Website optimization for local businesses: what you do and where you do it

Google wants two things from your website: what you do and where you do it. I set both up on the platform you already have, one page per service and one per area, linked to each other. The click from Maps then lands on a page that makes sense to the person and to Google.

Google reads your website to answer two questions: what do you do, and where do you do it. Most local sites answer the first. Almost nobody answers the second. Website optimization, the way I do it, is answering both so plainly that a search bot and a person on a phone both get it in ten seconds.

What Google wants from your site

Google's help page on local ranking says local results are ranked on relevance, distance and prominence. Your website is where most of the relevance comes from. If the page your listing points to does not say your service and your place in its title and headline, Google has less to go on, and plenty of other pages to choose from.

Distance is not something a website changes. Google draws a new map from where the searcher stands, so there is no single top 3. You can be first from one neighborhood and ninth from the next. The site's job is to make sure that when you are close enough, you are also the clearest match. Prominence comes from reviews, mentions and links over time, and a real site with real pages is one more sign the business is real.

The 10 second checkup

This is the list I run on any site before I touch it.

1. Title and H1. Hover over the browser tab. The title should carry your primary category and your place, something like "Plumber in Somerville". The big headline should say the same thing in plain words. "Welcome to our website" is not a headline.
2. Meta description. The two lines under your title in Google. Written for the person searching, not the bot: two sentences, talking to "you", saying what you do and where they land.
3. Name, address and phone in the footer. Spelled exactly like your Google Business Profile. Identical.
4. The Google map embedded. One pin, your business, pulled from your own profile. The embed code comes from Google Maps.
5. Schema markup. A short block of code that tells Google, in its own language, that this page is a local business with this name, address, phone and hours. Invisible to people, easy for bots.
6. Number of indexed pages. Search site:yourdomain.com on Google. More real pages beats fewer, as long as each one is real.
7. One clear call to action. Call, book, or request a quote. One, not four.
8. Speed on a phone. A slow page sends the searcher back to the list to tap the next name.
9. Real photos. Your truck, your shop, your team, your work. Stock photos tell nobody anything.
10. Nothing under the final call to action. The last thing on the page is the button. No carousel, no logos, no second menu.

Any item you fail is an easy win. None of them takes a redesign.

One page per service, one page per area

This is the part almost every local site misses, and it does the most work. Google gives you credit for two kinds of authority. Topical authority is what you do: every service gets its own page, with its own title, headline and words. Local authority is where you do it: every area you serve gets its own page too, with things that are true about that place, the neighborhoods, the kind of homes, the streets you know.

Then you link them to each other. The roof repair page links to two or three area pages. The area page for a town links to two or three services you do there. Two or three natural links per page, not zero, not four hundred. Every page gets its own title, the way every book on a shelf has its own spine.

• Home page: who you are, what you do, where you do it, one call to action.
• Service pages: one per service, the service and the place in the title.
• Area pages: one per town, the place and the main service in the title.
• Links: services point to areas, areas point to services, home points to both.

I run my own site the same way. I am one person based in Framingham, Massachusetts, and I work with local businesses anywhere, so my home page stays general and the place lives on its own pages: Boston is where I live and where my own Google Business Profile points, and towns around it like Cambridge get their own page. Each of those links back to service pages like this one.

It works on any platform

You do not need a new website for this or a new platform. WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Framer, a custom build: every one of them has a place for the title tag, a place for the meta description, a footer you can edit, and a way to add a page. The menus differ. The work is the same.

The six live sites on my home page were built for businesses in Montreal, Cyprus, Mexico, California and elsewhere. Same method each time.

How it works in my plan

Website optimization is step two of six in my plan. Step one is the Google Business Profile, rebuilt category by category, because the site has to match the listing, so the listing gets fixed first. Then the site, then the review system, the citations, retargeting, and the monthly rank grid.

On your site:

1. Read the listing: primary category, name, address, phone. That is what the site has to mirror.
2. Fix the title and the headline on the page your listing points to, so both say the service and the place.
3. Rewrite the meta description for the searcher.
4. Put the name, address and phone in the footer, identical to the listing, and embed the map.
5. Add the schema markup.
6. Build the missing pages: one per service, one per area you actually work in, linked to each other.
7. Set one call to action, clear everything under it, check speed on a phone, swap stock photos for yours.

After the first invoice you get access instructions within 24 hours. You share the website login and add me to the profile, which is two clicks. Your time is about an hour at the start, then a short check in each month.

How long it takes

Website, profile and citation changes can be processed on different schedules. Google does not publish a fixed ranking timetable, so the plan measures the same searches over time. The terms define a 90-day goal; if it is not reached, billing pauses until it is and restarts from the next billing cycle.

Who this is for

You are doing well and want more, not at zero and not about to close. You have some patience, because indexing takes weeks. The rate has to make sense for you. No long contracts. One business per industry per area, so I never work for you and your closest competitor at the same time.

The checklist you can run yourself

• Hover the browser tab on your home page. Service and town in the title? Same thing in the first headline?
• Scroll to the footer. Compare name, address and phone letter by letter with your profile. Look for a map with one pin.
• Search site:yourdomain.com. One page for each service? One for each town?
• Right click, view page source, search for "LocalBusiness". Nothing? No schema.
• Open the site on your phone on mobile data. Count the seconds. Count the buttons. See what sits under the last one.

Write down what failed. Those are your first fixes.

What I will not do on your site

• Stuff the town name into every sentence. One clear mention in the title, the headline and the footer is enough.
• Build area pages for towns you do not work in, or copy one page ten times and swap the town name. Start tight, then widen, the same rule Google's guidelines give for a service area on a new listing.
• Write the business name any differently from the listing. Changing the name back and forth triggers a new verification and can get the listing suspended. The name is set once, on the listing, and the site copies it.

Questions people ask

If you want to know which of the ten checks your site fails, send it through the free analysis form and I will email you the answer within two business days.