For most local searches the map listing is seen more than the website. It should agree with the website.
The primary category does the heavy lifting
One primary category decides most of what you show up for. Picking something broad to cover everything usually means ranking for nothing in particular.
Choose the one that matches the work you most want more of, then add secondary categories for the rest. Revisit it when the mix of jobs changes.
Service area or address, not both by accident
If customers come to you, show the address. If you go to them, set a service area and hide it. A shop that lists an address it does not staff gets reviews complaining about a locked door.
Keep the service area honest. Listing every suburb in the metro to widen the net dilutes the listing and brings calls you will decline.
Hours, holidays, and festival weeks
Wrong hours on the listing generate one-star reviews from people who drove over. Set the special hours before the holiday rather than after somebody complains.
Downtown and South Congress businesses should also set hours for the weeks when the street is closed. If you are unreachable during a festival, say so on the listing.
Photos, dated and real
Listings with recent photographs of actual work get more clicks than listings with a logo and a stock image. Add a few every month rather than twenty once a year.
Show the storefront and the parking situation as well as the finished work, so a first-time customer recognizes the place when they arrive.
Send each service to the page about that service
Linking every listing to the homepage wastes the click. If someone taps a listing about foundation repair, they should land on the foundation repair page.
The same goes for area pages. A search that named a neighborhood should land on the page for that neighborhood, with that neighborhood's details on it.
Ask for reviews at the right moment
The moment is when the job is finished and the customer is visibly happy, in person, with a link ready to send. Not a mass email three weeks later.
Reply to all of them, including the bad ones, in a way that a future customer reading the exchange would find reasonable. That reader is the actual audience.
