1. Make your details identical everywhere
Name, address, phone number and opening hours, matching exactly across your website, your business profile and the directories that already list you. Old suite numbers, a legacy phone number or a rebranded trading name will quietly undermine everything built on top.
2. Get the categories right
The primary category on a business profile does more work than most of the content on the profile. Choose the one that describes what people search for, not the one that best describes your ambitions. Secondary categories cover the rest.
3. Build pages for real demand
A page per service, per location you genuinely serve — written to answer the question a buyer is actually typing. One thin page per postcode is a tactic search engines stopped rewarding a long time ago, and it makes the site worse for the people who do arrive.
- One clear page per service, with a specific title and description
- Location pages only where you have a genuine presence or coverage
- Answer the practical questions: cost basis, timescales, area covered, what happens next
- A single, obvious way to make contact on every page
4. Treat reviews as a process, not a campaign
A steady flow of recent reviews is worth more than a burst. Ask at a fixed point in your delivery process, make the link one tap, and reply to everything — including the difficult ones, which are read more carefully than the good ones.
Local search is largely a test of whether your business is described consistently. Most losses are administrative, not competitive.
5. Then measure the right thing
Not rankings. Calls, direction requests, form submissions and their outcomes. If those are not recorded against the source, the visibility work cannot be judged, and the first fix belongs upstream in how enquiries are captured.
