SEO Down

Google runs a short set of tests before it puts three names on a map. Does this business do the thing being asked about, is it close to the person asking, is it open, and has anybody chosen it lately and said so in public. The firm above you passes every one of them. Most businesses in this county pass two.

The profile is usually where it falls apart. Claimed once, the category left on whatever was suggested, half the services never typed in, photographs from the year the doors opened and hours nobody has touched since. Google treats a profile in that state as a business it cannot vouch for.

The website is the other half of it. One page listing everything you do gives a particular search nothing to hold on to, so the job goes to the firm that wrote a page for it. And a site naming the county on its own loses every search made with a town attached, which around here is nearly all of them. Newry and Bangor are separate markets. Newcastle is different again.

None of this takes years to put right. In a town the size of Banbridge or Comber, you could count the firms in any one trade doing this properly on one hand, and being the finished name on a short list is enough. Bangor and Newry are harder, because there is more money in them and more people going after it.

The result comes first, because the result is what is being bought. Somebody in Newtownards wants your trade, puts the words and the town into a phone, and up you come. Your pin on the map, the number sitting there ready, your page in the results and your name in the answer printed above the whole lot. The phone goes, and the report puts the search beside the call.

The work splits four ways. The Google profile, finished to the last box and kept honest, category, services, photographs, hours and the ground you actually cover. The website, with a page for each service so that one search lands on one page. The reviews, asked for as a matter of course when a job is signed off, and answered properly. And the listings, every directory, register and body carrying your details, Newry Chamber among them, all saying the same thing.

Underneath it, the site has to be quick on a phone, the pages need the markup that ties each one to a business and an address, and the writing has to settle the questions customers here ask before they spend. Everybody searching in this county is served Google’s UK results, so that is the board your progress is marked on.

If there is money in a search you do not hold, you get the search, the work it needs and a date to expect it by. That goes in the report whether the news is good or not.

Every claim here is one you can stand over yourself before parting with anything.

We have been at this since 2013. Whoever puts your plan together is the one working it month after month, so there is no handover and nobody in between to pass a question to.

Prices are published in full, so a County Down budget can be decided before anybody rings anybody. The report counts enquiries, because a ranking on its own pays for nothing. Every review shown is a Google review with a name against it, left by a client who pays for the work.

There is a meeting address on High Street in Bangor, a short run from most of the county. County Louth is where the office is. The same people are on the work whichever one you visit.

Show me what my trade is worth in County Down

For a growing share of searches Google writes its own answer at the top and names businesses in it. ChatGPT will do the same if somebody asks who to use around Newry. Those names come from where the map has always got them. A profile with nothing left out, reviews from recent weeks, and pages stating what is sold and who it suits.

When Google answers instead of listing, it is still search, and the work behind it does not change. Nothing separate has to be bought, and anybody offering it is selling you fresh air. What helps is writing a machine can repeat accurately, so prices, hours, the towns covered and the answers people want before they ring all belong on the page in plain words.

It comes as part of every campaign in this county and nothing is added to the invoice for it. Once that answer begins naming businesses in your trade around Bangor or Downpatrick, the point is to have yours in there, and the report records the month it happened.

Send the form or ring. A working day is enough for us to come back with the searches your trade gets around your own towns, how you stand on each, and who is ahead of you. No fee for it, and no strings.

If it goes ahead, two weeks go on the audit. Where you appear today, what the website is costing you, which directories are still printing a number you dropped, and what the leaders in your trade have finished already.

The month after that goes on foundations. Profile completed, directories corrected, site faults cleared in the order they do damage, a review asked for as each job closes, and tracking put in so every enquiry can be traced back. Then the service pages, best earners written first.

A quarter in, the map should be carrying you whenever somebody searches close to the door, and the first report ought to put a town and a search beside every enquiry. In County Down the town searches move ahead of everything else, with Bangor and Newry last of those because they are the busiest. Should a quarter pass with nothing turning, the report says it outright and the plan is torn up.

The county divides three ways by how people buy. North Down, meaning Bangor, Holywood, Comber and Newtownards, is commuter country with money in it and high expectations, and every consumer trade there is contested. Newry and Banbridge trade on volume and on the border, with shoppers, hauliers and merchants. The Mournes and the coast at Newcastle live on visitors who arrive knowing nobody at all.

Up north the map decides the consumer trades. A salon, a dentist, a takeaway or a garage in Bangor is chosen from three map pins and a star rating. The one that wins has reviews from this month and a profile that answers questions before they are asked. Trades that travel, builders, electricians, joiners, are picked on where they will go, so those towns have to be written down and meant.

Around Newry the buying is heavier. Merchants, hauliers, plant hire and engineering sell to other businesses, where searches are fewer and each one is worth chasing, and the page has to carry stock, capacity and what happens when something goes wrong. At Newcastle and along the coast, hotels, guesthouses and restaurants compete with the booking sites for their own names, and win them back by answering a visitor’s questions and making it easier to book with them straight.

Some should keep their money. Where the need is this week, ads answer it, and that is the advice you will get. Where the ceiling is a couple of hundred a month, the profile and the reviews cost nothing but your own time, and that is where to start. For everybody else in County Down, there is a town search sitting there with your name nearly on it.