📍 Local Health

For any business serving a geographic area, the map pack is the ballgame. Are you in it?

What Is Local Health?

Local health measures every signal Google uses to decide who appears in the "3-pack" — the three business listings that show up on a map at the top of the search results whenever someone searches with local intent ("dentist near me," "OT for kids Bethesda," "roofing contractor Denver"). The 3-pack is the most valuable piece of real estate in local search: it takes up half the screen on mobile, appears above every organic result, and captures roughly 40–60% of clicks for local-intent searches. Own it and you don't need to worry as much about the rest of SEO. Miss it and your competitors get all the calls.

Why It Matters

If your business has a physical location or defined service area, local SEO isn't optional — it's the single highest-leverage pillar on your site. The math is brutal: for local-intent queries, the #1 organic result (a full-fledged web page) typically gets fewer clicks than the #3 spot in the map pack. Meanwhile, most small businesses have never done any deliberate local optimization; they claimed their Google Business Profile years ago, filled out about 40% of the fields, and forgot about it. That's the entire opportunity.

What We Diagnose

NAP Consistency

NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone — the three data points that must appear identically on your website, your Google Business Profile, and every directory listing (Yelp, Facebook, Bing Places, industry-specific listings). Google cross-references these to decide if your business is a "real" local entity. Even minor inconsistencies — "St." vs "Street," "(301) 555-0100" vs "301.555.0100" — will fragment your local authority. We verify your homepage footer contains a complete NAP, check that it matches your GBP, and flag common inconsistency traps.

Google Business Profile Check

Your GBP is a full-time local SEO asset that most small businesses treat like a Yellow Pages listing. We verify that your profile is claimed and verified, that all primary fields are filled (categories, hours, service area, description, phone, website), that you're uploading photos regularly (GBPs with fresh photos get ~35% more calls), that you have Q&A active, that recent reviews are being responded to, and that Google Posts are being used at least monthly. Miss any of those and you're leaving a fully-optimized competitor to win the map pack.

Local Map Pack Presence

We check whether you currently rank in the 3-pack for your primary local search terms — the actual queries your customers type when they're ready to call. If you're not showing up, we surface why (weak GBP signals, missing reviews, thin website topical relevance, incorrect service area, category mismatch) and give you the priority order to fix it. If you are showing up, we grade whether you're in position 1, 2, or 3 — because position 1 in the map pack gets roughly double the clicks of position 3.

Who Needs This Pillar Most

Anyone with a storefront, an office, or a defined service area. Home services (plumbing, HVAC, roofing, landscaping), healthcare (medical, dental, therapy), professional services (law, accounting, consulting), and retail all live and die by local SEO. If your customers ever type your city or "near me" into a Google search, this is your #1 pillar.