We are a local SEO agency with a guarantee for your Google Business Profile in Google's local map results: after an assessment, we guarantee up to 50% of the key phrases you could rank for will show your profile there, on a set schedule. We build out the profile, its categories, the local pages and the citations behind it, measured against the businesses already in the map results. It is one of the three places the first page guarantee measures, beside the organic results and Google's AI answers.
The guarantee
We guarantee up to 50% of the key phrases you could rank for will rank on the first page of Google, measured separately in each of the three places, after an assessment of your business. See how the first page guarantee is measured.
Search for a service and Google answers with a map and a short list of businesses, often before any website. It does this even when nobody types a place: Google says your location "helps to show you nearby results" even when the search leaves the place out. When we checked 12 commercial local searches from one U.S. city on September 27, 2026, the map results showed on 11 of them.
If your Business Profile is not in that short list, the call, the visit and the directions request go to a business that is. Google Maps alone has more than 2 billion users a month, by Google's February 2025 count, and Google is plain that nobody can buy a better spot: "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google."
The unpaid map listings are also getting squeezed. Sterling Sky's State of Local SEO report for 2026 found ads in the local pack on almost 22% of its reports, up from 1%, and Local Services Ads on 31% of the queries it tracked, up from roughly 11%, as paid placements grew through 2025. Every paid slot is one less look at the listings you earn.
The free SEO audit is where the work starts. Enter your website and your email on the free SEO audit page, and we take it from there.
After that comes the method. For each phrase on your list we search Google from your agreed market and record every business in the map results. Then we measure what they have: their primary and additional categories, how far they sit from the search point, their review count, rating and pace of new reviews, their photos, hours and listed services, their citations and the pages their profiles link to. That measurement shows what your profile has to match, then beat, phrase by phrase. Before we sign, we tell you in writing whether we can offer the first page guarantee, and for which market.
These are the local search engine optimization services the plan carries, each aimed at one number: your share of the phrase list in the map results.
Google says the categories you select affect your local ranking, and a profile can carry one primary category plus up to nine more. We set your categories from what the profiles ahead of you use.
What you get: Google Business Profile management that starts with the right primary category and the additional ones the measurement points to, the field that led Whitespark's 2026 list of local pack factors.
Service-area businesses hide their address and can list up to 20 service areas, within about two hours' drive of where they are based.
What you get: your address and service areas set up on your profile.
Google says a service you list may be highlighted on your profile when customers search for it. Hours must be your real customer-facing hours, and Google's photo rules ask for pictures that represent reality, with no heavy filters or AI edits.
What you get: services listed the way customers search for them, hours that match your door and photos of your real business.
Google allows asking customers for honest reviews, for example with a link or a QR code, and bans paid reviews, incentives and asking only the happy customers. In BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 US consumers, 89% expect business owners to respond to reviews, and generic or templated replies put off 50% of consumers.
What you get: a simple way to ask each customer for a review, and a reply to every review.
In Whitespark's 2026 survey, a dedicated page for each service led the local organic factors and placed in the map pack and AI visibility lists as well, and a name, address and phone on your site that match your profile is a map factor too. Our website team builds those pages as part of the same plan.
What you get: a page for each service and area you want to be found for, with details that match your profile.
Whitespark's experts weight citations at 6% of the map pack, a small share, but they call three of the top five AI search visibility factors citation factors. Consistent listings on Google Maps, Bing Maps and Apple Maps are the citation factor they rate highest for the map pack.
What you get: your business name, address, phone and hours kept the same across the listings that matter, including Apple Maps and Bing Places.
On each milestone date we search every phrase on your list from the market we agreed and record whether your profile shows in the map results.
What you get: your map share on each milestone date, next to the search terms your own Business Profile Performance report shows, which Google updates monthly.
Google's own help page says local results are "mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity", and explains the third factor under the heading "Prominence".
