Local Marketing by City

Search for a dentist, a roofer or a taco truck and Google shows a map with three businesses on it before anything else. The searcher picks one, usually within a minute, usually without scrolling. The fourth-best dentist in town is, for practical purposes, invisible. This is not fair. It is, however, very measurable, which makes it fixable.

Google decides the three on relevance, distance and prominence. Distance you cannot change, short of moving. The other two are mostly won on your Google Business Profile: the right categories, every service listed, real photos, hours that are right on holidays, and a steady stream of reviews with replies. Our guide to showing up in Google Maps covers how the three are chosen, and the free map pack audit shows where you stand on your own searches.

Local marketing is that work done every month: the profile rebuilt and kept alive, a review flow that runs after every job, directories that agree on your name, address and phone, service area pages for the towns around you, and ads that track to the call when they earn their keep. Plans start at $575 a month, month to month, and ad spend is billed by Google to your own account. The details are on local marketing.

It works best with its neighbors. SEO wins the organic results under the map, PPC management buys calls while the profile climbs, and conversion tracking counts the calls each one produces, so the budget follows the phone instead of the hunch. The free visibility check shows what a customer near you sees today.

Choose your city below. San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Dallas each decide the map differently, and every page explains how it works where you are.