How to get found on Google

The three kinds of result you can win

Search for a local service and you will see three distinct things, and they work differently:

• Ads at the top. You pay per click. Instant, and it stops the moment you stop paying.
• The map pack — three businesses with stars and a map. Driven mainly by your Google Business Profile, your proximity to the searcher, and your reviews. For most local businesses this is the most valuable real estate on the page.
• The blue links below. Driven by your website: its pages, its content, its speed and who links to it.

Most small businesses should work on the map pack first, because it is faster to influence and often sends more enquiries than the website does.

1. Your Google Business Profile, done properly

Free, and the highest-return hour in local SEO. Claim it at business.google.com and then actually finish it:

• Exact business name, address and phone number — and make sure they match your website character for character. Google cross-references this, and “Street” versus “St” genuinely matters.
• The right primary category. This does more work than almost anything else. “Plumber” and “Heating contractor” surface for different searches.
• Every service listed individually, with descriptions.
• Opening hours, kept accurate, including bank holidays.
• Real photographs, added regularly. Profiles with fresh photos get more engagement.
• Questions answered — you can post and answer your own, and should.

2. One page per thing you sell

This is the biggest website change most businesses can make. A single “Services” page listing eight things competes for none of them. Eight pages, each about one thing, can each rank.

Each service page should carry the service name in its heading and page title, explain what is involved, say what it costs or starts at, answer the questions people ask about that specific service, and finish with a way to get in touch. Three hundred useful words beat two thousand padded ones.

If you serve several towns and genuinely work in all of them, the same logic applies to locations — but only where you have something real to say about each. A dozen near-identical pages with the town name swapped is a pattern Google has recognised for years.

3. Use the words your customers actually use

Businesses describe themselves in industry language. Customers search in plain language. “Domestic electrical installation condition report” is what you call it; “landlord electrical certificate” is what they type.

Finding the real words costs nothing: type your service into Google and read the autocomplete suggestions, then read the “People also ask” box and the “Related searches” at the bottom. Those are real queries from real people. Also look at your own inbox — the phrases customers use in enquiries are the phrases to put on the page.

4. The technical basics

You do not need to do these yourself, but they need doing:

• Speed. Especially on mobile. Slow sites rank worse and convert worse. See our speed guide.
• A unique title and description on every page. The title is the blue link people click. Write it for a human: what the page is about, plus your town if it is local.
• A sensible heading structure. One H1 per page describing the page, H2s for sections.
• HTTPS. Non-negotiable.
• An XML sitemap, submitted in Search Console.
• Schema markup for your business details and services.
• Internal links. Link your service pages to each other and from the homepage. It helps visitors and it tells Google which pages you consider important.

5. Reviews and mentions

Reviews affect the map pack directly, and they affect whether people click you rather than the business above you. Ask every satisfied customer, by text or email, with a direct link to your review form. Most people are happy to and simply never think of it.

Reply to all of them, including the bad ones, calmly. A measured reply to a critical review reassures far more prospective customers than the review itself deters.

Mentions of your business name, address and phone number on other reputable sites — your trade body, local directories, Chamber of Commerce — also help, provided the details are consistent everywhere.

What to ignore

• Cold emails promising page one. Nobody can guarantee rankings. The ones who promise it are selling something else.
• Buying links. Against Google’s guidelines and risky. The link packages sold to small businesses are worthless at best.
• Keyword stuffing. Writing “plumber Reading” eleven times reads badly and has not worked for a decade.
• Obsessing over meta keywords. Google has ignored that tag since 2009.
• Blogging for its own sake. Twelve thin articles a year help nobody. One genuinely useful page that answers a real customer question beats all of them.

Questions