Local SEO and Google Business Profile

Be the business the map suggests.

Local SEO is how nearby customers find you: the Google Business Profile, reviews, and pages for the areas you serve. If you win work in a service area, this is the shortest path to the phone ringing.

Get your free plan Three sizes

The standard size takes: Four weeks
You own: The profile and the area pages, in your name
Runs monthly: The work that keeps it growing

No figure appears on this page. Your free plan comes back with the price of every size, and with what the whole job costs together.

What it is

Local SEO is how nearby customers find you: the Google Business Profile, reviews, and pages for the areas you serve. If you win work in a service area, this is the shortest path to the phone ringing.

When someone searches with local intent, the map decides who gets the call, and the map ranks on relevance, distance and prominence. You cannot move your workshop, but relevance and prominence are built: a complete profile, a steady flow of reviews, and pages for the areas and services you actually cover.

The review flow matters more than most businesses expect. A steady ask, sent at the right moment to every happy customer, beats a yearly scramble. Prominence compounds the same way pages do: quietly, monthly, in your favour.

This is for you if

Competitors sit in the map pack and you do not
Your Google Business Profile was claimed once and never touched
Reviews arrive by accident, not by system
You serve five suburbs but your site only mentions one

One of these is usually enough. If none of them is true, this is not the first thing I would build for you, and the plan will say so.

Why it comes where it does

Searches with local intent convert faster than anything else you can buy. The businesses at the top of the map results are not there by accident.

Nothing has to be built before this one, so it can be the first thing you do. Your free plan still puts it in order against everything else you are considering.

Three sizes, by scope

The sizes differ by how much is in them, not by how well it is done. Start at the size that matches the business today; moving up later is normal.

The Essentials

The profile, done properly.

Google Business Profile claimed, completed and optimised
Categories, services, photos and opening hours set up properly
A review ask flow for every finished job
Monthly profile posts and Q and A upkeep

Two weeks

The usual choice

The Standard

The map plus the pages. Most local businesses choose this.

Everything in the size before, plus:

Location and service-area pages on your site
Consistent name, address and phone across directories
Call and direction tracking so you see what it produces

Four weeks

The Works

Own the service area.

Everything in the size before, plus:

Full suburb-by-suburb page coverage for your service area
Review responses drafted in your voice, monthly
Local link and citation building, worked monthly
A monthly map-pack position report in plain English

Six weeks

The figure for each of the three sizes is not published here, because it depends on what else you are building at the same time. Build your free plan and the figure for each size comes back with it, along with what the whole job costs together.

How it is built

01
I check what the map currently shows for your searches, and where your competitors sit.
02
The profile: claimed in your name, categories, services, hours and real photos.
03
The review flow, built into how you already finish a job, so the ask is not a separate task.
04
Area and service pages on your own site for the places you actually cover.
05
Name, address and phone made consistent across the directories that feed the map.
06
Monthly upkeep: posts, questions answered, reviews responded to, positions reported.

Before you decide

Three things people get wrong.

They sayThe map ranking is out of our hands.

Distance is out of your hands. Relevance and prominence are not, and they are built with a complete profile, the right categories, real photos and a steady flow of reviews.

They sayAsking for reviews looks desperate.

Asking once, at the moment a job goes well, reads as normal. What looks bad is a year of silence followed by a scramble after one unhappy customer.

They sayWe serve the whole region, so one page covers it.

People search by suburb, and a page that names one town does not answer a search about the next one. Area pages are how a service business gets found outside its own postcode.

Your options

The alternatives, side by side.

Doing it yourself and hiring it out are both real answers. Here is how the three compare on the things that actually decide it.

Slide the table sideways to read every column.

Option	What it costs	What you own	Time	Outcome
Run the profile yourself	An hour a month you will not spend	The profile, if it is claimed in your name	Now	Claimed, half filled in, no review flow
Hire a local SEO agency	A monthly retainer, often with a long contract	Sometimes a profile in their account, which is a problem later	Ongoing	Managed, at a cost that assumes you will not check
This engine	A build, then a monthly fee	The profile and the area pages, in your name	Four weeks	A complete profile, reviews arriving by system, pages for the areas you serve

In practice

The map decides

A tradie who is invisible on the map does not get the call. The profile, the reviews and the area pages decide who does.

Straight answers

Questions I get asked about this.

01We already have a Google Business Profile.

Claimed is the start. Most profiles are missing categories, services, photos and a review flow, and those are what the map ranks on. Completing and running the profile is the actual job.

02Do reviews really matter that much?

Yes. Prominence is the part of the map formula you can influence most, and reviews are its loudest signal. The tiers here build the ask into how you already finish jobs.

03What do we do about a bad review?

Answer it, plainly, in public, once. A calm reply on a bad review persuades more readers than the review puts off, and the works tier drafts those replies in your voice.

04We have no shopfront. Does this still work?

Yes. A service-area business hides its address and lists the areas it covers instead. The profile and the area pages do the same job.

Also in search and traffic

What sits next to this.

Programmatic SEO

A page for every question your market asks.

Email marketing

The only audience you own.

See all of search and traffic

The next move

Local SEO and Google Business Profile, priced in context.

The free plan asks a few questions about the business, then comes back with this service at the size that fits, anything that has to come first, and the figure for each part and for the whole job. Nothing is charged and nothing is booked at the end of it.

Get your free plan stuart@sevenlens.co

Get your free plan