Guide

Getting found in nearby towns

Google leans heavily on where the searcher is standing. That is great when someone in your own town looks for you and frustrating when the town ten minutes up the road may as well be another county. There are honest ways to widen that.

Why the next town is harder

Maps results are ranked largely on distance from the person searching, and your pin is where it is. A business physically in that town starts ahead of you and there is no trick that changes that.

What you can win is the ordinary results below the map, and those are decided by pages rather than pins.

Write a real page, or none at all

A page for a town needs something genuinely local on it. Jobs you have done there, the estates or areas you cover, how long it takes you to get there, photos from that town.

Twenty pages that differ only by the town name are the single most common local SEO mistake and Google treats them as filler.

Only claim what is true

Do not list a town you would not actually travel to. You get calls you cannot service, you let people down, and the reviews follow.

Three or four honest pages beat twenty invented ones every time.

Support them properly

Each area page works better with these behind it.

  • Photos of work in that area
  • A review from a customer there, where you have one
  • Links to it from your main service pages
  • The area named on your Google profile service area

Common questions

Can I rank in a town I am not based in?

In the ordinary search results yes, with a properly written page. In the map results it is much harder because distance matters most there.

How many area pages should I have?

One for each place you genuinely work and can write about. Quality decides this, not quantity.

Where to go next

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