Local SEO basics a Dallas small business can do itself in a weekend

What local SEO actually is, and why the first weekend matters most

When someone in Dallas types "plumber near me" or "estate attorney Preston Hollow", Google shows two things: a map with three businesses pinned on it, and a list of websites underneath. Local SEO is the work of appearing in both for the services and neighborhoods you actually serve. Search engine optimization is my trade, and I am writing this as a member of BNI Preston Center, a referral chapter of about 70 Dallas business owners, because I watch fellow members pay for things they could do themselves and skip the free things that matter.

The honest truth about local SEO is that the first 20 percent of the work produces most of the result, and that 20 percent requires no technical skill. Google's own help page on improving local ranking states that local results are based primarily on relevance, distance and prominence, that businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up in local search results, and that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google. Everything in this guide follows from those three sentences. Block a Saturday and a Sunday, and do the following in order.

Saturday morning: claim and complete the Google Business Profile

The Google Business Profile is the listing that appears on the map and in the panel on the right of a search for your name. If you have never claimed it, search your business name, look for the "Own this business?" link, and follow the verification steps. Google's ranking page says verification tells Google that you are authorized to represent the business, which makes it more likely to appear in results. Until the profile is verified, nothing else you do to it counts for much.

Then fill in every field with care, because the rules are stricter than most owners realize. Google's Business Profile guidelines state that your name should reflect your business's real-world name as used on your storefront, website and by customers, and that including unnecessary information in the name, such as taglines, phone numbers or location details, is not permitted. The guidelines also say to use a precise, accurate address and that P.O. boxes are not acceptable. If you travel to customers rather than receiving them, the guidelines say a service-area business should hide its address and designate a service area, and that one profile per base of operations is the rule.

• Business name exactly as it appears on your signage and invoices, with nothing added.
• Address only if customers visit you there; otherwise hide it and set a service area.
• Phone number that a human answers, and the website URL of your main page, not a social profile.
• Hours, including special hours for holidays, kept current. Google says to include them.
• A written description in plain language: what you do, for whom, and where. No keyword lists.

Saturday midday: choose categories the way Google tells you to

Categories are the field owners most often get wrong, and the one that most affects which searches you appear for. The temptation is to add as many as possible. Google's guidelines say the opposite: choose the fewest number of categories it takes to describe your overall core business, pick specific categories where possible, and do not use categories as keywords. A roofer who adds "General Contractor", "Siding Contractor" and "Gutter Service" because he occasionally does those things is diluting the signal that says "roofer".

Set one primary category that describes what you would say if a stranger asked what you do. Add secondary categories only for services that are a real, regular part of the business. If you are not sure which category name Google uses, start typing in the field and read the options; the names are fixed, and the closest match to how your customers describe you is usually right. Then move on. This step takes fifteen minutes and people spend weeks on it.

Saturday afternoon: real photos, not stock

Google's ranking page lists adding photos and videos among the actions that help a profile stand out, and its photo help page explains that an exterior photo helps customers recognize your business when they visit, and sets the technical bar low: JPG or PNG, between 10 KB and 5 MB, recommended resolution 720 by 720 pixels. There are three types to add: a logo so customers recognize you on Google, a cover photo that best represents the business, and business photos that highlight what you offer.

Spend the afternoon with your phone. Photograph the front of the building with the sign legible, the inside where customers stand, your vehicles, your team at work, and finished jobs. Twenty honest photographs beat two polished ones. If the logo on your truck, your website and your profile are three different designs, that is a separate problem; a graphic designer such as Vicky Gouge of Full Moon Design Group fixes that kind of inconsistency, and her guide on a website, brochure and logo that look like three different companies explains why it costs you trust. For the weekend, use the logo you have and make sure it is the same one everywhere.

Saturday evening: set up a review habit you can keep

Reviews are the part of local SEO that compounds, and the part with the most rules. Google's ranking page states that more reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking, and that positive reviews and helpful replies can help your business stand out. Its page on getting reviews says you can ask customers to visit a Google link or scan a QR code, and it is blunt about the limits: reviews must reflect a genuine experience, and offering free or discounted goods or services in exchange for reviews, changed reviews or removed negative reviews is considered fake and misleading content and is strictly prohibited.