Whitespark's 2026 survey of 47 local search experts puts rough weights on the map pack: Business Profile signals 32%, reviews 20%, on-page signals 15%, links 8% and citations 6%. It is an expert-opinion survey, not a measurement of Google, and its authors say none of the experts has special access to Google's algorithm. Its top two factors are the primary category and the searcher's distance from the address.
Reviews matter because Google says so. Sterling Sky's study of 8,186 businesses in 200 cities found that the reviews a business got that month mattered more for "near me" rankings than its total count. Reviews come from your customers; our measurement counts the review count, rating and pace of every business ahead of you, so the gap is on paper.
The order matters. First the address and hours: Google says a virtual office or P.O. box is not eligible, and hours must match the door. Then the categories, then services, photos and attributes, then the local pages and citations behind them. Google warns that editing a category can trigger a new verification.
The profile also feeds Google's AI now. Google shut down the Business Profile Q&A API on November 3, 2025, and is moving customer questions to AI answers in Google Maps. Ask Maps, a Gemini feature inside Google Maps, launched in the U.S. and India on March 12, 2026. Ask Maps and the AI answers in Google Maps do not count toward the first page guarantee, which counts the AI answer on Google's results page. Google also lists an up-to-date Business Profile among the fundamentals for its AI features, which is where our AI search optimization work picks up.
| Instead of | You get |
|---|---|
| A one-time "profile optimization" that goes stale | Profile work that continues, checked on each milestone date |
| A listings tool that syncs directories and nothing else | Citations plus the categories, pages and profile work that decide the map results |
| An SEO who works the website and ignores the map | One team on the map results, the organic results and the AI answers together |
| Guessing what the businesses above you have | A measured gap: their categories, reviews, photos, citations and pages, next to yours |
Local SEO is one of the six services in the Full Suite plan, which brings all six under one house:
Each case page says what we did for that client:
Hummus Bowls & Wraps, a Mediterranean-style eatery: we built their website and started an SEO campaign for local searches such as "restaurant near me" and "food near me".
Fast Affordable Air, an air conditioning repair and installation company, is one of our Full Suite clients: one team delivered its website, its SEO and the automation behind them.
Katy Dental Experts, a dental practice in Katy, Texas, and MiraZone Spa, a chronic pain and inflammation treatment center, are Full Suite clients too.
C.J. Hewitt Construction, a roofing company in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, hired us for its SEO.
Every case page records what that client reached during our service. See what each one reached.
A local SEO agency works on the places a nearby customer finds you: your Google Business Profile in the map results and the local pages of your website. At First Page SEO Guarantee that means categories, services, hours and photos, a page for each service and area, consistent citations, and a measurement of the businesses already in the map results for each phrase on your list, checked on each milestone date.
Google says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and popularity, the third of which its help page explains under the heading "Prominence". Relevance is how well your profile matches the search, distance is measured from the searcher, and prominence draws on links and reviews. Google also says the categories you choose affect your local ranking, and that complete, accurate profiles are more likely to show up. Nobody can pay Google for a better local ranking.
Google's general guidance for search is that changes can take anywhere from a few hours to several months, and that it is worth waiting a few weeks before judging them. Our written terms set the milestones instead: at least 20% of your phrase list on the first page by day 90, 40% by day 180 and 50%+ by the end of the first year, measured in each of the three places separately, the map results included.
Distance is measured from the searcher, so a business close to the search point has an edge that no one can buy. A service-area business hides its address and can list up to 20 service areas, within about two hours' drive of where it is based, but it cannot set a radius. A page on your website for each area you serve helps in the organic results, where Whitespark's experts put the city or neighborhood relevance of your content second on their list.
Yes. The map results are one of the three places the first page guarantee measures, beside the organic results and Google's AI answers. A phrase counts in the map results when a search for it, made from your agreed market, shows your business there through your Google Business Profile. Your map share is measured separately from the other two places, and the written terms explain each check.
The free SEO audit is the first step. Enter your website and your email, and the work starts with a measurement of the businesses already in the map results for the searches your customers make. Questions first? Contact us.
Answer a few short questions, and we reply the same business day and tell you where your business stands.
