Relevance: make the service easy to recognise
Google lists relevance among the main factors in local results. Start with the service someone needs. Your profile and website should make it easy to spot.
Your profile's category, services, opening hours and website link should match what you actually do. Each local search that matters to you needs a page that answers it. We check both. A repair enquiry should reach the repair service, with a usable phone number or booking route. For a clinic, we check that the service and location remain clear through to booking.
Local pages need to answer practical questions: what is available here, who it is for, and how to arrange it. We ask for the details only you can supply, including the jobs you take on and those you decline. For boiler repairs, that means stating which systems you work on and where your engineers will travel.
You can start with your last few genuine enquiries. Write down what people asked for and where they were based. Compare that language with your profile and service pages. A missing service or a link to the wrong branch gives you a specific correction to make. The UK local SEO guide gives you a starting point if you handle these checks yourself.
Distance: start with the places you can serve
Distance is another of Google's stated factors for local results. Our plan starts with where you work and how far you will travel. We mark the areas you want more enquiries from separately.
For a service-area business, we separate the operating base from the addresses where work takes place. For multiple premises, we check the information and destination page for each location. One branch's opening times should not send a customer to another branch's locked door.
The commercial choice comes next. You might accept a large installation farther away while keeping small repairs close to base. That tells us which topics to write about and which places to report on. A town goes into the plan after you confirm which jobs you can fulfil there. We cannot promise a map position in any of them.
Before you brief anyone, mark recent customers on a map. Separate the work you want again from the work that stretched your team. Add travel limits, branch capacity and any areas you have stopped serving. We use that to agree where to focus. For a mobile trade, our plumber marketing service covers the wider enquiry journey.
Prominence: build on the people who know your business
Google calls the third factor prominence; its summary uses popularity. Its local ranking guidance says this draws on information such as how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have.
We check your details on relevant local listings, find inaccurate entries and identify genuine organisations that could reference your work. If you belong to a local business association, for example, we check that its listing points to the right website and location. We check contact details too, so the listing sends enquiries to the person who can handle them.
Someone inside the business needs to read new reviews. We help them choose an appropriate moment to ask and prepare a neutral request. You give the customer a good experience. The process makes asking for a review a normal part of finishing the job. Responses should address what the person wrote, with care around private customer details.
myChiro Clinic in Canary Wharf shows the order this usually takes. Search ads filled the diary first, and the bookings grew enough that the clinic hired. The slower work underneath, a site search engines can read and articles written from the practitioner's own clinical approach, is what keeps it full once the ads are not the only thing working.
To start yourself, read recent reviews alongside the enquiries you want more of. Note the services people mention and any recurring confusion. Then check which local organisations already know your business and whether their public information is accurate. Keep the list manageable enough to maintain. If several customers mention the same confusion, use that finding to correct the service page or booking instructions.
Keep the name real and the reviews earned
Google's Business Profile rules require the name to reflect the real business name used on your storefront, website and stationery, and known to customers. We check proposed profile edits against those materials. In our reading, that means keeping search phrases out of the name unless they are part of the real one.
Review requests have a separate boundary. Google Maps policy prohibits incentives in exchange for any review, including money, discounts, free goods or services. In our reading, a voucher for leaving a review falls under that rule, whatever rating you ask for.
UK law adds another obligation. The UK's Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 lists submitting a fake consumer review, or commissioning someone else to, as a banned practice (Schedule 20, paragraph 13). It defines a fake review as one that purports to be based on a person's genuine experience when it is not. These provisions have been in force since 6 April 2025.
Our review process asks people to describe their own experience in their own words. We do not write reviews for customers, offer a reward or supply a rating for them to copy. Give the same neutral wording to the people who handle bookings and completed jobs. Check any existing request before asking them to use it.
Reporting: calls, directions and enquiries
We agree the local searches and locations to monitor before making changes. Each monthly report keeps calls, direction requests, enquiries and map rankings separate. For each number, we say where it came from and what it misses.
A request for directions does not establish that someone visited. Call records can help trace a phone click through to an enquiry; where your records allow it, we then compare enquiries with booked jobs or appointments. You help classify wrong-area calls, existing customers and the new work you actually want.
Local priorities sit inside the SEO retainer. It includes technical health, schema markup, content, and mapping search terms to services and locations. We report organic traffic and AI citations alongside rankings each month. For your local plan, we read those figures beside the enquiries from the areas you serve.
The next month's priorities follow what the records show. Poor-quality calls send us back to the service and area described. If people reach the booking page but cannot complete it, that repair takes priority. Send your website, profile and service area through the contact form so we can scope the work.
