Local SEO Services

Get more leads with local SEO for small businesses

People are searching for a business like yours right now. Learn how to rank higher on Google and turn more of those searchers into customers.

*30 Canadian loonies is aboot 85 American quarters,
1,863 euro cents, or 381,993 Indonesian rupiahs.

Jef van de Graaf

Local SEO does not create customers. It competes for clicks from people who are actively searching for a business like yours near them. If barely anyone nearby is searching, no amount of search engine optimization will help you (if anyone says otherwise, they’re lying).

What is Local SEO?

Local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving your Google Business Profile, website, and citation signals to rank higher in Google’s local search results and Map Pack. In non-boring language: it makes your business appear first, which means more people click on you instead of a competitor.

Google Business Profile 32%

Stop paying local SEO agencies to create your GBP profile

Google genuinely wants small businesses to succeed on its platform — though it also wants you spending money on ads, which made up roughly 73% of Alphabet’s revenue in 2025.

Fortunately, gambling on ads isn’t your only option. You can create a FREE Google Business Profile, which is one of the biggest, influential factors that help people find you at all. Plus, you don’t have to pay a local SEO agency to do this for you.

Click here to create your FREE Google Business Profile

Disclaimer: That link opens in a new tab, and there’s a big chance you never come back to this page. Before you go, be sure to read my FREE DIY local SEO guide below (no email required).

The business profiles above are made-up examples to show what a complete profile looks like. They are not real clients.

Free Local SEO Guide

2027 Guide to Local SEO

How to get found on Google, Maps and AI.

  • How AI assistants pick local businesses, without the hype
  • Fix your Google Business Profile, reviews and website yourself
  • Backed by research from BrightLocal, Whitespark, SOCi and CIRA
Jef van de Graaf’s 2027 Guide to Local SEO

Free to read, no email required.

Reviews 20%

Don’t be shy, ask! A happy customer would gladly leave you a review.

People often struggle with asking for help. For small businesses, their struggle is to ask happy customers for a review. Even though we all know Google reviews are a powerful local SEO factor, many business owners fail to capture a positive review after a job well done.

“But Jef, I do good work and surely it will speak for itself.”

Sadly, that’s not what happens in the real world. Instead, an unhappy customer will angrily go out of their way to leave a low-star review on your profile (Why? Because they want your business to fail).

Was this helpful?

If you’ve found this page or my free Local SEO Guide to be helpful, please leave me a review.

★★★★★
Click me orScan Me

Asking for reviews doesn’t have to be awkward

Use these free resources to collect more positive Google reviews and improve your local SEO.

Rated 5.0 from 11 Google reviews

Every review below is word-for-word from my Google Business Profile.

Leona Leslie★★★★★

I chose Jef from BaoB to build the new Tenix website, partly because his prices made sense, and mostly because of his energy and knowledge of what makes a website great. I found him on LinkedIn and loved his approach. His way of communicating was refreshing. He came across as practical, honest, and like he’d actually be fun to work with.

From the start, Jef was upfront about what he could do and where he’d need to poke around, experiment, or figure things out as we went. I liked that he was a one-man show and that we would build the website together as a team, rather than working with an agency that would impose more rigid frameworks and a narrower delivery scope.

Throughout the project, Jef was professional, thoughtful, and full of great ideas. He managed to take what I had in my head (sometimes clear, sometimes not-so-clear) and turn it into a website that presents Tenix as a leader in its category (which it is). We made it crystal clear what the product does, who it’s for, and the operational benefits of using it.

The aim was always to create a site that’s simple, clear, easy to navigate, and designed for conversion, and that’s exactly what we got. The new site has given me a solid base for building marketing programs, and has provided sales with an excellent tool for customer communication. The Tenix team now has a company showcase they can feel proud of.

Jef is generous with his know-how and experience in SEO, AI, and the little tricks that make a website work better. He goes the extra mile to help his clients achieve their goals.

I highly recommend Jef to anyone looking for a thoughtful, highly capable partner to bring a new website to life.

Nader Qarini★★★★★

Very happy and definitely recommend.

Support was provided throughout, high quality work, well designed website, and allowed steps where communicated well throughout the project.

Heather Watson★★★★★

Working with BOAB was a wonderful experience from start to finish. Jef was so personal and supportive throughout the process that I was always confident I was getting exactly what I wanted for my business. I am proud of the website I have now and would highly recommend connecting with BOAB if you are wanting to enhance your businesses online presence.

Ame Proietti★★★★★

Jef built me a beautiful functional website that’s improved my lead generation and traffic!