Google's review content policy goes further. It states that merchants may not discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers, and that content based on a conflict of interest, including current or former employment or familial relationships, is prohibited. So the habit is simple and legal: generate your review link in the profile, send it to every customer at the moment the job is done and they are pleased, ask everyone rather than only the happy ones, and never trade anything for a review. Then reply to each one in a sentence or two, conversationally and without promotions, as Google's page advises. Our chapter guide on word-of-mouth marketing you can control covers the exact moments to ask.

If you would like to see how a room of 70 business owners handles this in practice, a Thursday visit to BNI Preston Center is a fast education. We meet at Park City Club, 5956 Sherry Lane, Suite 1700, in Preston Center, with open networking from 11:00 AM and the meeting from 11:30 to about 1:00 PM. Visitors register on the Visit page. Half the owners in the room have solved the review problem and will tell you how over lunch.

Sunday morning: one page per service, one page per area

Now the website. Most small-business sites have a home page, an about page and a single "Services" page that lists everything in one paragraph each. Google's relevance factor is about how well a listing matches what someone is searching for, and a page that mentions water heater replacement in one sentence among twelve other services does not match "water heater replacement Dallas" the way a page devoted to it does. The fix is one page per service you actually want to sell, written for a customer who has that problem right now.

Each service page needs four things: a heading that says the service and the place in plain words, a few paragraphs that explain what the problem looks like, what you do about it and what the customer should expect, a photograph of your own work, and a phone number and form. If you serve several distinct areas, a short page for each one is reasonable, provided it says something true and specific about working there, not the same paragraph with the neighborhood name swapped. Write for a reader first. Google has said for years that it rewards content that is helpful to people, and in my experience the pages that answer a customer's real question also rank.

Sunday afternoon: citations, consistency and the website-profile match

A citation is any place online that lists your business name, address and phone number: Yelp, the Better Business Bureau, Apple Maps, Bing Places, your chamber directory, industry directories, and the member directory of any group you belong to. Google's prominence factor includes information it has about a business from across the web, and inconsistency between those listings is a common, fixable weakness. Spend the afternoon searching for your business name plus your phone number and fixing every old address, former phone number and misspelled name you find.

Make sure your website shows the same name, address and phone number as your Google profile, ideally in the footer of every page. If you have moved or changed numbers, that is the first thing to correct. The goal by Sunday evening is one version of the truth about your business, repeated identically in a dozen places.

What not to pay for

I earn my living from search, so I will be specific about what is not worth buying. Nobody can sell you a better position on the map; Google's own page says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Anyone promising a guaranteed position is describing something that does not exist. Beyond that, a few common charges that a weekend's work makes unnecessary.

• Monthly fees for "managing" a Google Business Profile that only needs an hour a month once it is set up.
• Bulk citation submissions to hundreds of directories nobody visits; a dozen real ones, kept consistent, do the job.
• Review-generation services that offer incentives, gate negative feedback or write reviews; Google's policy prohibits all three and the risk is yours.
• Dozens of near-identical "city pages" generated for every suburb; they are thin content and rarely help.
• A new website before the existing one has a proper page for each service; design is not the problem if the content is.
• Any report that counts keywords or "SEO score" without showing whether the phone rang more.

What to measure in 90 days, and the part no search engine can do

Give the weekend's work three months. Then look at four numbers inside the Business Profile and your website: how many times the profile appeared in searches, how many calls and direction requests it produced, how many reviews you added, and how many form submissions or calls the new service pages generated. Compare them with the three months before. If the profile is appearing more and the phone is not ringing more, the problem is the description, the photos or the reviews, not the ranking. If nothing moved at all, verification failed or the categories are wrong. Start there before paying anyone.

There is one limit to all of this that I should state plainly, since I sell SEO for a living. Search finds people who already know what they need and are typing it in. It does not reach the homeowner who has not yet realized the stain on the ceiling is a plumbing problem, or the business owner who does not know a fractional CFO exists. Those customers arrive through people: the realtor, the insurance agent, the CPA who hears the problem first. For that side of growth, the options in Dallas are compared in our guide to business networking in Dallas, and a structured referral chapter like ours is one of them. The weekend fixes what people find when they look you up. The Thursday lunch is where many of them hear your name in the first place.

Questions people ask me