+667%
more times seen on Google, in search results and on Maps
Fast Tyre24-hour mobile tyre fitting, London
June to September 2026. Source: Google Search Console and Google Business Profile.
A free local SEO audit from a person, not a score out of 100.
For UK tradespeople and small local businesses who want to know why Google isn't sending more work. A person checks your profile, your rank across your area, the businesses above you, your reviews and your site, and sends you a video within two working days. You pay nothing for the audit. Local SEO and Google Business Profile work is paid on results, with nothing to pay upfront.
- Free audit. Local SEO work after it is paid on results
- Only one of each trade per area. Is your patch still open?
- A video from a person, not a score or a 50-page PDF
+160%more clicks through to the website from Google search
“Our online presence has increased massively. I would recommend him 100%.”
Matt, ColourHausKitchen spray painting, Leeds
June to September 2026. Source: Google Search Console.
Read the full storyMore often shown, clicked and called.
All client resultsThree clients, and three of the numbers an audit is ultimately about: how often Google shows you, how many people click through, and how many tap to call. Each figure runs from the first month we tracked to the best month since, using Google's complete monthly data.
+159%
more views of the Google profile in search, and calls up from 38 to 60 a month
“I’m so busy I can’t do it anymore myself.”
Hiwad, Rescue TyresMobile tyre fitting, north-west London
June to August 2026. Source: Google Business Profile.
Read the full storyGoogle's call figure only counts presses of the profile's call button. Anyone who copies the number and rings it later never shows up in it. Fast Tyre and Rescue Tyres go to their customers rather than the other way round, the kind of business a rank check from one spot can badly mislead.
What is a local SEO audit?
A local SEO audit finds out why your business does or doesn't come up when people nearby search for what you do, and what would change that. Some call it a local SEO check or analysis. We call ours the free analysis. A person does it, for your trade and your area, and sends it to you as a short video.
Every check traces back to the three things Google says local results mainly rest on. How relevant you are to the search. How near you are to whoever is searching. And how well known you are, which Google says includes your reviews and the websites linking to you.
So the audit answers three questions. Does Google understand what you do? Where across your patch do you actually appear? And what are the businesses above you doing that you aren't? The answers decide what is worth fixing, in what order, and whether your area is worth chasing at all.
To ask for yours, use the form on this page.
Why check your rank from more than one spot?
Because distance is part of every local search. Google weighs the distance between each business and whoever is searching, and if they haven't shared where they are, it works from what it knows about their location (Google). You can top the map at the end of your road and be missing altogether in the next town.
So a single check, such as your own phone at home, only tells you about that spot. The audit runs your main search from a grid of points spread over the area you cover and notes where you come at each one. Laid over a map, it reads in seconds: green where you're in the top three, red where you can't be found.
The grid also shows how far you can realistically reach. Sterling Sky's local SEO audit checklist starts with this step, and warns that a business can be doing everything right and still have "hit the limits of its location". If that's where you are, you hear it before anything is agreed. What moves a business up the map.
Run the business from a van with the address hidden? Then where Google thinks you are is part of the check as well.
How does the audit size up the businesses ahead of you?
It takes the businesses Google shows first for your main search and sets each one against you. Some gaps can be closed. Distance can't, and it pays to know which is which before you put time or money into either. These are the comparisons that count:
- Categories. Which primary and extra categories they use, against yours.
- Reviews. How many they have, how recent the newest are, and how often fresh ones arrive. If a rival seems to be behind fake reviews, on its own profile or on yours, here is what you can and can't do about it.
- Distance. How close each one sits to the places where you want more work.
- Pages. Whether their website has a page for the job when yours doesn't.
- Names. Whether the name on the map is the one on their invoices. Whitespark's 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey, a poll of local search experts, puts keywords in the business name third on its map list (BrightLocal's summary). Yet Google's guidelines don't permit service or location information in a name. A rival leaning on that can be reported, though Google decides and promises nothing. Copying them puts your own profile at risk, so we never suggest it.
What else does the audit check?
Five more things. Four are tied to how Google picks local results, and the fifth is how you'll measure what changes. A tool can tick most of them. Working out which one is costing you calls takes someone who has looked at your market. What tips the balance changes from trade to trade, so the trade pages go deeper: roofing, plumbing and building.
Your categories
Your primary category tells Google what you are, and it heads the 2026 survey's list of map factors. The audit checks it against the work you sell and against what the leaders use. Google asks for the fewest categories that describe your core business. Picking the right one.
Your reviews
How many you have, your star rating and how recent they are, set against the businesses ahead of you. Recent reviews and a steady flow both sit in that survey's top 15. The audit also looks at whether reviews get a reply. Why the pace matters.
Citations and NAP
Citations are your business details on other sites. The audit checks your NAP (business name, address and phone number) matches on your site, your profile and the directories that appear when someone searches your name. Your site agreeing with your profile is the survey's only matching factor in its top 15, so that comes first. Which citations matter.
Your service pages
One page per job you want more of, not one page listing the lot. "Dedicated page for each service" is first on the survey's list for the results below the map. The audit checks each page says what the job is, where you do it and how to book, in your customers' words. How a service page ranks.
Your tracking
An audit is only useful if you can measure what changes after it. Your profile's call figure counts presses of its call button, not conversations, and Search Console counts clicks through to your site. If we work together, both feed your portal, so the starting point is on record. Which calls came from Google.
How is a manual audit different from a free tool's score?
