Local SEO services

A local business is found in two places at once: on its Google Business Profile, which is what shows in Maps and in the box of local results, and on its own website, which is what shows in the ordinary results underneath. The two are read together. When the site gives a different phone number from the profile, hides its address in a picture, or has not been readable by Google since the last redesign, the business is harder to find and harder to trust, and the owner often cannot tell why.

This is search work for a local business with a site on WordPress, sold as work. Most of it is on the website, which is where we can show what was wrong and that it is fixed. Some of it is inside the Business Profile, where we work as a manager you add. It is the same audit and the same monthly hours as for any WordPress site, with the parts a local business adds.

What Google says decides local results

Google's help page says it in two sentences: "Local results are mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity." And: "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google." So nobody can sell a place in the map results, and we do not. What the same page says a business can do is keep its information complete and accurate, verify its profile, keep its hours right, reply to reviews and add photos. It also says that how well known a business is draws on things such as links to its site and its reviews. The work below is the part of that list that can be done for you, done properly.

What we do on the website

• One name, address and phone, in one place. Google's guidelines say a profile's name should reflect the business's real-world name, "as used consistently on your storefront, website, stationery, and as known to customers". We find every place the site states its details, the footer, the contact page, a widget, an SEO plugin's settings, and make them come from one source, so a move or a new number is one edit. See name, address and phone on a WordPress site.
• Markup that says the same thing. LocalBusiness structured data with the two properties Google requires, a name and an address, and the recommended ones that are true of the business: phone, hours, coordinates, the kind of business. We check for a second block from a theme or plugin that disagrees with it. See local business schema in WordPress, or write the block yourself with the local business markup generator.
• Rating markup that cannot show stars. Google's documentation says a business's pages about itself are not eligible for review stars, whatever the markup says. We tell you which markup on your site that applies to, and take out what goes further and breaks Google's guidelines, such as a rating no visitor can see on the page. See review stars not showing for a local business.
• Pages for branches, where there are branches. A branch with its own address, hours and staff gets a page that says what is true of that branch. A page per town that differs only in the town's name is what Google's spam policies describe as doorway abuse, and we do not build those. See location pages in WordPress.
• Whether Google can read the site at all. Indexing, the sitemap, and the page your profile links to. A profile that points at a page Google cannot index is a common fault after a rebuild. You can check a page yourself with the page indexing check.

What we do inside your Business Profile

A Google Business Profile is a service Google provides at no charge. Nothing you pay us goes to Google, and nothing we do there is something Google sells. What you pay for is our time.

• You own it, and we are a manager. Google's policies for companies like ours say a business must "retain ownership or co-ownership of their Business Profile at all times". You add us as a manager from your own Google Account, and you can remove us there whenever you choose, without asking us. If someone else holds your profile today, getting it back comes first, and only you can do that.
• We bring it in line with Google's guidelines and with your site. The name as it really is with nothing added, the right kind of profile for a storefront or a business that travels to its customers, the most specific category, hours, the phone number and the link to the right page of your site.
• You are told of every change. Nothing is edited or switched off without your agreement, and each change is in the report.
• Replies to reviews are yours. We can draft a reply for you to post, or post one you have approved in writing. We do not reply in your name on our own judgment.

If your profile is suspended, the appeal is made by its owner, in the owner's Google Account, with documents only the business has. We can put the website's side in order and tell you what Google's page asks for: a suspended Business Profile. Google has published advice for businesses on working with a third party, which says what any company managing a profile may and may not do. It is worth reading before hiring anyone, us included.

What you get

• An audit, with each finding tied to the page of Google's documentation or guidelines it rests on, and to what your site printed when we asked it. The fixes on the website are done within the hours the price includes, and each is tested again. The prices are on this page.
• Or hours each month, against a written list, for a business with more to work through: several branches, a site that has changed hands, details that have drifted apart over years.
• A report of what was changed and what was tested. A figure in it is Google's own, from Search Console or from your profile's performance report, kept apart from each other and given with the day it was read.

How it works

What we do not sell, and why

• A place in the map results. Google's own words are above. Its policies for companies that manage profiles list "Guarantees top placement on Google" among the claims they may not make.
• Reviews. We do not write, buy or reward them, and we do not ask only your happy customers. Google's policy for Maps forbids offering "incentives – such as payment, discounts, free goods and/or services - in exchange for posting any review", and forbids a business to "selectively solicit positive reviews from customers". In the United States, a federal rule, 16 CFR Part 465, makes it a violation to give anything in exchange for a review that has to express a particular sentiment (§ 465.4) and to write or sell reviews that misrepresent the reviewer's experience (§ 465.2). That is the rule's text and not legal advice. What both allow is asking every customer, the same way.
• Listings in bulk. The claim that a business must be listed the same way in dozens of directories is everywhere, and we found no Google page that says so. Being listed where your customers really look is sensible. Paying by the hundred is not something we can point to a source for.
• A page for every town. See above. One honest page about where you work does more than fifty that say the same thing.
• Words added to your business name. Putting a service or a town into the name on a profile is against Google's guidelines, which say it "could result in the suspension of your Business Profile".

What it does not cover

• Your ads. Local Services Ads and campaigns are not part of this.
• Verifying your business or appealing a suspension for you. Google asks the owner for these. We tell you what its pages ask for.
• Looking after the site. Updates, backups and security are a care plan.
• Sites that are not on WordPress.