Local SEO retainer
Local SEO that puts your business in front of customers in your area
Generic "organic traffic" doesn’t pay your bills — calls, bookings, and foot traffic do. Local SEO is what gets your business in front of the people who are actively searching for what you do, in the area you actually serve. It’s the highest-leverage marketing channel a local service business can run, and it’s also the one most agencies get wrong.
My local SEO retainers are built around the three things that actually move local-pack rankings: your Google Business Profile, the reviews and citations that tell Google you’re a real, established business, and the on-site technical foundation that lets the rest of it work. I don’t sell a generic SEO package — I work a defined, repeatable process that I personally review every month.
What’s in the retainer
Everything you need to compete locally, done monthly
The full monthly cycle — not a one-off audit. Every line is delivered by me, not handed to a junior, and every deliverable is personally reviewed before it ships to you.
Google Business Profile audit, ongoing optimisation, and post scheduling
Local pack and map ranking tracking, alongside traditional keyword rank tracking
Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4 monitoring, with month-on-month reporting on what actually moved
Review monitoring across Google, Checkatrade, Yell, Trustpilot, and trade-specific directories, with response drafting support
Local citation building and cleanup across the directories that matter for your trade (Yell, Yelp, Thomson Local, FreeIndex, trade-specific sites)
Monthly technical fixes — schema markup, page speed, mobile usability, indexing issues, internal linking
One content piece per month — a real page or blog post targeting a query your customers actually use, written to your brand voice and reviewed before publication
On-page SEO work across your existing pages — titles, meta descriptions, headings, content gaps, internal links
Competitor monitoring — who else ranks for your target queries, what they’re doing, what’s working
Monthly report inside your dashboard, plus a personal written note from me explaining what changed and why
How I work
A defined, repeatable process — not a black box
I run the same 4-step cycle every month, on every retainer client. It’s the process I’ve refined across hundreds of audits, and it’s what gives me the confidence to commit to a 48-hour baseline-audit SLA when you first join.
- Baseline audit (48-hour SLA). Once you’ve connected Search Console, Google Business Profile, and Meta in your dashboard, I run and personally review your baseline audit within 48 hours. This is the benchmark everything else is measured against.
- GBP + citations. GBP is the single most important local-SEO asset. I audit the profile for completeness, accuracy, categorisation, services, photos, and posting cadence, then fix the gaps. In parallel I run a citation audit across the directories that matter for your trade and clean up any inconsistencies.
- Technical + content. I fix the technical issues that block ranking (page speed, mobile usability, schema, indexing) and ship one piece of new content per month — written to your brand voice, targeted at a query your customers actually use.
- Report + personal note. Your monthly report goes into your dashboard with everything that moved. I add a short written note explaining what’s working, what isn’t, and what I’m changing next month. You’ll never get a PDF with no context.
What this isn’t
Honest about what a retainer does and doesn’t do
I don’t buy backlinks. I don’t run link farms. I don’t submit your site to 1,000 directories that exist only to sell you more "links". I don’t guarantee rankings — no honest agency does, because Google makes the ranking decisions, not us. And I don’t lock you into a 12-month contract — most clients stay because the work is real, not because they can’t leave.
What I do is the slower, more boring, more sustainable work: fixing what’s broken on your site, building the citations that Google actually trusts, earning reviews the right way, and shipping content that’s worth ranking for. It’s less exciting than a "we’ll get you to #1 in 30 days" pitch, but it’s what actually compounds.
Pricing
£297–£597 / month
The exact figure depends on your market, your starting position, and how much technical work is needed to get the foundation right. New clients with a clean, working site and an established GBP start at the lower end; clients who need significant technical rebuilds or who are entering a competitive market start higher. We work the exact figure out on a call once I understand your goals.
Common questions
Local SEO, honestly answered
Honestly: it depends on your starting position, your competition in the area, and how recently Google has re-crawled your page. Realistically, meaningful movement in the local pack usually takes 3–6 months of consistent work. Technical fixes and Google Business Profile improvements can show up within weeks — anyone promising you #1 in a competitive local market in a month is not being straight with you.
No — and any agency that does is selling you a story, not a service. Google makes the ranking decisions, not me; what I can guarantee is the work: technical fixes that match Google's current guidance, GBP work that matches their published best practice, content that targets real queries, and transparent reporting so you can see exactly what moved and why.
General SEO targets organic blue-link rankings for any query; local SEO targets the map pack and local-finder results — the blocks with the map and the business listings that show up for queries like "plumber near me" or "dentist in Reading". They overlap, but local SEO puts much more weight on your Google Business Profile, reviews, NAP consistency across the web, and proximity to the searcher.
In practice, yes — Google uses your website to validate the GBP, to confirm what you actually do, and to decide whether you match a query. A thin or missing website caps how far local SEO can take you. The good news is you don't need a fancy one: a well-structured 5–10 page site built for speed and clarity is enough to rank in most local markets.
I work with what you have first. If the structure, content, and speed are reasonable, I'll optimise on top of them. If the foundation is fundamentally broken (huge page-builder bloat, no mobile layout, no schema), I'll tell you straight and quote you a rebuild — but I never tear down a working site to upsell you a new one.
Rank tracking for your target keywords (both local-pack and organic), traffic and visibility trends from Search Console, Google Business Profile insights (calls, direction requests, profile views), site health scores from PageSpeed, the action log of what I did this month and why, and a short personal note from me explaining what actually moved and what didn't. No PDF full of vanity metrics that don't tie to your business.
Reviews are one of the strongest local-ranking signals — both the count and the recency, and increasingly the substance of what people actually write. I monitor your reviews across Google, Checkatrade, Yell, Trustpilot, and any industry-specific platforms, alert you to new ones, and help you draft responses that sound like a real person (not a templated 'thanks for your feedback').
Yes — separately, as the GBP Reinstatement one-off service. It's a structured diagnose-and-appeal process; the outcome depends on Google's review of the appeal, which I can't control, but I can make sure the case is well-built and all the verification documents are in order.
Ready to find out what’s actually stopping you ranking locally?
Run the live check on your website below, or send your details over and I’ll personally take a look.