Local SEO for small businesses: Google and reviews

Your own website, in your name

It's your address on the internet: the one you give out over the phone, and the one that puts people at ease before they even call. One page is enough, as long as it answers the four questions every client has: what you do, where, how much, and how to reach you.

We write the text from your trade and the services you really offer — no agency waffle — and you put it live on the day that suits you. After that, you ask for a change and we make it: a new price, a new service, your holiday dates.

‘I can build a website myself on Wix.’ You can, and for a brochure site it works. But a website on its own isn't local SEO: for a search like ‘plumber near me’, the map and the profiles on it come before the list of websites. The site still matters, because it confirms what your profile says — the same name, the same address, the same services — and because it's where a client who wants more than a phone number goes next. What owners usually drop after a few months isn't the website, it's keeping the two in step.

• A domain name built on your business's name, with a professional email address
• Made for phones first: the call button is always in view
• Changes whenever you ask, at no extra cost and with no agency delays

Your Google Business Profile, kept up to date

This is where most people really find you: the box on the right of the search results, with your hours, your photos, your rating and the ‘Call’ button. Most clients make up their minds there, without ever opening your website.

You add Traxo's Google address to the people who manage your profile, and it stops going stale: your hours, your one-off closures, the ‘Book’ button, the link to your website, your services and their prices, your photos and your posts follow your diary and your site, each behind its own switch. The business's name, its address and its category stay yours — we never touch them — and a profile left as it is loses its place within a few months.

Most of the local SEO guides that rank in Ireland spend their length on the profile, and Google's own guidelines settle two of their usual tips. The business name is the one on your van, your sign and your invoices, with no town or keyword added to it. And the categories are as few as it takes to describe your core business, not a list of every service you offer — the services have their own section for that.

Showing up on Google Maps, town by town

‘Plumber near me’, ‘hairdresser open now’: these searches show a map and three names. Being one of them depends on three things — how close you are, whether your details match everywhere, and how many recent reviews you have.

We set out exactly where you work, we create a page for each town you really cover, and your website repeats word for word the name, address and phone number on your Google profile — which you alone ever write there. It's not exciting, but it's exactly what Google checks.

Google says it plainly: local results rest mainly on relevance, distance and popularity. Distance you can't change. The other two you can work on: a profile filled in down to the services and the hours, pages on your website that name your services and the towns you cover, and reviews that keep coming each month rather than ten in one go. The agency guides add one more job worth doing once, by hand: checking that any directory that already lists you shows the same name, address and phone number.

Your reviews come in on their own

A happy client rarely leaves a review unprompted: you have to ask, at the right moment, and make it one tap. That's what Traxo does — an email goes out after the appointment, with a direct link to your Google profile and, at the bottom, a link to stop receiving them.

You turn the sending on with a switch, and it then goes to every client whose appointment took place, with no picking and no reward: those are Google's rules. Your reviews travel the other way — they come back into Traxo every night, with the rating, the text and the date — and an email alert tells you about a new one if you switch it on.

Google's review policy draws the same line for every business, whatever tool it uses: you may ask for reviews, but not in exchange for a discount or a gift, and not only from the clients you expect to be happy. That's why the request goes to every client whose appointment took place, and why nobody can honestly promise you five-star reviews only. What most profiles lack isn't good reviews; it's recent ones.

Your work, on show

A photo taken on your phone at the end of a job says more than three paragraphs. You send it, it goes into your gallery with the town and the service, and it goes up on your Google profile at the same time — where the most people will see it.

For renovation work, before-and-after photos do the job on their own. Allow two minutes a week: it's the only thing we ask of you.

You see what it brings in

How many people saw you, how many called, how many asked for directions. A summary every month, compared with the month before, with no jargon and no spreadsheet to decipher — plus our advice when something needs fixing.