This is one of the questions we get asked most, so here is the whole answer in one place. It is meant to be sent to somebody rather than read by a marketer, and there is nothing in it you need a background in this to follow.
The short version is that ranking on Google as a local business is two separate races, and almost everybody is only running one of them. The map at the top of the results is won on reviews and relevance. The list of links underneath it is won on pages and links and, frustratingly, age. The same effort put into the wrong one of those two produces nothing.
What follows is everything that genuinely moves the needle, in order of how much it moves. Beside each one is who has to do it, because that is the part usually left vague, and it is the part that decides whether anything actually happens.
The list, in order
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Google reviews
Owned by: YouNothing else on this list comes close for a local business. Count matters, recency matters, and replying matters. A steady handful every month beats a pile from two years ago, and it is the main reason one business sits in the map pack while a better one three doors down does not.
Time to show results: Weeks
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Your Google Business Profile, filled in properly
Owned by: TogetherThe right primary category, real photographs, correct hours, the service areas you actually cover, and the website link pointing at the right page. It is free and most profiles are half finished, which makes this the cheapest position you will ever gain.
Time to show results: Weeks
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A page for each thing you actually do
Owned by: UsGoogle can only rank a page that answers the search. One page listing nine services will lose to nine pages that each answer one of them properly. This is the biggest single change we make to most sites, and it is why our own services sit on their own pages rather than as nine paragraphs.
Time to show results: One to three months
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Links from other real websites
Owned by: TogetherStill the backbone of the ordinary blue link results. A handful from genuine local sites, suppliers, trade bodies, the club you sponsor, is worth more than a hundred from directories nobody visits. Slow, unglamorous, and it is what the businesses above you have that you do not.
Time to show results: Three to twelve months
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Saying where you are, in the words people use
Owned by: UsA county is not a town. A site can name its county fifteen times and still not be competing for its county town, because Google does not treat one as a synonym for the other. We know because we found exactly that on our own site and had to fix it.
Time to show results: Weeks to months
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Answering the questions people actually type
Owned by: TogetherNobody types plumber Bedford when they are stuck at eleven at night. They type why is my boiler losing pressure. Those searches are less contested, they land on pages rather than profiles, and the person asking is usually much closer to spending money.
Time to show results: One to six months
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The technical foundations
Owned by: UsLoading quickly on a phone, working properly at phone size, being crawlable, having the right page titles, and carrying the structured data that tells Google what kind of business this is. It will not lift you past a competitor on its own, but missing it holds you below people you should be beating.
Time to show results: Immediate, then compounding
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Being listed consistently everywhere else
Owned by: TogetherYour name, number and area, identical across the ordinary business directories. The value is not the listings themselves, it is the consistency: contradictory details across the web make Google less confident about you, and confidence is what it is ranking.
Time to show results: One to three months
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Keeping the site alive
Owned by: TogetherNot a blog post a week. A site that changes occasionally, has accurate prices, and does not carry an offer that expired in 2023. Low impact on its own, but it is the difference between a site that looks maintained and one that looks abandoned, and readers judge that faster than Google does.
Time to show results: Ongoing
Split by who does it
Free, and faster than anything we do
What you can do
- Ask every happy customer for a Google review, on the day the job finishes
- Send them the direct review link rather than telling them to search for you
- Reply to every review, especially the bad one
- Take real photographs: the work, the van, the unit, you
- Keep your hours and phone number right, bank holidays included
- Tell us when your prices, services or area change, so the site does not go stale
- Mention the sponsorships, suppliers and local links you have, so we can chase them
The half that needs building
What we do
- A page for each service, written to answer that search rather than to list a service
- Local pages that name the town, with the structured data to match
- Titles, descriptions and headings that match what people actually type
- Speed and mobile: the site loading before somebody gives up on it
- The technical plumbing: sitemap, robots, structured data, Search Console, Bing
- Internal linking, so the pages you care about are the ones Google sees as important
- Fix the profile alongside the site, because they are read together
What nobody can do
Two things move your ranking that no agency on earth controls, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something.
The first is proximity. In the map results, how close the searcher is to you is a genuine ranking factor. Somebody standing in Kempston gets a different set of three than somebody in Biggleswade, and that is not something to be optimised. It is also the reason checking your own ranking from your own premises tells you almost nothing.
The second is time. A new website on a competitive local term is a six to twelve month proposition against businesses who have been there for a decade, and no amount of spending compresses that into a fortnight. We would rather say so at the start than have you wondering at week three.
If somebody guarantees you position one, ask them to put the refund in writing. That normally ends the conversation.
A sensible order for the first ninety days
- Fill the Google profile in completely and fix the category. One afternoon.
- Start asking for reviews, every job, without exception. Ongoing, and it is the whole ballgame.
- Make sure the site answers the searches you want, with a page per service and the town named properly.
- Fix the speed and the mobile experience, so the visits you already get stop leaking.
- Get the directory listings consistent and chase the two or three genuine local links you already have a claim to.
- Then leave it alone long enough to mean something. Checking daily is how people talk themselves into changing things that were working.
1st
reviews, and they are free
2
separate races on one page
6-12 mo
realistic on a competitive term
If you want the honest version for your business
Send us your business name and the search you want to win. We will tell you which of the two races you can realistically compete in this year, what is already working, and which of the items above is the one actually holding you back. If that turns out to be reviews rather than your website, we will say that, and it will not cost you anything.