Local visibility
Own the map pack in the towns you actually cover.
Google Business Profile, reviews, service areas and local pages — the three results above the search listings, where most trade enquiries start.
Three results decide most trade enquiries, and they are not the ones you optimise
Search anything urgent in the trades on a phone and the map pack is what fills the screen. Three businesses, a rating, a distance and a call button. For reactive work that block is not part of the decision, it is the whole decision — most people never scroll past it.
Owning a position in it is not a one-off task. Google reorders those three results constantly on proximity, on review velocity, on how complete and how active the profile is, and on categories most trades set once and never look at again. A profile that was third in March is on page two by August without anybody doing anything wrong.
So this is a maintained position rather than a setup job. Anybody can claim a listing in an afternoon. Holding the top three across a whole service area, all year, against competitors doing the same thing, is the work — and the work is what this is.
What we actually do
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Get the categories right, and the secondary ones too.
The primary category does most of the ranking. Most trade profiles are in a category that describes the business rather than the job people search for.
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Cover the service area honestly.
Towns you actually work in, with a page behind each one that says something true about working there. Listing thirty towns you have never been to is the fastest way to rank for none of them.
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Keep the profile alive.
Photos with real dates, services priced, questions answered, hours correct at Christmas. Activity is a ranking factor and it is the one nobody maintains.
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Run reviews as a process, not a favour.
A steady flow beats a burst, and recency counts for more than total.
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Fix the citations that contradict each other.
An old address on three directories quietly costs you local ranking.
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Report on calls, directions and the searches that found you.
The profile tells you what people typed, which is the cheapest research available.
It matters far more to some trades than to others
For a plumber or a gas engineer this is close to the entire marketing problem — urgent, local, decided in the map. For a builder it barely moves the needle on extensions but wins the small jobs that fill the gaps. For a commercial cleaner it is nearly irrelevant, because nobody procures a contract cleaner off a map, and the money is better spent elsewhere.
The trade pages below say which of those you are, and what to do about it.
The first ninety days
- Weeks 1–4
Profile rebuilt properly — categories, services, area, photos — and the review process started.
- Weeks 5–8
Town pages behind the service area, citations corrected, and the first month of activity established.
- Weeks 9–12
Position tracked across the whole area rather than from your own postcode, and the weak towns given their own attention.
What good looks like
- Top three in the map for your main service across most of your area
- Reviews arriving steadily rather than in bursts
- Photos and services current rather than three years old
- The same details everywhere Google looks
- Calls from the profile showing up in your reporting
Questions we get asked
Can’t I just set the profile up myself? Claiming it, yes, in an afternoon. Holding a top-three position across a service area for a year is maintenance, and that is what this service is.
Why did I drop without changing anything? Usually a competitor became more active, or the results reordered on proximity. It is a ranked list, so somebody moving up moves you down.
Does the address have to be public? No. A service-area business can hide the address, and for most trades working from home that is the right setting.
How many towns can I cover? As many as you genuinely work in. The limit is credibility, not the field.
Find out what your website is costing you
Put your website in and we'll tell you what's losing you work — speed, mobile, your Google profile, reviews and the pages you're missing. Two minutes, no call unless you want one.