Getting found in local search.

Local search has two halves that work differently, and most of the confusion around it comes from treating them as one thing.

The map results — the block of businesses with pins near the top — are driven mostly by your Google Business Profile and by how close you are to whoever is searching. You influence this by completing the profile properly and gathering reviews. You cannot influence proximity at all, which is why no amount of optimization gets a single-location business ranking across an entire metro.

The organic results below the map are driven by your website: whether you have a page about the specific service someone searched for, whether it says where you work, and whether anything links to it. This is the half you build.

The order below is the order worth doing the work in. Start with the profile, because it is free and it is the fastest return available. Then make sure your site is actually indexed. Then build the service and area pages that compete organically.

The last article is for businesses whose service area covers many towns rather than one. That is a different problem: deciding which additional areas deserve a page at all, and what has to be on one for it to work. Greater Austin is the worked example because its wide, fast-growing service area makes the trade-offs unusually clear.