Local SEO

Someone near you is looking for you right now.

They will not scroll far, and if you are not there they will call somebody else without ever knowing you existed. This is the work of being the one they find.

See where you stand, free From $500/mo

The cost of waiting

Every month you wait, the gap gets wider.

76% of people who run a nearby search on their phone visit a business within a day, according to Google and Ipsos. That is not browsing. That is somebody who has already decided to buy and is working out from whom. Those decisions are being made across your service area this week, and at the moment they are being made without you in the room.

If you are buying leads from Angi or Thumbtack, you are paying for customers who were already searching for exactly what you do. And the competitor who started this last year is not smarter than you. He is further along, and the two things that put him there, reviews and links, only accumulate with time. That is the part you cannot buy back later, which is why starting matters more than starting perfectly.

What winning looks like

Do not take a spot. Take the page.

A results page is not one list. It is a map pack, an AI answer and the organic results underneath, and nothing stops the same business appearing in all three. Hold one and you are in the running. Hold all three and you are most of what they see before they have decided anything.

The map is the piece worth taking first. In a 2026 study of 500 home services searches it appeared in 98% of them, and it is the only one that shifts with where the customer is standing, so you are competing against the businesses near them rather than every business in your city.

Sources: Google and Ipsos, Consumers in the Micro-Moment. WebFX, May 2026, 500 searches across 100 home services keywords.

How it actually works

SEO built on Google's own documentation, not on my opinion.

Google publishes what decides local rankings, and it comes down to three things: relevance, distance and prominence. Almost everything sold as local SEO is one of those three wearing a different name, so knowing which is which tells you what you are actually paying for, here or anywhere else.

Read Google's page on local ranking →

Relevance

Does what you do match what they typed?

Work moves this

Google is matching a phrase to a business. If your profile says "contractor" and the search says "metal roof repair", you are relying on Google to make a leap it does not have to make. Most local businesses are far less specific online than they are in person.

Primary and secondary categories on your profile, chosen against what people in your area actually search, not what sounds most impressive
Every service you sell listed as a service, in the words customers use for it
A real page for each service, so there is something to rank besides the homepage
Pages for the towns you serve, which is how you show up somewhere you do not have an address
Titles, headings and internal links pointed at the queries that produce phone calls rather than the ones that produce traffic

Distance

How far are you from the person searching?

Depends on your setup

The three shown are the three near them. Move two miles and it is a different three.

Nobody can move your building, so if customers come to you this is the one factor that is close to fixed. If you go to them, it is a different question. Google still has to work out which towns you actually serve, and that is a judgment you can influence with evidence.

Service area set to the towns you genuinely work in. Claiming half the state does not extend your reach, it just makes the claim less believable
A real page for each town you want work from, with detail that proves you go there, rather than your city name swapped out ten times
Reviews that name the towns you worked in, which is your customers confirming your service area on your behalf
For a storefront, the honest version is different: you compete for the people already near you, which is a far smaller fight than beating every business in the city

Prominence

How well known are you, on and off the web?

Work moves this

Google's own wording is "how well-known a business is", and it names two inputs directly: how many websites link to you, and how many reviews you have. This is the slowest of the three factors and the one that compounds, which means it is also the one most often skipped by people selling a quick win.

A system that asks for a review after every job, so review count grows on its own instead of in panicked bursts
Responses to reviews, including the bad ones, which is a ranking input and a sales page at the same time
Citation cleanup first, then building. A wrong phone number in twelve directories is a problem no new listing solves
Links from locally relevant places: chambers, associations, suppliers, local press, sponsorships. Slow, unglamorous, and the part competitors skip

That is the whole list. Anything sold to you as local SEO is one of those three wearing a different name, and if a task is not moving one of them, it is not moving you.

Included, not extra

AI visibility comes with it.

ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI answers are reading the same profile, the same citations and the same reviews that the map pack runs on. Which means most of the work that earns you a map position is already the work that gets you named in an AI answer. Selling that back to you as a second retainer would be selling you the same thing twice.

Where it needs something genuinely extra, structured data that states plainly what you do and where, and a machine-readable summary an assistant can quote, that is in the plan. Not an add-on, not a line item. What that involves →

Timing

What I cannot speed up, and what I can.

I cannot change how long Google takes to crawl your site, reassess it and move you. What I can promise is that you will not wait any longer than you have to.

