Search for “fish and chips Brixham” or “dentist Torquay” on your phone and, before any ordinary website appears, Google shows a map and three businesses. Those Google map results take the majority of the clicks for local searches, which makes them the most valuable three slots on the internet for a local business. This post explains what decides who gets them, and how to do each part yourself, because none of it is secret and most of it is free.
What Google is weighing
Google says its map rankings come down to three things: relevance (does this business do what was searched for?), distance (how close is it to the searcher, or to the place named in the search?) and prominence (how well known and well regarded is it, online and off?). You cannot move your premises, but you can influence the other two a great deal, and prominence is where most Torbay businesses leave the most on the table.
1. Claim and complete your Google Business Profile
Everything starts here. If you have not claimed your profile, do it today at business.google.com; it is free, and until you do, Google is guessing about you. Then fill in every field, not just the obvious ones.
- Primary category. The single most important setting. Choose the one that matches what you most want to be found for, as specifically as possible: “Fish & chips restaurant” rather than “Restaurant”, “Holiday home” rather than “Lodging”. Add secondary categories for the rest.
- Name, address and phone. Exactly as they appear everywhere else. No keywords stuffed into the name; Google removes them and may suspend the profile.
- Hours. Including seasonal hours and bank holidays. “Open · Closes 9 pm” in the listing is pulled straight from here, and a wrong “Closed” loses customers.
- Services and products. List them, with short descriptions. These help relevance for searches that are not your main category.
- Description, photos, attributes. A plain description of what you do and where; real photos of the premises, the team and the work, added regularly; attributes such as “dog friendly” or “wheelchair accessible” that match real searches.
2. Get reviews, and reply to them
Reviews are the biggest lever you control. The number matters, the average matters, how recent they are matters, and what they say matters, because Google reads them for relevance too: a review that mentions “best crab sandwich in Brixham” helps you appear for that search.
Ask every happy customer, at the moment they are happiest: when the job is finished, when the plates are cleared, at checkout. Give them the direct link (your profile has a “get more reviews” button that generates one) or a QR code on the counter. Reply to every review, good and bad, briefly and politely; Google notices, and so do the people reading. Never buy reviews or write your own. Google is good at spotting it, and the penalty is the listing disappearing.
3. Make your details match everywhere
Google checks your name, address and phone number against the rest of the web: directories, Facebook, Yell, the council’s listings, trade associations, the Chamber of Commerce. Every mismatch, an old address in one place, a different phone number in another, “Ltd” here and not there, weakens its confidence. Search for your own business name and fix the inconsistencies, then make sure the important directories have you listed correctly. This is dull and it is worth doing.
4. Make the website back it up
The link from your profile to your website is a strong signal, and what Google finds there matters.
- Name the place. The town, and the areas around it, in the page title, the headings and the copy, with real detail, not just a list of place names at the bottom.
- One page per service, one per area. A plumber in Paignton who also covers Torquay and Brixham should have a page for each, each one genuinely about that town. That is how a business appears in more than one town’s map.
- Address and hours on the site, matching the profile, with structured data (a small block of code) that tells Google plainly what the business is. Every site I build has this.
- Speed and mobile. The map results are mostly viewed on phones; a slow site is marked down.
5. Build prominence
Prominence is reputation: mentions and links from other websites, press, local partnerships, the Chamber, sponsorship of the local football club, the Torbay business awards, the food blog that wrote about you. You cannot buy this honestly, but you can earn it by being worth writing about and by asking. It is also helped by posting to your profile every week or two (an offer, a new product, a photo), which keeps it active.
How long it takes
Claiming and completing the profile can move you within days if the competition is weak. Reviews and consistency usually show in a few weeks. The website and prominence work compounds over three to six months. For a competitive search in Torquay town centre, expect the longer end; for a specific trade in Brixham, often the shorter. Track it by searching from your phone, from the places your customers are, rather than from your own desk, where Google already knows who you are.
What I do differently when I do it for you
Nothing magic: the same five steps, done thoroughly, measured and kept up. The parts most businesses get wrong are the category choice, the website pages, and the consistency work, because they are fiddly. If you would rather hand it over, the SEO service covers all of it, and the local pages on this site, such as Paignton and Brixham, show what the website side looks like when it is done properly.