I made a hot mess trying to DIY my website and I didn’t know enough to hire a random freelancer to fix it. From concept to the final product, Jef helped me plan and execute an easy-to-use, SEO-friendly website I'm proud to show to people. Plus, I don’t need an IT background to confidently manage it myself!

Jef also offered great advice to improve the user experience so I could attract more visitors and ultimately more leads. Since working with Jef, I’ve seen a 71% increase in monthly traffic to my site. Jef is solid!

Tony Ierullo★★★★★

Jef is a rockstar! He helped us build a website for our psychology services in Toronto that got many positive reviews who shared these insights directly in person. In fact, the site and booking forms have generated 100s of inbound referrals. I was surprised that we even got a referral the very next day the site went live!"

"Jef built a website that served us well in portraying the overall brand attributes of our psychology services in Toronto. We continue to receive more than 15 new inbound referrals every month which keeps us at full capacity! I definitely recommend Jef for building a website for your business. He's genuine, honest, and top-notch!

Robert Marousseev★★★★★

Working with Jef van de Graaf was transformative for my business. His exceptional copywriting skills and business acumen propelled our projects forward quickly, setting up professional websites effortlessly. Jef’s guidance was invaluable, laying a solid foundation for our success. Highly recommend for anyone looking to elevate their business.

Kirby Hewines★★★★★

We have been working with Jef for a couple of years now. Always impressed with his attention to detail. He's designed/maintained a great website for us, that's generating leads on a steady basis. Couldn't be happier!

Cathal Murtagh★★★★★

Jef is all about the best results he can deliver and he certainly delivered for us. The quality of his copywriting and creativity was second to none.

Anna Irving-Peckham★★★★★

Hiring Jef to design and build a WordPress website for my brand new elder care company was the single best decision I could have made.

Not only did Jef design and build a beautiful and easy to use website for my business, but he also designed the logo for my company, wrote all of the copy for the website, and even created a free, downloadable and printable information brochure.

Jef has provided me with all the help I’ve needed in starting my business from the very beginning. I am so grateful!! Build An Online Business is the best!!

On-page SEO 15%

In a nutshell: it’s everything your website says is a signal to Google

Every word, image, and line of code on your website is a signal Google reads to decide what you do and who you serve. Guess what? When you get your copy and code right, it’s possible to outrank competitors with more backlinks and bigger budgets than you.

One Page Per Service

Give each service and each city its own page. One page trying to cover eight services in eight towns won’t rank for any of them.

Search-Matched Copy

Write the page in the words a customer actually searches — the service, the city, and the plain language they’d type.

Unique Location Pages

Templated location pages don’t work. If you’re swapping town names on a duplicated page and Google calls you out, you will be demoted.

Content Freshness

Did you know? Pages you update can outrank pages that were finished once and never touched again for years. Try it!

Title Tags

This is the single most important on-page element. And ‘Plumber in Hamilton’ beats ‘Home’ or any other generic title every time.

Meta Descriptions

Fact: These don’t affect your ranking. But they do influence whether someone clicks — and those clicks feed the behaviour signal.

Heading Structure

Only use one H1 to state what the page is about, then use H2s and H3s to organize the rest. It helps people scanning and engines parsing.

Image SEO

Rename image files, add alt text, and compress file sizes. All three help Google understand what the image shows, and help the page load fast.

Schema Markup

Structured data tells Google exactly what kind of business you are, in a format it reads directly (you can even ask AI to do this for you).

Clean URLs

Add keywords to your URLs, like /plumbing-hamilton/, so it reads like an answer to people and to Google.

Internal Linking

Link your service pages, city pages, and homepage to each other, so no page sits alone with nothing pointing to it.

Your Contact Info as Text

Put your name, address, and phone number on your website as real text so it matches what’s on your Google profile and citations.

All twelve are already done if I built your site — audited and fixed if someone else did.

Citations 6%

Your details, everywhere else

Directory listings carry less weight every year — the industry has been slow to admit it because they are easy to sell by the hundred. What still matters is the absence of contradictions: an old suite number here, a disconnected phone there, your name with and without the “Inc.” Scattered across enough sites, those make you look like several half-real businesses instead of one solid one. So this is cleanup, not accumulation: find the conflicts, fix them, stop.

What you get

  • One version of your name, address and phone — everywhere
  • Duplicates and dead listings cleaned out
  • The Canadian directories that still matter, covered
  • A cleanup you pay for once — not a subscription to listings nobody reads

Need help with your local SEO?

Book a 30-minute call and we’ll go through your profile, your reviews and your pages together, and you’ll leave knowing what to fix first — whether or not you hire me to fix it.

*30 Canadian loonies is aboot 85 American quarters,
1,863 euro cents, or 381,993 Indonesian rupiahs.