Getting found on Google
Local SEO & Getting Found on Google
This is the part I do full-time for national brands. Stripped of the jargon it’s one question: when somebody near you searches for what you sell, why does a competitor come up and you don’t?
What’s included
What you actually get.
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A proper look at where you stand
What you rank for now, what you don’t, and which competitor is taking the work.
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The technical basics
Can Google actually crawl and index your pages? Are they fast? Is the structured data valid? This is the layer most agencies quietly skip.
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Pages that match real searches
Built around what people actually type, which is rarely what a business calls itself.
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Local signals
Your Google listing, your name and address consistency, and the directories that still carry weight.
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Plain-English reporting
Enquiries and calls, not a dashboard of numbers that don’t mean anything to you.
What I actually do all day
My day job is technical SEO for large brands — the kind where a single misconfigured template can take thousands of pages out of Google overnight. The work is unglamorous: crawling, indexing, page speed, structured data, making sure the right pages exist and the wrong ones don’t.
The surprise, when I started doing this for local businesses, was how little of it needed changing. The scale is different. The questions are identical.
Why local is winnable
Ranking nationally for a competitive term takes years and a budget. Ranking in your own town usually doesn’t, because most of your competitors have never done any of this. A complete Google listing, a fast site that names the areas you serve, and a page for each real service will put you ahead of most local competition.
That’s not a trick. It’s just that the bar is low and almost nobody clears it.
What I won’t do
I won’t sell you a monthly retainer you don’t need. Plenty of local businesses need a few weeks of work and then nothing for a year. I won’t buy links, and I won’t spin out fifty near-identical pages with the town name swapped — that’s a pattern Google actively demotes, and it’s still being sold to people.
And I won’t promise you position one. Anyone who does is guessing.
Questions
About this service.
Google listing changes can show within days. Website and ranking changes are more like 3–6 months, depending on how competitive your trade and area are. Anyone promising faster is selling something.
It’s the same work, usually done more directly. The difference is that I’ll tell you when the work is finished, rather than finding something to bill for every month.
Not necessarily. Some businesses need ongoing content and review work; plenty just need the foundations fixed once. I’ll say which you are.
Also available
The rest of what I do.
Websites
Hand-built websites for local businesses. Fast on a phone, easy to update, and built to turn a search into a phone call.
Read moreGoogle Business Profile
The map listing people tap before they ever reach your website. Claimed, filled in properly, and kept that way.
Read moreGoogle Ads
Paid search for when you need the phone ringing this month, set up so you can see what every enquiry cost.
Read morePhotography & video
Your actual premises, your staff, your product — for your website, your Google listing and your socials.
Read moreLeaflets, posters & cards
The offline half, designed to match the online half, so you look like one business everywhere.
Read moreWant to know if this is what you need?
The free presence check tells you which two or three things are actually worth doing for your business. Sometimes this service isn’t one of them, and I’ll say so.