r/localseoadvice

With 13yr of web development experience, I started dabbling in rank-and-rent.

Before I put a lot of resources into it, I want to make sure I can get 1 site to generate consistent monthly income.

Because this website is not a brick-and-mortar site, how do I get it ranked for local SEO without being able to create a Google Business Profile and be added to the map pack?

Hello, everyone!

I'm looking for insights from people who have actually worked in competitive local markets—not the usual "optimize your profile, get reviews, build citations" advice.

If you were to bring GBP, which was stuck on page 2-3 of the Local Pack, to the top 3, what were the 2-3 changes or experiments that made the biggest measurable difference?

I'd especially like to hear about things that are often overlooked.

• Proximity vs. Relevance vs. Prominence—how did you actually impact these?
• Review Velocity, Review Content, and Review Diversity—what do they matter?
• GBP Categories and Category Changes—Any experiments that made a noticeable difference?
• Local landing-page/entity signals and their relationship to GBP rankings
• Local backlinks and “real-world” local authority vs. traditional citations
• Competitor analysis — What signals have you found that are consistent with top-ranking competitors?
• Anything you've tested that should have worked according to general SEO advice, but didn't?
• Any ranking experiment whose results genuinely surprised you?

And what local SEO tactic have you used that proved most effective, especially in locations where competition is high?

I'm hoping someone here has dealt with a similar Google Business Profile situation.

We're a full-service catering company. We don't have a restaurant or retail storefront—our events are all off-site.

We currently have two Google Business Profiles:

• Headquarters: Our main office and warehouse where our team works.
• Tasting Studio: A separate location where we host client tastings and meetings. This used to be our company headquarters, so it has an older GBP. The tasting studio is by appointment/invitation only and is only staffed when we have scheduled tastings or other meetings.

Both profiles have very similar names (same company name with slight variations), and I'm wondering if they're competing with each other or confusing Google. Our local rankings haven't been where I'd expect, and I'm concerned the two profiles are hurting our SEO.

I'm trying to decide between:

• Removing one of the profiles (likely the headquarters or the tasting studio), or
• Keeping both but differentiating them much more clearly.

My hesitation is that if we remove one, I don't want people trying to get to the correct location to end up at the wrong address.

Has anyone dealt with something similar? Would you consolidate to one GBP, or is there a way to make two legitimate locations work without hurting local rankings? I'd especially appreciate hearing from anyone who's managed multiple locations for a service-area business.