Search · Local SEO
Ranking in the towns you actually serve.
Three businesses show up in the map pack, and they take the calls. Getting there runs on proximity, prominence, relevance, and only two of those are inside your control.
The short answer
What local SEO services actually are: ranking in Maps, not just in Google.
Local SEO is the work that puts your business in the three-result map pack for the towns you serve. It runs on a separate ranking system from the blue links underneath it, and it is won one town at a time.
Google ranks that map pack on three things: how close you are to the person searching, how well known your business is, and how well you match what they typed. Proximity you cannot change. The other two are the job.
Which is why a competitor eight miles further out still beats you. They have more reviews, a fuller profile, and pages that actually name the town. None of that is luck, and none of it is expensive.
The blue links below the map still matter, and we work those too. But when somebody needs a plumber today, the call is decided in the map pack, usually in under a minute, usually on a phone.
The honest limit: nobody ranks everywhere. A business in one location has a real radius, and the work is pushing that radius outward town by town rather than pretending it does not exist.
A real scan: 49 checkpoints, one live map lookup each. Green means the map pack, grey means invisible at that spot. This is how we measure the work, spot by spot, not by searching from the office chair.
What arrives
What you get: 6 deliverables, each with a number against it.
- 01
Google Business Profile worked weekly
Categories, services, service area, products, photos, plus questions and answers, kept current on a steady weekly cadence. A claimed profile is a starting line, not a result.
- 02
Service-area pages that name the town
A real page for each town you want calls from, with the work you did there on it. Not a template with the town name swapped, which Google has been discounting since long before anyone worried about AI writing them.
- 03
Citations built and corrected
Your name, address, phone number made identical everywhere they appear (citation consistency). Mismatched listings are one of the cheapest ranking problems to fix and one of the most common to have.
- 04
Review engine running
A request that goes out while the job is still fresh, and replies written to sound like a person. Review count and reply rate both feed map-pack ranking, and both are entirely inside your control.
- 05
Map-pack position tracked on a grid
We measure where you rank from points spread across your service area, not from one address. Ranking first at your shop and eleventh four miles away is the normal starting picture, and averaging it hides the problem.
- 06
A monthly report in plain English
What moved, what did not, what we are doing next, and what we need from you. No 40-page export nobody reads. If a number went the wrong way it is in there with the reason.
Fit
Who this fits: 4 signs it is you.
Local SEO pays for itself fastest when there is real search demand in your area and you are already able to service the calls. If either half is missing we will say so.
This is you if:
- You serve customers at their address, in a set of towns you can name.
- People search for what you do rather than for your business by name.
- You can handle more calls next month without anything breaking.
- You are somewhere on Google Maps already, even if buried.
This is not you if:
- You want national rankings with no physical service area behind them.
- You need the phone ringing this week. Local SEO is a compounding asset, and paid search is the tool for that job.
- You cannot service more work, in which case you need pricing help before you need us.
- You want a guaranteed position. Nobody can sell one honestly.
How the work runs
How it runs: 4 steps, then a monthly rhythm.
- 01
Grid the baseline
We measure where you actually rank across your service area before touching anything, so every later claim has a before behind it.
- 02
Fix the profile
Categories, services, service area: corrected first, because the profile moves faster than anything else on this list and costs nothing to change.
- 03
Build the town pages
One page per town you want calls from, carrying real work, real photos and the specifics only somebody who has been there would know.
- 04
Work it monthly
Posts, reviews, citations, pages on a monthly cycle, with the grid re-measured so you can see the radius moving rather than take our word for it.
Proof, not a pitch
Built by people who ran the truck first.
We have run the truck, quoted the job, and paid an agency invoice at the end of a slow month. That is the perspective the map-pack work is built from, not a marketing degree.
- 300+
- Points in the Deep Audit, worked by hand
- 36
- Hyperlocal pages shipped in one build
- 14
- Categories in the Deep Audit, worked by hand
Every point listed in the report appendix
6 service areas × 6 services, same engagement
300+ points, $1,500
Search
What it costs: published, not quoted.
Local SEO is the core of the Local Engine, which is the tier most operators start on. Page counts and posting frequency are agreed in writing per engagement, so the scope cannot quietly drift into unpaid overtime or unbilled expectation.
Start on the Local Engine. Move up to the Market Engine when you are ready to own more than one town, and to the In-House Engine when you want a marketing department without the hire.
Every retainer tier, with what is in it| Tier | Price | What moves the number |
|---|---|---|
| Local Engine Get found where you already work: the map pack and the searches that ring the phone. | $1,500 per month | The price is flat. What changes is where the effort points: a harder town, or more services, means the same monthly hours aimed at fewer targets, and we say which before you sign. Page counts and posting frequency are agreed in writing per engagement, so scope cannot quietly drift. Not included. Multi-market page coverage, expanded listings and the AI-search program at full strength are the Market Engine. We would rather tell you when you are ready for it than sell it to you early. |
| Market Engine Own every town you serve: coverage pages, AI-search visibility, listings everywhere that counts. | $3,000 per month | How many markets and how many services. The price is flat, and the page program inside it is agreed up front, in writing, so the scope cannot quietly drift. Not included. Placements on other platforms, PR-grade link campaigns, social management, video creative and conversion testing are the In-House Engine, and it is capacity-capped. |
| In-House Engine Everything, run for you: search, content, placements, PR-grade links, social presence, video creative, conversion work, quarterly strategy. | $6,000 per month | Capacity, not scope creep. We run a small number of these engagements at a time so the work stays deep rather than spread thin across too many accounts. Not included. We still do not sell paid ad management, and we still will not commit to a monthly number of editorial links. Both get the same answer at every tier. This tier is also capacity-capped: a few seats, run deep, and we will say plainly if one is not open yet. |
Objections and questions
Questions we get asked: 6 answers.
