“We used to get calls from Google and now we don’t.”
Service
Local SEO Calgary
Getting your business into the three results on the map, for the searches that end in somebody calling you.
- Find out what the listing actually looks like to a customer
- Fix the profile itself
- Give each service you sell its own page
- Make the city relevance real rather than stuffed
Sound familiar?
You’re probably here because…
“My competitor is always above me on the map and I don’t know why.”
“I’ve got a Google listing but I’ve never really done anything with it.”
What’s actually going on
When somebody nearby searches for what you do, Google shows a map with three businesses on it above the ordinary results. For a local service business that block is usually the whole game: it sits above everything, it carries a phone button, and it answers the question the searcher actually has, which is who can help me, near me, now.
Which three appear is decided by a different set of things than ordinary search rankings. The category you have chosen on your profile matters enormously. Your physical distance from the person searching matters, and you cannot change it. Whether you are open at the moment they search matters. What your page says about the specific service they typed matters. Review volume and recency matter.
Two consequences follow, and both are worth knowing before you spend anything. The first is that your service-area setting does not extend your reach — that polygon tells Google where you are willing to travel, not where you will be shown. Your radius is set by your verified address whether or not that address is displayed. The second is that a beautiful website will not rescue a profile that is set up wrong, because for this search the profile is the storefront and the website is what backs it up.
About your Google Business Profile
The profile is roughly the first half of this work, which is why it does not get sold here as a separate product. Setting it up properly is unglamorous and it is where most of the available movement is: category, service area, hours, photos, services, and the review habit.
One thing we will not do. Putting keywords into the business name — calling yourself “Calgary Emergency Plumber 24/7” when the business is called something else — is among the strongest levers there is and the most abused. It is a straightforward guideline violation and it risks suspension of the listing. The suspension lands on you, not on the agency that did it. If someone offers to do it, that tells you what else they are willing to risk with your business.
The work
What we’d do, in order.
- 01
Find out what the listing actually looks like to a customer
Not to you, on your phone, at your address — that view is weighted by where you are standing and what you have searched before, and it routinely shows a business to itself while showing nothing to a customer two suburbs away. We check it properly, from outside your own signal.
- 02
Fix the profile itself
Primary category, service area, hours including the ones you actually answer, real photos, and the service list. The primary category alone moves more than most of what gets sold as local SEO. We do not touch the business name — see below.
- 03
Give each service you sell its own page
One page listing nine services is not the same as nine pages. This is the single most consistent structural lever in local organic search, and it is the part most sites skip because it is work rather than a setting.
- 04
Make the city relevance real rather than stuffed
The city belongs in the title, the heading and the copy where it reads naturally — not repeated into every sentence, and not in the URL, which only makes it harder to expand later.
- 05
Sort out reviews as a process, not a campaign
A repeatable ask at the point the customer is happiest, and a habit of responding. Nothing incentivised, nothing gated, nothing filtered — all of which are against the rules and all of which are visible.
- 06
Handle the citations that matter and stop
The core handful of directories, consistent and correct. Bulk citation packages are sold by volume because volume is easy to invoice, not because the next four hundred listings do anything.
What you actually get
Every deliverable, and how often.
No bundles, no “strategy” line item you can’t inspect. If it isn’t on this list, we didn’t promise it.
- Profile audit What your listing looks like to a customer who is not you, checked from outside your own location and search history. One-time
- Category & service setup Primary and secondary categories, the service list, hours including the ones you actually answer, and the service area set to what it should be. One-time
- Service pages A dedicated page for each service you sell, written the way people search for it rather than the way you name it internally. One-time, then extended
- Review process A repeatable ask at the point the customer is happiest, plus a response habit. Nothing incentivised, gated or filtered. Set up once, run monthly
- Core citations The handful of directories that matter, consistent and correct. Not a package of four hundred. One-time
- Map rank check Where you appear from several points across your service area, not from your desk. Monthly
- Plain-language report Calls and direction requests from the profile, what moved, and what we changed. One page. Monthly
The difference
How this usually gets done, and how we run it.
How it usually goes
How we run it
The business name gets keywords added to it because it works.
We never touch the business name. It is a guideline violation, the suspension lands on you, and it is the first thing we tell people not to do.
A citation package: four hundred directory listings, billed by volume.
The core handful, correct and consistent, then we stop and spend the time on something that moves.
One page listing every service you offer.
A page per service. It is more work and it is the most consistent structural lever there is.
Rank checked from the agency office, which flatters the result.
Checked from several points across your actual service area, because proximity decides the map and your desk is not where your customers are.
What this doesn’t fix
Worth saying plainly, because paying for the wrong thing is the most expensive mistake on this list.
If the problem is that calls come in and then get missed, dropped or forgotten, a better map position makes that worse rather than better — you will simply lose more of them, and you will have paid to generate them first.
Look at follow-up insteadIf you need work booked this month rather than over the next two quarters, local search is the wrong instrument. Paid search buys you the top of the page today; local search is the thing that makes you stop paying for it eventually.
Google AdsHow you’ll know it’s working
Agreed before any money is spent, so there is something to hold us to.
- Where you rank in the map block from locations you do not live at — measured from several points across your service area, not from your own desk.
- Calls and direction requests from the profile itself, which Google reports directly.
- Which of your service pages actually receive search traffic, and which ones never do.
- Tracking goes in before any of the work does, so there is a genuine before-and-after rather than a story told afterwards.
What you won’t get from us is a promised ranking, a promised number of leads or a promised date. Nobody controls those, and quoting them before the work starts is guessing with your money.
What it costs, and who does it
A fixed number before anything starts, agreed with you first — not an hourly rate that drifts. What the number is depends on what we find, and we would rather look before quoting than quote and revise.
10+ years of digital marketing experience. How we work, in full →
Before you ask
The questions we actually get.
How long before anything moves?
A profile that has never been set up can change things quickly. Competitive local search does not. We will not give you a date before we have looked, and anyone who does is guessing.
Do I need a new website for this?
Usually not. The profile does a large share of the work for local search, and the site backs it up. If your site already brings in calls, replacing it is the most expensive way to change nothing.
What if I do not have a physical address customers visit?
That is normal for a service-area business, and the address stays hidden. Worth knowing: your service-area setting does not extend your reach — your radius comes from the verified address whether it is shown or not.
Can you guarantee the top three?
No, and nobody can. Proximity alone means the same business ranks differently for two customers a few kilometres apart. What we will do is tell you where you actually stand and what is in the way.
Do I have to sign a long contract?
The work has a defined scope and a fixed number agreed before it starts. What happens after that is your call.
Who does the work?
The person who looked at your listing is the person who does the work. If something needs a specialist we are not, we will say so rather than learn on your budget.