//SEO
Local search optimization for the
searches that end in a phone call.
Local SEO is search engine optimization for a business that serves an area. "Near me" is the most valuable phrase in search. Someone typing it wants to buy today, from someone close. Local SEO decides whether that is you or the business three miles away with worse reviews and a better profile.
Local search runs on different rules from the rest of Google. The map results, the three listings under it, and the near-me searches are decided by proximity, by the Google Business Profile, by review velocity, and by the location and service pages on your site, in roughly that order. A local SEO agency, or a local SEO expert working alone, has to work those levers in sequence, because a beautiful blog does nothing for a business whose profile has the wrong category and eleven reviews from 2021.
We do local SEO for businesses in Orange County and across the United States, from a base in Irvine, California. A Westlake Village med spa went from page two for most of what it sells to 138 non-brand terms in Google's top three, including the near-me searches that bring people through the door. We built our own local footprint the same way, with location guides across every California metro, and it ranks. The playbook is the same for a plumber in Anaheim or a dentist in Sacramento.
//What you get
What local SEO includes.
Local audit against the pack
Your profile, site and reviews measured against the businesses actually winning the Map Pack in your market, in plain language.
Google Business Profile optimization
Categories, services, hours, attributes, photos, posts and Q&A, set up and managed like the homepage it has become.
Review velocity
A simple ask-flow by text and email that your team will use, with responses to every review, because reviews that never stop are the strongest lever you control.
Location and service pages
A page for every service and every area you serve, written to answer the search and to be worth reading, not doorway filler.
Citations and consistency
Name, address and phone consistent across the directories that matter, and the ones that do not left alone.
Local reporting
Calls, direction requests, website clicks and Map Pack positions by area, not raw impressions.
//What is usually broken
Why the business down the street outranks you.
Your primary category is wrong or too broad, so Google shows you for searches your buyers never make and hides you from the ones they do.
Reviews arrive in bursts twice a year, and the competitor with a review every three days holds the top of the map.
Your site has one "Areas we serve" paragraph, while theirs has a real page for every city and every service.
The phone number on Yelp, the profile and the site are three different numbers, and Google trusts none of them.
Want this for your business?
Sound familiar?
Most owners recognize at least one of these. The fix is usually smaller than the problem looks, and the first conversation costs nothing.
Not ready? Keep reading
//How we work
How we win the map.
Audit the pack, not just the site
Who wins your searches today, why, and how far you are from them on each factor. That gap sets the plan.
Fix the profile first
The Google Business Profile decides most Map Pack outcomes, so it gets fixed before anything else: categories, services, photos, hours, description.
Build the review engine
The ask-flow, the timing, the responses. Review velocity compounds, and it is the lever a business controls most directly.
Build the pages, then report
Service and location pages worth reading, citations cleaned up, and a monthly report on calls and direction requests by area.
Want this for your business?
That is the process.
Nothing exotic, just done properly and in the right order. Want it run on your business?
Not ready? Keep reading
//Receipts
What this work has produced.
Method of Beauty
406 keywords ranking from zero in three months
A med spa with page one for its name and page two for most of what it sells. Search impressions rose 46%, and 138 non-brand terms landed in Google's top three, including the near-me searches that bring people through the door.
Read the case studyBody Juice
Customer base up 600%, revenue up 350%
Our founders' own juice bar. An education-based Instagram campaign reached 76,000 people and was shared 12,000 times, and NFL players, a Bachelor lead and a vlogger with millions of followers came through the door.
Read the case studyWant this for your business?
Want the same rigor on your account?
Every number above has a case study behind it, and a founder who can walk you through how it happened.
Not ready? Keep reading
//Two-minute quiz
Is local SEO your next dollar?
Four questions. At the end you get our honest read, including when the answer is “not this, not yet.”
Question 1 of 4
Do customers come to you, or do you go to them, within an area?
//Why trust us with it
Local SEO without the tricks.
No fake reviews, no keyword-stuffed names
Both get profiles suspended, and reinstatement is slow and ugly. We build real velocity from real customers.
No doorway pages
A location page has to be worth reading or Google eventually treats it as spam. Ours carry local knowledge, not swapped city names.
No promised Map Pack spots
Proximity is a ranking factor no agency controls. We make your profile the most complete, most reviewed, most active one in its category, the part you control.
You own every asset
The profile, the pages, the review flow, the reports. If we part ways, all of it stays with you, working.
Want this for your business?
This is how we work.
If it sounds like the way you would want it done, the next step is a ten-minute conversation with a founder.
Not ready? Keep reading
//What you can count on
How we operate.
//Learn the work first
The thinking behind the work.
The full playbook for winning the map results near you.
Every lever on the profile, in order of impact.
What changed this year and what still works.
