Get found by whoever is looking ten minutes away.

Google explains how it sorts, and it is worth reading

There is a lot of mythology around search rankings, and at the same time Google publishes the three factors behind the local result in the open: relevance, distance and prominence. Distance cannot be touched. The other two are, quite literally, the work.

Relevance means what you offer is written in the words people use to look for it, not the words used inside the trade. Prominence means your business shows up beyond your own website: reviews, mentions, the local paper, the trade association’s site, sponsoring the neighbourhood team. It sounds distinctly untechnological and it is exactly what separates two identical businesses on the same street.

A page for each thing you sell, not a list

The most repeated mistake in small websites is a single page called «Services» with twelve things inside it. That page answers none of the twelve searches well. Somebody searching for «kitchen renovation» wants a page about kitchen renovations, with photos of kitchens, ballpark prices, timescales and the usual questions.

So the sites we build grow like this: one page for each thing you genuinely sell, and one page for each area you genuinely work in. Not thirty cloned pages with the town name swapped, which Google sees coming and which achieves nothing; only the real areas, written differently because the work there is different too.

Name, address and phone identical everywhere

It sounds trivial and it is one of the few things that pays off quickly. If your website says «3 High Street, 2nd floor», your profile says «3 High St» and an old directory still lists your previous phone number, each version chips away at confidence in the whole. The first thing we do is review where you appear and with which details, and leave everything saying the same thing.

Telling the search engine what the page already says

Beyond the text a person reads, the site declares in a format search engines understand who you are, where you are, when you open and what you do. It is not a trick and it does not replace content — only what is visible on the page gets declared — but it stops a search engine having to guess at something already written down. Google documents that format for local businesses and we use it on every site.

What cannot be promised

Nobody can guarantee you first place. Anyone who guarantees it is selling you something else, usually paid advertising dressed up as ranking work. What can be promised is doing what is documented, doing all of it, and showing you what has been done: the profile, the pages, the matching details and the words people actually use to look for you. That moves the needle, and it shows in months rather than days.