Local SEO retainer
from €990 / month
monthly, three months minimum
- All six levers
- Google Business Profile maintained
- Location pages and local schema
- Monthly reporting and strategy call
Local SEO for SMBs: Google Maps and local search Found in your real service area.
Local visibility as a system: Google Business Profile, location pages, local schema, reviews and citations, maintained monthly rather than set up once.
Launch 30 May 2026
Investmentbüro Rotenberger, impressions per day as a 7-day average since the new site launched. Source: Google Search Console.
Six levers national SEO ignores.
The mechanics are the same, the signals are not. That is where most local businesses fall short.
Google Business Profile
A fully completed profile, regular posts, maintained service and product data, every review answered. The first lever and usually the most neglected one.
NAP consistency
Name, address and phone number identical in every directory. Mismatches dilute local authority without anyone noticing.
Location pages
A dedicated URL per location or sub-area with locally adapted content. Not a template with the place name swapped in, but real local substance.
Local schema
LocalBusiness and matching subtypes with areaServed, openingHours and geo coordinates, so the website and the Business Profile carry the same data.
Review strategy
A process for new reviews, response guidelines and a way to handle negative ones. Volume, recency and replies feed prominence, one of the three factors Google names.
Local citations and links
Mentions in relevant trade directories, chambers, local blogs and associations. Not hundreds of them, but the right ones.
What the local SEO retainer includes.
A fixed scope per month, with priorities reset whenever the local field shifts.
Every month
- Maintain the Google Business Profile and publish posts
- Answer every review
- Build and optimise location pages
- Maintain and extend local schema
- NAP consistency across the relevant directories
- Reporting on visibility, map pack share and reviews
- Strategy call
When needed
- An onboarding sprint with full profile setup and NAP cleanup
- A workflow for winning new reviews
- Posts on locally relevant topics and funding programmes
- Local citations and links
- A second language for international clients
Not included
- Bought reviews
- Bulk directory submissions
- Paid ads and social media
- Legal advice on reviews
How Google picks the local results.
Google names three factors itself: relevance, distance and prominence. Every lever in the retainer feeds at least one of them.
Relevance
Does the business match the search? Google reads the primary category, the listed services and the description in the profile, plus the content of the linked page. A primary category that is too broad or simply wrong costs more than any missing detail.
Distance
How far is the business from the searcher, or from the place named in the query? That cannot be moved, but it can be represented correctly: a consistent address, a cleanly defined service area and pages for the places where you actually work.
Prominence
How well known is the business, online and offline? This is where the number, recency and content of reviews come in, along with mentions in directories and local media, links, and the organic strength of your own website.
Map pack and organic results
A local search returns two lists: the map with three profiles, and the classic results below it. The profile competes for the map, the location page for the list underneath. Each supports the other, which is why we look after both together.
Searches without a place name
Someone typing “electrician” or “tax advisor near me” into a phone still gets local results, because the device location supplies the place. Local optimisation therefore also works on searches that contain no place at all.
Storefront, service area or a city of districts.
How the profile and the page structure are built depends on where your customers meet you.
Businesses with walk-in customers
Practice, law firm, studio, shop: the address is visible, and opening hours, directions, parking and accessibility go into the profile and onto the page. Proximity counts heavily here, so every one of those details has to be right, holiday hours included.
Service areas without walk-ins
Trades, cleaning, mobile services: if you travel to customers and do not receive them at your premises, the address is hidden in the profile and a service area is set instead. The most important places in it get pages with real content, not a list of town names in the footer.
Cities with district-level results
In large cities every district returns its own result lists with its own competitors. How we approach that district by district is shown on the page about local SEO in Munich.
What happens in the first months.
First the foundation, then the monthly routine. The order is fixed; the pace depends on the competition in your area.
Access and ownership
The Google Business Profile belongs to you, with owner rights on your account. We work with manager access, and the same goes for Search Console and analytics. If the retainer ends, everything stays with you.
Onboarding sprint
At the start, usually four to six weeks: build out the profile completely, set categories and services, add photos, clean up conflicting listings and write the first location pages. The sprint has its own fixed price based on scope.
The directories that count
Google, Bing Places, Apple Maps, the main business directories, chamber and trade association listings, and the portals of your industry. We check where your business is already listed, correct conflicting data and get duplicates removed.
Winning and answering reviews
A fixed moment after each job when customers are asked, QR cards for the workshop, practice or counter, and an email reminder. Every customer gets asked, not just the happy ones, because the Google guidelines prohibit incentives and selective requests. Every review gets a reply, negative ones factual and without a point-by-point defence.
Retainer, diagnosis or rebuild.
Three months minimum, then cancel monthly. No onboarding lock-in.
SEO Audit
€690
one-off, two to three weeks
- Local signals and location structure checked
- Competitor comparison in your area
- Prioritised action list
Website with location structure
from €3,900
fixed price, eight to twelve weeks
- Location pages planned from the start
- Local schema from launch
- Transition into the retainer possible
Three signals that it does not fit.
Local SEO only works where there is a real service area.
- You sell purely online with no service area. Local optimisation is wasted effort there, and the standard SEO retainer is the better route.
- You only want the Google listing filled in quickly. That is a single step, not a system, and it does not justify a retainer.
- You expect the map pack within four weeks. In low-competition sub-areas things move after four to eight weeks; contested city queries take months.
Further reading.
- Why your website isn't getting enquiries: 8 mistakesTraffic is coming in. The site looks decent. Yet no enquiries arrive. Here are eight structural mistakes that explain why - and what to do about each one.
- Switching SEO agency without losing rankings or dataSwitching SEO agencies is trickier than starting with one. Switch wrong and you lose access, data and rankings at once. Switch right and your rankings never notice. Here is the order that makes the difference.
- SEO for AI Search 2026: What Business Websites NeedSEO for AI search is not a trick layer. Business websites need clear architecture, technical access, proof, internal links and measurable inquiry paths.
Patrick SosathFounder of seosath, responsible for strategy, code and SEO
From the first call to the reporting you deal with the same person. No hand-off to a junior team, no account management in between.
Common questions about local SEO.
What makes local SEO different from normal SEO?
Additional signals: Google Business Profile, NAP consistency, local reviews, location pages, local links and schema with geo context. Without them a site stays close to invisible for searches with a place in them.
Is a Google Business Profile listing enough?
No. The profile is the baseline. What decides is consistent data across directories, regular posts, a reply to every review, maintained service data, your own location pages and local schema.
We have several locations. What changes?
Each location needs its own URL with locally adapted content, its own schema and its own profile. That gets mapped before anything is built, otherwise the location pages compete with each other.
We are outside the city, not in it. Does this still work?
Yes. The city is the search term; the service area can be the district or a cluster of neighbourhoods and surrounding towns. We define that geometry and reflect it in the profile and the location pages.
How fast will we see results?
Local search often moves faster than national, because each sub-area has less competition. First movement usually after four to eight weeks; heavily contested city queries take three to six months.
What does local SEO cost?
The local SEO retainer starts at €990 per month, the same fixed fee as the SEO retainer without a local focus, with a three-month minimum. An onboarding sprint at the start is offered where needed, as a one-off fixed price based on scope.
Send us your domain and your most important local search.
In the strategy call we look at the profile, the location pages and Search Console, and say which of the six levers moves first for you.
Reply within one working day. 60 to 75 minutes, €190, credited against your project fee.