The questions below are the ones operators actually ask on the first call, including the two that agencies usually dodge.
Ask us something else How long does local SEO take to work?
Profile and citation fixes can move map-pack position inside 30 to 60 days, because those signals update quickly. Service-area pages and review volume compound over 4 to 6 months. Anyone quoting you a faster number for the second half is guessing, and anyone guaranteeing a position is selling something they do not control.
Can you guarantee I will rank in the top 3 on Google Maps?
No, and neither can anyone else. Google does not sell ranking positions and does not take instructions from agencies. What we guarantee is the work: the profile managed on a stated cadence, the pages built, the citations corrected, the reviews requested, and the results measured on a grid so you can see whether it is working rather than take our word for it.
What is the difference between local SEO and regular SEO?
Regular SEO is about ranking pages in the standard blue-link results. Local SEO is about ranking your business in the map pack, which uses a different system: how close you are to the searcher, how well known your business is, and how well you match the query. Both matter for a service business, and the map pack is usually where the phone call comes from.
Do I need local SEO if I already have a Google Business Profile?
Having a profile and working a profile are different things. Most operators claim theirs once, fill in half the fields, and never touch it again. Categories left wrong, service areas unset, no posts, no product entries, questions unanswered and reviews unreplied is the normal state of a profile we take over, and every one of those is a ranking input.
How much does local SEO cost?
Our Local Engine is $1,500 a month and covers the local work: the profile worked every week, the site's pages worked every month, citations kept correct, the review engine running, technical upkeep, rank tracking with an AI-search baseline, plus a monthly report and a real call. Page counts and posting frequency are agreed in writing per engagement. The price is flat, and what changes is where the effort points: a harder town, or more services, means the same monthly hours aimed at fewer targets. The Market Engine at $3,000 a month runs the whole thing across every market you serve and adds social, link outreach, AI search at full strength and conversion testing.
Will this work if my competitors have been doing SEO for years?
Usually yes, and often faster than you would expect, because most local competitors are not doing SEO. They are paying someone a retainer to claim a profile and send a report. The free audit will tell you honestly which situation you are in before you spend anything, including when the answer is that the market is genuinely hard.
Related services
What this pairs with: the rest of the stack.
Every one of these is sold on its own, and none of them needs the others to work. Local SEO sits inside SEO Services, which is where the whole line is laid out side by side.
- 01 SEO Services The half that decides whether anyone sees the site: Google, Maps, plus the AI answers your buyers are already reading. Read more
- 02 Google Business Profile Management The profile worked weekly, not claimed once and forgotten. Read more
- 03 Small Business SEO The whole program, sized for a business that has to pay for it monthly. Read more
- 04 Review Management More reviews, answered fast, feeding the local pack. Read more
- 05 SEO Audits The hand-built teardown, including keyword and opportunity research. Read more
- 06 Landing Pages Single-service pages built to convert one kind of visitor. Read more
Trades
Who we do this for: named by trade.
The map pack behaves differently in every trade. Emergency work is decided in seconds, install work over weeks, and seasonal work in the two weeks either side of a weather event.
- 01 Plumber Marketing Emergency intent converts in seconds. Most plumbing sites lose it. Read more
- 02 SEO for Roofers Storm-season demand is won in the map pack, not the phone book. Read more
- 03 HVAC Marketing Emergency calls, maintenance plans, and the seasons that pay for the year. Read more
- 04 Marketing for Electricians Panel upgrades and EV chargers are the pages almost nobody has built. Read more
- 05 Pressure Washing Marketing Seasonal, visual, decided on a phone in about four seconds. Read more
- 06 SEO for Landscaping Weekly maintenance and $50k installs need separate routes in. Read more
Free snapshot · paid teardown
Send us your site: 300+ points, worked by hand.
A short, sharp look: the top handful of findings, scored, delivered by email. What's broken, in plain English.
Want the full punch list? The Deep Audit is $1,500: the same crawler and link indexes the top-tier agencies run, plus live map-pack checks town by town and AI-assistant citation checks almost nobody local does. 300+ points across all 14 categories, plus a prioritized 90-day plan. Credited in full toward your first month if you hire us within 60 days.
Snapshot delivered in a few business days
It's yours either way. Hand it to your own developer, or your own AI, and it still pays for itself. If you hire us, it costs you nothing.
Site & search audit · what we check
300+ points
- Crawl, indexation and site security 30 pts
- Duplicate signals, structure and internal links 39 pts
- Speed and Core Web Vitals 28 pts
- The experience on a phone 14 pts
- Money pages: content, depth and freshness 24 pts
- Structured data and the trust surface 20 pts
- Search demand and the keyword map 20 pts
- Google Business Profile 20 pts
- Reviews and reputation 16 pts
- Local presence: map results and directories 20 pts
- AI search and assistant citation 22 pts
- Link profile and authority 20 pts
- The operators beating you 22 pts
- Turning visits into calls, and counting them 24 pts
The Snapshot is the top handful of these, free. The Deep Audit is all 14 categories, 300+ points, scored, with a 90-day plan and the full point-by-point appendix. No account, no card either way.
Ready to stop losing customers to the guy with a better site?
Fifteen minutes, no discovery deck. We'll tell you what we'd build, what we'd rank, and what it costs. And if we're not the right fit, we'll say that too.