Service
Local SEO for electricians: the map pack, done properly
On a phone, the map with three businesses fills the screen before any website appears. It is where the emergency, the socket, the fault and the small job go. It is decided mostly by your Google Business Profile, not your website, and most profiles we audit are set up wrong in ways that take an hour to fix and months to feel.
What decides the map pack
The factors, ranked, and what we do about each
Rankings from the 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey (Whitespark, 47 local search specialists, 187 factors), which is the closest thing the industry has to a public answer. The biggest movers this year were hours and predefined services, which almost nobody fills in.
| Factor | Rank | What we do |
|---|---|---|
| Primary category | 1st | Set to Electrician. Not Contractor, not Electrical installation service. |
| Distance from the searcher | 2nd | You cannot move, but you can make sure the pin and service area are right. |
| Words in the business name | 3rd | Only your real trading name. Keyword-stuffed names get suspended. |
| Open at the time of search | 5th | Exact hours, including evenings if you answer. Special hours for bank holidays. |
| Rating and review count | 6th and 9th | A steady flow beats a burst. Recency is scored on its own. |
| Additional categories | 8th | EV charging station contractor, emergency electrician, if true. |
| Predefined services ticked | 22nd, up 59 places | Every service you do, ticked in the profile. |
| Site NAP matches profile | 15th | One name, one number, one address everywhere. |
The review routine
Reviews that arrive every week, not once a year
Rating, count and recency are three separate signals. We set up a routine that fits the day: the words to say when the job is finished, a one-tap link texted that evening, a card with the invoice, and a reply to every review within a day. No incentives, no gating, no family. The target is a pace that looks like a busy electrician doing good work, because that is what it is.
The full review guideService area and pages
Evidence for every town you claim
Google trusts a service area it can see evidence for: reviews from that town, a page that speaks to it, mentions on that town's sites. We set the profile's service area to where the van genuinely goes and then build the evidence for the two or three towns that matter most, rather than listing thirty and proving none.
How the pages fit inWhat you get
Included in every tier
- Profile audit against the ranked factor list, with the three competitors above you
- Categories, services, attributes, hours and special hours set and kept current
- Service area set to where you actually work; address shown or hidden correctly
- Photos of real jobs added regularly; stock images removed
- Review routine, link, card and reply handling
- Questions and answers written from what customers ask you on the phone
- Citations on real directories and installer registers, with one consistent NAP
- Spam removal: reporting fake competitor profiles in your area
- Monthly check that nothing drifted: Google changes the service list and the hours
Questions electricians ask us
How long does it take to get into the map pack?
Profile fixes register within a couple of weeks. Whether that is enough depends on the three businesses already there: if they have two hundred reviews each, the gap is reviews, and that is months of steady asking. We tell you which it is in the audit.
I work from home. Should I show my address?
If customers never visit you, no. Set the profile as a service-area business, hide the address and list the areas you cover. Showing a home address is against the guidelines for a service-area business and can get the profile suspended.
Can you get my suspended profile back?
Often, if the suspension was for a fixable guideline breach such as keywords in the name or a hidden address on a shopfront. Reinstatement takes weeks and needs evidence of the real business. We have done it; we cannot promise it.
Do Google Business Profile posts help ranking?
Barely. In the 2026 ranking survey they sit near the bottom of the list. They help a customer decide once they are looking at you, so we post when there is something real to show, not on a schedule for its own sake.
What are citations and do I still need them?
Mentions of your business name, address and phone on other sites: directories, installer registers, trade bodies. They matter less for the map pack than they did, and more for being cited in AI answers. We build them steadily, on real sites only.
Find out why you are not in the map pack
Send us your business name and your town. You get the profile audit, the three businesses above you, and what it would take, in plain English.