Local SEO Field Notes
What the search data actually says for local service businesses, told straight, including the parts that did not work.
You have a site and a verified business profile, and you cannot tell which of them is quietly doing the work. This pillar is for owners of local service businesses and the people who run their search, and it reports what the data says even when the result is unflattering.
Expect field notes drawn from our own search work. Some are about how pages get found and indexed. Others cover tag pages and thin archives that drag a site down, and pages that rank but never make the phone ring. One looks at why a verified business profile is more fragile than it looks. Another covers reviews and star ratings, and where schema helps and where it does nothing. Facts are checked against the search engines' own documentation, and anything that is our judgment is labeled as ours.
You should leave each post with something you can check on your own site this week, whether or not you ever hire anyone. Most of those checks need nothing but a free tool. The hands-on version lives in our local search work.
Every post in Local SEO Field Notes
Why a longer service page does not rank better
A word count target is a poor way to judge a service page. Here is a simpler test: does it answer the question completely and quickly?
How emergency locksmiths win the call that comes at night
Your listing can hold the map by day and still lose the night call. Here is the order an urgent searcher checks things, and what to fix at each stop.
Want to talk through your marketing?
Tell us where things stand and we'll tell you plainly what we'd do next.