More Calls From Local Search. Not Just More Rankings.

Local SEO is what gets your business showing up when someone nearby searches for what you sell — in Google Maps, the local pack and "near me" results. It's a different discipline from regular SEO because Google ranks local results on relevance, distance and prominence, not just backlinks and content. That means your Google Business Profile, your citation consistency and your review profile often matter more than your website does. For most local businesses, the three map pack results take the majority of clicks and calls — everything below that gets a fraction.

Google Business Profile improvements usually show within 4–8 weeks, sometimes faster if the profile hasn't been properly set up before. Map pack movement on competitive keywords typically takes 2–4 months. Website rankings take longer, usually 3–6 months depending on your domain's current authority. Market matters more than most people expect. A plumber in Brisbane moves faster than a personal injury firm in Toronto, where dozens of firms are spending heavily on the same keywords. Anyone promising page one in 30 days is either working in an empty market or isn't being straight with you.

Google ranks local results on three things: relevance (how well your profile matches the search), distance (how close you are to the searcher), and prominence (how established your business looks online). We can't move your address, so we work on the other two. Relevance comes from getting your primary category, services and profile content right — most businesses have the wrong primary category and don't realise it's costing them rankings. Prominence comes from reviews, citation consistency and local links. Those are slower, but they're what holds a top-three position once you get there.

Yes — and for most local businesses the profile matters more than the website. When someone searches for a service nearby, Google shows the local pack above organic results: three profiles with ratings, hours and a call button. Many customers call straight from there without ever visiting a website. Your site still matters. It supports your local rankings and converts the people who do click through. But if you only have budget for one, optimise the Google Business Profile first.

Yes — plumbers, movers, electricians, cleaners, contractors. Service-area businesses rank differently and need a different Google Business Profile setup. Your address needs to be hidden, service areas defined properly, and location pages built only for areas you actually serve. That last part matters: creating pages for twenty suburbs you've never worked in is one of the fastest ways to get a profile suspended. We've handled service-area business setups across the US, UK, Canada and Australia, including reinstatements after suspension.

Yes. Each location needs its own optimised Google Business Profile, its own location page, and consistent NAP details everywhere it appears. The risk with multi-location is that your own branches start competing with each other. If two locations target the same keywords with near-identical pages, Google struggles to decide which to rank and often ranks neither well. We structure pages so each location owns its own area — and report per location, so you can see which branch is actually generating enquiries.

We set up a system that makes asking easy — review links, follow-up templates and the right timing, usually right after a job is completed while the experience is fresh. We never buy or incentivise reviews. Google detects it, and a filtered review profile is harder to fix than an empty one. We also handle response strategy, because how you reply to a negative review often matters more to the next customer than the review itself. Review count, rating and recency all feed directly into map pack rankings — so this isn't just reputation work, it's ranking work.

For most single-location businesses in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, local SEO sits between USD 1,000 and 3,000 per month. Multi-location and highly competitive markets — legal, medical, personal injury — usually run higher. The honest answer is that it depends on how much ground you need to make up. A business with a solid profile and a clean site needs less work than one starting with duplicate listings and a slow website. Send us your website and we'll give you a scope and a price. Not a package — a number based on what your market actually requires.

Not replace — but it's already changing where discovery starts. When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity for a recommendation in their city, those tools pull from your Google Business Profile, your website, reviews and third-party mentions. The businesses getting recommended are usually the ones with strong local signals already. Good local SEO is what makes you visible in both — which is why we optimise for both rather than treating AI search as a separate service.

You should be able to see it without reading a report — more calls from your profile, more direction requests, more enquiries mentioning they found you on Google. We track map pack position for your main keywords, GBP calls and direction requests, and enquiries from search. That's what goes in your monthly update. Not a traffic graph — traffic can go up while enquiries stay flat, and that's not a win.

No. We work month to month. Local SEO needs three to six months to show properly, so we'll tell you upfront what to expect — but we'd rather earn the next month than lock you into twelve. (Some clients prefer a 3-month minimum for extra commitment; after that it's month to month. We don't do 12-month lock-ins.)

Regular SEO competes on content and backlinks — the strongest page usually wins. Local SEO adds two things regular SEO doesn't have: physical proximity to the searcher, and Google Business Profile signals that sit outside your website entirely. That's why a small local business can outrank a national brand in the map pack. The brand has more authority, but it doesn't have a properly optimised profile three kilometres from the person searching.