Google Maps SEO in Newcastle, NSW: show up in every suburb.

It is the work of ranking in the map rather than in the ordinary results. The map reads your Google listing, and it weighs how close your business is to whoever is searching.

Two things share a results page and they are ranked separately. The blue links are ranked on your website. The map is ranked on your free Google listing, and on how far your address sits from the person holding the phone.

That second factor is what makes the map feel unpredictable. A business can sit first for somebody in Hamilton and be invisible for somebody in Cardiff, on the same search, in the same minute.

What the map is weighing

• How relevant the listing is.

  How well your categories, your service list and your website match the words that were actually typed into the phone.

• How close the business is.

  The distance from your address to the searcher, or to the suburb they named. This is the one factor nobody can change.

• How well known the business is.

  Your reviews, mentions of the business on other websites, and how the site performs in the ordinary results.

Google sets those three out itself in its guide to local ranking. The order it puts them in has not changed in years, which is unusual for anything Google publishes.

Your position is calculated from where the searcher is standing. So there is no one number, there is a map of numbers, and the honest way to report it is suburb by suburb.

A measurement of eight Newcastle trades found every business that reached the top three did so in a quarter of the city or less, so where a business disappears matters as much as where it shows.

Owners ask where they rank and expect a number back. There is not one. Stand in Merewether and one set of three businesses comes up. Drive to Kotara and a different set comes up, on the identical search.

This is also why a report saying you rank second is not saying much. Second where, and for whom. A single number is usually the searcher standing roughly on top of the business, which is the flattering version of the answer.

The Hunter makes it starker than most places. Newcastle is a small centre with a long spread of suburbs around it, then Lake Macquarie, Maitland, Cessnock and Port Stephens. Each of those is effectively its own market.

A rank grid checks the same search from a spread of points across an area and shows your position at each one. It turns the map from a guess into a picture that can be compared month to month.

The grid is the only honest way to answer the ranking question. It runs the search from a set of points laid over the area that matters and records the position at each one. What comes back is a shape rather than a number.

What the shape tells you

• Where the business already holds.

  Usually a tight patch around the address, and it is normally greener than the owner expects it to be.

• Where the business falls off the map.

  The ring where it drops out of the three. That edge is the part worth working on, because it is the closest thing to reachable.

• Where the business is not competing at all.

  Suburbs where it never appears. Those need their own pages and real work in the area, not a longer list of suburb names on an existing page.

The grid gets run before anything changes, then again on the same points later. Two grids months apart are the difference between a report and an opinion.

Some of the businesses above you are ranking on a listing that breaks Google's own rules. A fake address, keywords stuffed into the name, or a category they do not serve. You can report those, and Google does act on reports.

Look at the businesses sitting above you and a share of them will be breaking a rule you have been careful about. The most common ones are visible from the outside without any special tools.

What is worth looking at

• Keywords added to the business name.

  The name field is for the registered name. A name carrying the service and the suburb is against the guidelines, and it is the easiest one to spot.

• An address that is a mailbox or a house.

  Google's rules require a staffed location, or a hidden address with a service area set instead of it.

• Several listings for one business.

  Multiple pins in different suburbs for a business that only has the one location.

The route is Google's own business redressal process, where you report a listing that breaks the guidelines and attach the evidence. It is slow, it costs nothing, and it does move things.

Run a grid first, then put the listing right, then start the reviews arriving weekly. After that comes a page for each service and each area, a few local mentions, and the same grid run again.

The first and last steps are the same step, which is what makes the middle ones answerable.

1. Measure everything before touching anything

A grid over the area the work is wanted from, on the searches that matter. Without it, every change afterwards is an opinion rather than a result.

2. Put the listing right

Categories, the service list, real photographs, correct hours, and the service area set properly where the business travels to its customers.

3. Reviews start arriving every week

Sent automatically when a job finishes, and replied to. Recency counts, so a burst of them last year does less than a trickle this month.

4. Build the pages

One for each service, then one for each area worth reaching. An area page needs real detail about that area and jobs genuinely done there.

5. Earn a few local mentions

A club, an association, a local story, a supplier who lists the businesses it works with. Being well known is the slow factor, and this is what feeds it.

6. The same grid gets run again

Same points, same searches. That comparison is the report, and it is the only part of this an owner should have to read.

Listing fixes can show on the grid quickly. Reviews and mentions are the slow half, and the ground gained arrives suburb by suburb, closest to the address first.

The order it happens in

• First the baseline grid runs.

  Nothing has changed yet at this point. This is the picture everything afterwards compares against.

• Then the listing is put right.

  Categories and services first, because this is where a position can move on its own without anything else changing.

• Then the reviews and the pages build.

  The green patch widens outward from the address rather than appearing everywhere at once.

The effect stays strongest close to the address and weakest furthest from it, permanently. That is distance working normally, and no amount of work removes it.

Ask for a grid before and after, ask which suburbs are being targeted, ask what happens to the listing in the first week, and ask who owns the account. A single ranking number instead of a grid is the answer worth noticing.

These are worth asking of any agency, including this one, so the answers given here are underneath each question.

• Will you show me a grid, before and after?

  Yes, and on the same points both times. Running the second one on different points is what makes a comparison meaningless.

• Which suburbs is this aimed at?

  A named list, decided on purpose. Covering four areas is four times the work of covering one.

• What changes on my listing in the first week?

  The categories, the services, the photographs and the hours. Never the business name.

• Who owns the Google account?

  The business does, with the owner as owner. That gets set up here before anything else happens.

The listing half of this is genuinely doable in house, and plenty of Newcastle businesses run it themselves. The measuring is the part that usually needs a tool.