Local links
The junior sports club you sponsor, the supplier who lists their installers, the chamber of commerce, the local news site. Unglamorous, hard to fake, and exactly why it works.
6. Tracking that shows enquiries
Google Business Profile insights, call tracking, and form attribution, so you can see how many people actually contacted you — not how many impressions the listing got.
The three things that decide the map pack
Relevance
Does your profile clearly say you do this thing? Categories and services are the levers, and they are the most commonly misconfigured part of any profile.
Distance
How close you are to the searcher. You can't change your address, but you can be realistic about which areas are winnable and which aren't.
Prominence
How well known and well regarded you are — reviews, links, citations, mentions. This is the part you can actually build, and it's where the work goes.
Local SEO questions
What is the map pack and why does it matter so much?
The map pack is the block of three businesses with a map that appears above the normal results for anything local. It takes the majority of clicks on mobile for service searches. Getting into it is usually the highest-return thing a local business can do online, and it is decided by different signals than normal rankings.
How do I rank in the Google map pack?
Three factors: relevance (categories, services and description matching what people search), distance (you can't move your premises, but you can pick the right service area), and prominence (reviews, citations, links and mentions). Reviews and a fully completed, actively posted profile are where most businesses have the most room to improve.
How many Google reviews do I need?
There is no magic number — what matters is having more than the businesses currently above you, and getting them steadily rather than twenty in one week. A consistent trickle of recent reviews with real detail beats a big old pile. We set up a system that makes asking automatic.
Do suburb pages actually work?
Done properly, yes. Done as twenty near-identical pages with the suburb name swapped, no — Google filters those out and they can drag the whole site down. A suburb page earns its place when it has genuine local content: jobs you've done there, local knowledge, real photos.
I don't have a shopfront. Can I still rank locally?
Yes. Service-area businesses can hide their address and set a service radius. You'll usually rank strongest closest to your registered address, so it's worth thinking carefully about which suburbs you genuinely target.
Can you do local SEO for me if you're not in my city?
Yes, and it makes no difference to your results. Your rankings are driven by your address, profile, reviews and content — not ours. What matters is that whoever does the work understands your market and who you're competing against, and that's research, not geography.
Want to know why you’re not ranking?
Send us your website. We’ll come back within two business days with a plain-English audit: what’s holding you back, what your competitors are doing, and what we’d fix first. No charge, no obligation.