Google Business Profile
Categories, services, photos, posts and the details most profiles leave blank. This is the storefront Google shows before your website.
Local SEO
Own your patch before you conquer the map.
Local searches are the warmest traffic there is: someone three suburbs away, phone in hand, ready to call whoever shows up. We build the signals that decide who that is, a sharp Google Business Profile, real reviews, and suburb pages with actual substance.
Most of your customers search with a suburb in mind.
Every city and town is really a cluster of neighbourhoods. People do not search for a plumber, a clinic or a cleaner in general: they search for one near them, and Google answers with the map pack and a handful of local results. Local SEO is the discipline of earning those spots. It sits inside the wider work of SEO businesses need, but the signals are different, and most agencies get them wrong in the same five ways.
- Missing from the map pack
- A half-finished Google profile
- Thin copy-paste suburb pages
- Reviews nobody answers
- Different details on every directory
Most local SEO is directory spam with a monthly invoice.
The standard package is a pile of junk directory listings, a stack of near-identical suburb pages and a ranking report nobody reads. Google stopped rewarding that years ago. We put the work into the signals Google says it actually weighs, and we show you what changed each month.
The usual agency
- Bulk directory submissions
- Doorway pages, one per suburb
- Reports built to confuse
- Long lock-in contracts
You, with Igloo
- The citations that actually count
- Suburb pages with real local copy
- Clear monthly reporting
- Month to month, earn it or lose it
Everything that decides who shows up locally.
Local rankings are dozens of small signals pointing the same way. These are the ones we build, and keep pointed.
Reviews & ratings
A steady system for earning and answering reviews, with visible reviews on the page backing the schema. That is how star snippets are earned honestly.
Suburb & city pages
Local landing pages built the anti-doorway way: shared structure, real local copy. Each one earns its own place in the results.
Citations & NAP
Your name, address and phone number made consistent across the directories that matter, and only those. Quality over bulk, every time.
LocalBusiness schema
Structured data that ties your business to its real service area, so search engines understand exactly who you are and where you work.
Local link architecture
Hub, city and suburb pages linked so authority flows where it should, on a fast site that helps rather than hurts. Speed is a local factor too.
How do I rank in the Google map pack?
Google is unusually open about this one. Map pack rankings come down to three things: relevance, distance and prominence. Distance is out of everyone’s control, which is exactly why nobody honest will promise you a position. What we do is make the other two as strong as they can be, so that whenever you are in range, you are in the running.
Relevance
Does your profile clearly match the search? Right categories, complete services, and a website that says the same thing. Most profiles fail here first.
Distance
How close you are to the searcher. Nobody can optimise this, and anyone who claims they can is selling you a promise they do not control. We plan around it instead.
Prominence
How much trust you have earned: reviews and replies, consistent citations, and a fast site with real local pages behind the profile.
Do suburb pages still work?
Yes, when they are built properly, and we know because we build them for our own businesses. The Spruce home cleaning site runs city and suburb pages designed the anti-doorway way: the functional blocks, the booking flow and the trust elements stay identical across every page, and the local copy is real, written about the actual suburb rather than swapped in with find-and-replace. Google can tell the difference, and so can the person reading it.
Writing genuinely local copy at scale is its own craft, which is why our content systems service exists. And it only pays off on a site built to carry it: clean architecture, fast pages, proper internal links. If yours is not, that is a web design conversation first, and we will say so.
4.9Spruce’s real Google rating, from 131 reviews
7 figureswe grew our own brand, Spruce, from zero on $0 ad spend
Reallocal copy on every suburb page, no doorway clones
The free listing most businesses waste.
Your Google Business Profile is often the first thing a local customer sees, and it is free. Yet most NZ profiles are a name, a phone number and a handful of old photos. Proper Google Business Profile optimisation means the right primary and secondary categories, every service listed and described, fresh photos, regular posts, questions answered before strangers answer them for you, and every review replied to. It also means defending the profile: reporting fake competitor listings and keeping your details from drifting. It is unglamorous work, done steadily, and it is where most of the early local wins come from.