Weeks 1 to 4

Profile, categories, services, photos and citation corrections. This is the fastest-moving part, and where a neglected profile can move noticeably inside the first month.
Months 2 to 3

Service and town pages go live, reviews start accumulating on a schedule instead of by accident, and map pack positions usually begin to move.
Months 3 to 6

Local organic rankings, the blue links under the map, catch up. Prominence work from month one is still paying in month twelve, which is the part that makes this worth doing at all.

If you need the phone ringing before any of that lands, Google Ads is the only channel with no lag, and it is a reasonable thing to run alongside this rather than instead of it.

Pricing

Three rungs, and the difference is how far you reach.

Not more work versus less work, which you have no way to judge from the outside. The difference is how much of your business is competing. One service, then everything you sell, then the towns around you as well. Each step is a bigger job because every service and every town needs its own page and its own reason for Google to believe you.

Month to month at every rung, and you can move between them as the work pays for itself. No contract, no setup fee, and nothing that asks you to commit to six months to find out whether it is working. Which one fits depends on your industry and who else is competing for the same three spots, and the free audit is how that gets measured before either of us commits.

Starter

$500 /mo

Competes in One service, in your city

Pick the service you most want the phone to ring for and win that one first.

Profile, categories, services, photos and citation cleanup
One service page built and optimized properly, whichever earns you most
A review system that runs after every job
One local link or PR placement each quarter
AI visibility included

Standard

$850 /mo

Competes in Every service you sell, in your city

The usual home for a business that wants the whole of what it does competing, not just one part.

Everything in Starter
A page for every service you sell, not just the one
A review system that runs after every job
One local link or PR placement every other month
AI visibility included

Aggressive

$1,500 /mo

Competes in Your city and the towns around it

For crowded markets, or when you want the whole service area instead of one city.

Everything in Standard
A page for every town you want work from, not just the one you sit in
Every service covered, including the ones that only come up in season
One local link or PR placement every month instead of every other
A faster content cadence, so you cover ground in months rather than quarters

Not ready for this?

Google Business Profile on its own runs $250/mo. It is the map pack only, no site work, and it is the sensible starting point if your website is fine and your profile is not.

Questions

The ones I actually get asked.

What is the difference between local SEO and regular SEO?

Local SEO targets searches tied to a place: "near me", city names, and the map pack. It leans on your Google Business Profile, distance, citations and reviews. Regular SEO targets rankings regardless of geography. If your customer has to be near you to buy from you, local is the one that matters, and for most service businesses the two are the same project anyway.

How long does local SEO take to work?

Google Business Profile work moves fastest, sometimes inside 30 days. Map pack positions usually show meaningful movement in 60 to 90 days. Local organic rankings take longer, typically 3 to 6 months. Nobody can compress that, and anyone promising otherwise is selling the promise rather than the result.

Do I still need this if I already have a Google Business Profile?

Having a profile is the starting line. Claimed and unoptimized is the normal state for a local business, and it leaves the easiest ranking gains on the table. The profile is also only one of the three factors Google names, so on its own it caps how far you can get.

Can you rank a business with no physical address?

Yes. A service area business can rank in the map pack without showing an address, and hiding the address is the correct setup if you work at customer locations. What you cannot do is pick where Google thinks you are. Your ranking center is still your registered location, which is why pages for surrounding towns matter more for you than for a business with a storefront.

What about multiple locations?

Every location needs its own profile, its own page on your site, and its own citations, so it is genuinely more work rather than the same work spread wider. Multi-location is scoped per location for that reason. Tools that track local rankings also bill per location, so it is one of the few areas where the cost is transparently mechanical.

Is AI visibility included?

Yes, at no extra cost, and it is not a separate workstream. AI assistants read the same profile, citations and reviews that Google does, so the work that earns you map pack position is most of what makes you citable in an AI answer. Where it needs something extra, structured data and a machine-readable summary of the business, that is part of the plan rather than an upsell.

How much does it cost?

Three tiers. $500/month for one service in your city, $850/month for every service you sell in your city, $1,500/month to compete across the surrounding towns too. Month-to-month at every tier. What you actually pay depends on your industry and how competitive your market is, because a plumber in a metro area and a barber in a small town do not need the same amount of work to reach the same place. The free audit is how that gets measured before either of us commits to a number.

Free audit

Find out where you rank now.

Your site's performance, your Google Business Profile, and whether AI assistants can find you. It runs automatically and lands in your inbox in about three minutes.

You get the findings whether or not you hire me, and if your market is thin enough that this would not pay you back, the audit will show you that too.