FINDABILITY

Local SEO in Noord-Brabant: three things you can sort out yourself

Anyone searching nearby first sees a map with a handful of businesses. A complete business profile, honest reviews and a site that works on a phone give you the best chance.

How Google chooses who ranks at the top locally.

When someone searches for “painter Breda” or “accountant near me”, Google first shows a map with a few businesses. According to Google itself, that order depends on three things: how well your business matches the search, how far you are from the searcher and how well known your business is online.

You can change little about the distance. You can about the other two, and that does not have to cost a monthly agency fee. Below are three things you can arrange yourself, with the pitfalls that come with them.

1. Complete your Google Business Profile.

Your Business Profile is what Google shows on the map and on the right of the search results. A half-completed profile gives Google little to match you to a search.

• Choose a primary category that says exactly what you do, and add additional categories for your other services.
• List your services, with a short description of each.
• Use the same name, the same address and the same phone number everywhere: on your website, in your profile and in business directories.
• Add real photos of your work, your team or your premises. No stock photos.
• Keep opening hours and public holidays up to date. A customer who finds the door closed often leaves a review about it.

Posts in your profile show that the business is active, for example a completed project or a new service. One accurate post a month is worth more than something every week just for the sake of posting.

2. Ask for reviews, and ask everyone.

Reviews count towards how well known your business is, and they help a visitor choose. When you ask makes a big difference: right after completion a customer still remembers the work well. Send a short message with the review link from your Business Profile, so the customer lands in the right place straight away.

Ask every customer in the same way. Google does not allow you to ask only satisfied customers for a review, or to give something in exchange for a review. Respond to every review, including a negative one. A calm, factual reply often tells a new customer more than the review itself.

3. A page per town, only if you have something to say about it.

Based in Breda and also working in Etten-Leur, Oosterhout or Tilburg? Then it is tempting to make a page for each town with the same text and a different place name. Google calls these doorway pages and treats them as spam. Pages like that can harm your whole site.

A page per town does work if it really contains something different: projects you did there, how you work when you come from further away, or the rules that apply in that municipality. If you do not have that, list the places where you work on one page and in your Business Profile.

Make your website say the same as your profile.

Google compares your Business Profile with your website. Put your business name, address and phone number on every page, for example at the bottom, and write them exactly as in your profile. If you are called “De Vries Loodgieters” in one place and “Loodgietersbedrijf De Vries” in another, Google is less certain that it is the same business.

Also give the site structured data, the description of your business that search engines read (LocalBusiness from schema.org). That is a job for whoever builds your site. Ask about it if you do not know whether it is already in place.

And look at your site on a phone.

Most local searches happen on a phone. Test your site with Google’s PageSpeed Insights and look mainly at the mobile measurement and the Core Web Vitals. A slow or jumpy page costs you visitors, even if you rank high. Also check that your phone number is clickable and that the contact form works well on a small screen.

What you do not have to wait for.

None of these steps requires an agency or a new website. Mostly it takes a morning to complete your profile, and then the discipline to keep it up to date. If you get stuck on your website itself, for example because you cannot change anything or because it works badly on a phone, that is the moment to look at the site.

A website from TrompTech costs a one-off €749, €1,495 or €2,495, excluding VAT.