Google is the world’s front door to your business. For local intent, it blends two systems:
Map pack (Google Maps): The 3 highlighted listings with pins, ratings, hours, and directions.
Local organic results: Traditional listings beneath the map, driven by website relevance and authority.
Winning locally means aligning both: your Google Business Profile (GBP) signals + your website and off-site authority.
Google Business Profile (GBP): Categories, services, descriptions, photos, products, Q&A, hours, attributes, and UTM tracking—plus post publishing.
Maps ranking & proximity strategy: Coverage planning for service areas, location clustering, and “near me” query capture.
On-site local relevance: City/neighborhood pages, service pages, internal links, headings, and entity-rich copy mapped to local keywords.
Citations & NAP consistency: Audit and clean-up across top directories; build net-new listings and niche/geo citations.
Reviews & reputation: Request flows, response frameworks, profile guidelines, and spam/fake review escalation.
Local links & PR: Sponsorships, local news/features, chambers/associations, event pages, and resource guides.
Technical foundations: Mobile UX, speed, Core Web Vitals, indexation, schema for LocalBusiness/Service/FAQ, and crawl budget hygiene.
Measurement that matters: Call tracking, GBP Insights, UTM conventions, conversion goals, lead quality checks, and share-of-voice tracking.
Local audit & roadmap – Baseline map visibility, gaps, and fast wins for “near me,” Maps, and service keywords.
Quick wins (first 30–45 days) – GBP overhaul, listing fixes, on-page revisions, top citation clean-up, and review flow live.
Authority & coverage – Location/service pages, local links/PR, neighborhood clusters, and structured content expansion.
Manage & scale – Ongoing posts, offers, photos, review responses, testing, and monthly iteration on what’s moving the needle.
Single-location clinics, showrooms, retailers, restaurants, and home-services.
Multi-location brands that need scalable local governance and publishing.
Service-area businesses (SABs) that rank beyond a storefront radius.
You have noticed by now how Google subtly monetizes their search results by placing advertisements... everywhere.
Searching for "personal injury lawyer Chicago" on desktop today yields a literal full page full of advertisements to the searcher. Is this a good experience? (rhetorical)
49% of Americans trust organic search results more than paid results, while another 46% trust organic and paid results equally. Only 5% trust paid results more than organic. - Search Engine Land, February 2025
People trust organic results more than paid ads. As a result, people tend to skip over ads and jump straight to the organic results because Google has a good history of providing quality results. At the end of the day, Google is a public, profit-seeking company so we cannot expect ads to go away anytime soon. But having a solid organic SEO strategy, including Local SEO, is important for balancing out your channels and giving them all the proper attention.
Local audit & roadmap – Baseline map visibility, gaps, and fast wins for “near me,” Maps, and service keywords.
Quick wins (first 30–45 days) – GBP overhaul, listing fixes, on-page revisions, top citation clean-up, and review flow live.
Authority & coverage – Location/service pages, local links/PR, neighborhood clusters, and structured content expansion.
Manage & scale – Ongoing posts, offers, photos, review responses, testing, and monthly iteration on what’s moving the needle.
We’ve spent 22 years building search programs that drive pipeline—local, enterprise, and ecommerce. You’ll get senior expertise, clear priorities, and practical execution that translates into calls, bookings, and foot traffic.