A tool scores your listing against a fixed checklist. A person compares you with the businesses actually beating you, for your trade and your area, and picks out the two or three things that matter. Search for a local SEO audit and most of the first page is free tools and how-to guides, so it's worth knowing what a score can't tell you.
A score adds up items without knowing which ones count in your market. The 2026 survey's experts rank the primary category first among map factors. They count the number of posts, and keywords in your description, as having little impact (BrightLocal). A checklist can still mark you 90 out of 100 while the one thing that matters is wrong.
Some things a tool can't judge at all. Whether the town in the top business's name is its real trading name or padding. That most of your work comes from the next town over. That you want more kitchen jobs and fewer quick repairs. And no tool will tell you an area isn't worth the effort.
We use tools as well, to gather the data: the ranking grid, review counts, what's on your pages. What changes is who reads it. A person goes through it against your market, puts the few findings that matter in the video, and leaves out what won't move anything.
What's in the free video, and what isn't?
A few minutes of a person talking you through your own business, on screen. Where you show up now, who sits above you, and the handful of changes that would make the most difference, in order. It reaches you on WhatsApp within two working days, and you keep it, whatever you decide.
It isn't a 50-page PDF, a score out of 100 or a printout of every warning a crawler can find on your site. It's the short version, from someone who has looked at your market, in five parts:
- Where you show up. Your main search across the area you cover, and where you drop away.
- The businesses ahead of you. Who takes those searches, and the edge each one has over you.
- Your profile and website. What Google sees now, what's missing, and what's fine as it is.
- What to fix first. The few changes that matter most, in order. You can make them yourself.
- A straight answer. Whether your area is worth chasing, and whether it's still open in your trade.
Nothing upfront. Paid on results.
Local SEO and Google Business Profile work is paid on results. There is nothing to pay upfront: you pay nothing until the results we agree with you in writing, before we start, have been met.
- Agreed in writing first
- What counts as a result, and how it is measured, is set before any work starts.
- One business per trade, per area
- If we take you on, we turn down your competitors.
- No lock-in
- After the result, a rolling monthly fee you can stop whenever you like. Leave before it and you owe nothing.
- Straight answers
- If your market is not winnable, the free analysis says so.
Websites, ads and social media are quoted separately after the free analysis. How pay on results works
From first call to first result
Free analysis
Tell us your trade and area. We record a short video of where you rank, who is above you and what would have to change. It is yours to keep.
An honest answer
If your market is not winnable, we say so. If it is, we agree in writing what a result is and how it is measured, before anything starts.
The work
Your Google Business Profile, the pages that need to rank, citations and reviews. One business per trade per area, so never your rival as well.
You see every number
Clicks, calls and where you show up, in your own portal, straight from Google. You pay once the agreed results are met.
What people ask us
Is the local SEO audit really free?
Yes. There is nothing to pay and nothing to sign, and you keep the video even if you never hire us. It's free because it's how we decide whether a market is worth taking on, and it's the clearest way to show how we work. If you use it to make the fixes yourself, that's fine.
What do I have to give you, and when does the video arrive?
Your name, your trade, the town or area you cover and a mobile number, through the form on this page. Your website and business name help, but they're optional. Expect the video on WhatsApp within two working days. It takes a few minutes to watch.
Can a free tool or ChatGPT do the same audit?
Part of it. A checker will list missing fields and website errors in seconds, and a chatbot can explain what an audit covers or review text you paste in. Neither knows which jobs you want more of, why the business at number one is there, or whether your area is worth the effort. Use a tool for the checklist and a person for the judgement.
Do I need a website?
No. The audit starts with your Google Business Profile: the map listing that carries your reviews and call button. If you have a website it's checked too, and if it's sound we'll work with it, whoever built it. If you don't have one, the video says whether it's worth having. A new site is quoted separately and isn't paid on results.
Do you need my Google login?
No. The audit is built from what Google shows the public, so there's nothing to log in to. If we work together later, you add us as a manager on your profile and stay its owner. Each user signs in with their own Google account, so you never hand over a password.
What if my area isn't worth chasing?
Then the video says so, with the reason. It might be distance: the businesses ahead sit much closer to the customers you want, and no amount of profile work moves a business. You keep the video either way. We don't take on areas we don't think we can win, because with pay on results nothing is paid unless the agreed result is met.
What happens after I watch it?
You decide what to do with it. If your trade is still free in your area and you want the work done, the result and how it's measured get agreed in writing first. Local SEO and Google Business Profile work is paid on results. There is nothing to pay upfront: you pay nothing until the results we agree with you in writing, before we start, have been met. Once they have been, you pay monthly and can stop whenever you choose. End it before the result arrives and nothing is owed. Only the SEO is paid this way: anything else, such as a new website or ads, has its own quote. What pay on results means.
Can I make the changes myself?
Yes. The video puts the fixes in order. The free guides on this site cover most of them step by step: choosing a category, asking for reviews and checking your details. If time is what you're short of, rather than know-how, hand it to us.
Is a Google Business Profile audit the same thing?
It's one part. A profile audit looks at the listing on its own: category, services, hours, photos and reviews. A local SEO audit also covers your position from one side of your patch to the other, the businesses ahead of you, your website and your details on other sites. Google weighs all of them. If the profile is your only problem, the video says so. Google Business Profile management covers the profile work, and local SEO for tradesmen the rest.
Find out where you drop off the map.
Fill in your trade and your patch. A person records your video, and you'll have it within two working days. You'll see where you appear, who's ahead of you and what to fix first. If the area isn't worth chasing, the video says that too.