The questions to ask before you sign with anyone.
Which one your business actually needs.
The playbook for one local category, in detail.
Getting found by the neighbors who need you.
How to get it back, and what caused it.
Our local guides across every California metro.
Local help if you are in our home county.
//Related services
The work this connects to.
Technical, on-page and content SEO that turns into calls, forms and booked revenue.
Optimization and management of the listing that is your real homepage now.
Pages and articles written to rank, to be cited by AI, and to be read by a buyer.
Authority earned through real coverage and relationships, never bought in bulk.
Getting cited inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews.
Search built for one location and one owner, not an enterprise budget.
Pages and articles written by operators, for the searches your buyers run.
Paid search and paid social run as one account, measured by booked customers.
Messaging, friction and proof, fixed in the order that moves the number.
Welcome, nurture, win-back and newsletter flows to the people who opted in.
Design and engineering as one job: fast, crawlable, on brand, built to convert.
Every Door Direct Mail: the offer, the piece, the routes, the printing and the drop.
Press releases, local features, awards and the outreach to the outlets that matter.
Practices, med spas and clinics: local search, ads that clear policy, and trust.
Who to win, why they pick you, what to run first, and how you will know it worked.
Every service we offer, grouped the way buyers look for them.
The receipts, with the numbers and how they happened.
Local help if you are in our home county.
//Our work
See this work in the wild.
Four businesses we have grown, including our own. Every number on these pages is one we can show you.
Body Juice
We built a juice bar that fought human trafficking and went viral
600% customer growth, on a founder's budget.
Read itMethod of Beauty
We put a med spa on the map
80+ guests from one campaign, 406 new keywords from zero.
Read itRomée
From a name to a brand, four cans and a store
A whole brand, live before launch day.
Read itWheelhouse
From page 3 to the top 3 for 300+ keywords
Five Dispensary of the Year wins came with it.
Read it//Plain English
What the initials actually mean.
Defined in a sentence, with a link to the organisation that owns the term.
Earning your place in the unpaid results. Google publishes its own starter guide, and the short version is that you make the site easy to crawl, useful to a reader, and clearly about the thing people are searching for.
Source: Google Search Central: SEO starter guideGoogle's listings above the map for service businesses, with the Google Guaranteed badge. You pass a background and licence check, and you pay per lead rather than per click.
Source: Google Ads Help: Local Services AdsThe free listing that shows your business on Google Maps and in the local results, with your hours, photos, services and reviews. For most local businesses more people see it than see the website.
Source: Google Business Profile Help//Common questions
Things we get asked first.
What is local SEO?
Everything that decides whether you show up when someone nearby searches for what you do: the Google Business Profile, the Map Pack, reviews, location and service pages on your site, and consistent business information across the web. It is a different discipline from ranking a blog post nationally, with different levers.
How long does local SEO take?
Profile fixes land in weeks. Review velocity and page work build over 60 to 120 days, which is when Map Pack movement typically shows in most markets. We set the realistic expectation for your market and category up front, then report against it.
Do I need location pages for every city I serve?
For the cities that matter, yes, if each page is worth reading. A page with real local detail ranks and converts. A template with the city name swapped in is a doorway page, and Google eventually treats it as one. We write the first kind.
Can you help with a suspended Google Business Profile?
Often, yes. Suspensions usually trace to a guideline violation: a keyword-stuffed name, a bad address setup, or review problems. We diagnose the cause, fix it, and file the reinstatement with documentation.
Is local SEO different from regular SEO?
It overlaps, but the levers are different. Proximity and the profile matter most locally. Site authority and content matter most nationally. Most businesses that serve an area need the local version first, and we will say which you need.
Do you do local SEO outside Orange County?
Yes. We are based in Irvine and we run local SEO for businesses across the country. The map works the same everywhere, and we bring local research to every market we work in.
Want this for your business?
Still have a question?
Ask a founder directly. No call center, no sales guy, and no obligation.
Not ready? Keep reading
About Mining Wells
We're on a mission to fix bad marketing.
Maybe:
- You are spending thousands on marketing tools, ads, and your website, with zero revenue increase to show for it.
- Every campaign you have tried gets minimal results.
- You have a great product that nobody seems to find.
- You are getting interest, but it never converts to a sale.
- You have a low retention rate.
- You have been paying a marketing agency for over a year and have not seen results.
You are not alone. Many founders and leaders live with the results of bad marketing without ever finding the reason.
And often that is because it can be many reasons. Sometimes it is the wrong ICP, sometimes the wrong messaging, sometimes the wrong targeting chasing impressions.
We are here to take the hard guesswork out and provide that clarity before it is too late.
At Mining Wells, we help founders and leaders grow their businesses the right way.
Tired of bad marketing?