Carve. Build. Weather.
One method, three moves. Local SEO is won by picking the right ground first, then holding it.
01
Carve the patch
We map the suburbs and services actually worth winning: where the demand is, where you can genuinely serve, and where the competition is soft.
02
Build the signals
Profile, reviews, suburb pages, citations and schema, built as one system so every signal points the same way.
03
Weather the churn
Reviews keep arriving and keep getting answered, rankings get tracked, pages get refreshed. Local SEO is held, not finished.
The local stack, end to end.
A local ranking is dozens of small signals agreeing with each other. These are the tools and disciplines we use to build every one of them.
- 01 Google Business Profile Setup, categories, services, posts and review strategy.
- 02 Local landing pages City and service-area pages that read naturally and rank locally.
- 03 Suburb page architecture Suburb-level pages built carefully, never thin doorway duplicates.
- 04 Reviews and ratings Visible reviews on the page plus the schema that earns star snippets.
- 05 LocalBusiness schema Structured data that ties your business to its real service area.
- 06 Google Search Console Local query tracking, indexing and coverage monitoring.
- 07 Local citations Consistent name, address and phone details across the directories that matter.
- 08 Internal linking Hub, city and suburb pages linked so authority flows where it should.
- 09 Core Web Vitals Fast local pages, because speed is a local ranking factor too.
Local SEO works harder with these.
No surprise invoices.
Nobody should have to book a call just to hear what local SEO costs. These are the ranges local work usually lands in. Your figure comes down to scope, which we agree in writing before we start.
Local foundations
from $1,500
2 to 3 weeks
A one-off fix: Google Business Profile done properly, citations cleaned up, LocalBusiness schema and a review system set up.
Local growth
$900 to $1,800 /mo
month to month
Ongoing local SEO: suburb pages built out, reviews managed, profile kept sharp, rankings tracked and reported plainly.
Site + local build
from $8k
6 to 10 weeks
A new fast site with the local architecture designed in from day one: hub, city and suburb pages, schema and reviews.
Indicative ranges, not a quote. We scope the exact number with you up front, in writing, before anything begins.
The things people ask first.
How long does local SEO take to work in New Zealand?
Profile fixes can move things within weeks. Suburb pages, reviews and citations compound over months, and the timeline depends on your suburb, your category and who you are up against. Anyone quoting you an exact date is guessing. What we do promise is a clear list of what changed each month and why.
What is the Google map pack and how do I get into it?
The map pack is the block of two or three local businesses Google shows above the normal results. Google says it weighs relevance, distance and prominence: how well your profile matches the search, how close you are, and how much trust you have earned through reviews, citations and your website. Nobody can guarantee a position, because distance depends on where the searcher is standing. We work on the two factors you can control.
Are suburb landing pages spammy or do they still work?
Thin, copy-pasted ones are spammy, and Google treats them that way. Suburb pages built properly still work well. We build the Spruce home cleaning site this way: the functional blocks stay identical across pages, and the local copy is real, written about the actual suburb. That is the difference between a doorway page and a landing page.
Do I need a physical address to rank locally?
No. Google supports service-area businesses: tradies, cleaners and mobile services that go to the customer. You hide the address on your profile and set the areas you serve. The signals that matter, reviews, a complete profile and a site that backs it up, are the same either way.
How much does local SEO cost per month in NZ?
The ranges on this page are where most local work lands: a one-off foundations project, or ongoing monthly work if you want the reviews, pages and tracking handled. We scope the exact figure in writing before anything starts, and the monthly work runs month to month. No lock-in contracts.
Let’s make your patch impossible to miss.
Tell us your suburb and what you do, and we will send back a free local visibility teardown: your profile, your pages and your reviews against the businesses currently winning. No obligation, no hot air, just the gaps and the plan.
Start a projector email hello@igloostudio.co.nz