Local SEO services that put South Carolina businesses on the map

Categories come first, because they tell Google which searches you belong in. Services come next, each described the way a customer would put it: a Greenville electrician who also installs generators lists that as its own service. Photos should show your own jobs and vehicles, not stock images.

Two rules catch owners out. Adding keywords to the business name ("Smith Roofing Charleston Roof Repair" when the sign says Smith Roofing) breaks Google's guidelines and can get a profile suspended. And if you work at customers' homes rather than receiving them, you can hide your address and show a service area instead.

A citation is any listing of your business name, address and phone number on another site: Apple Maps, Bing, Yelp, Facebook, your trade's directories, the local chamber. When those listings disagree, customers get sent to the wrong place and search engines get mixed signals.

The mess usually comes from ordinary changes: a move from West Ashley to Summerville, a new phone number, a new name after a partner left. We search every version of your name, past addresses and old numbers; fix the big directories first; add the ones you're missing; merge duplicates; and log every listing in your monthly report. Directories update on their own schedules, so some fixes show within days and others take weeks.

The goal is a habit: every customer asked, at the same moment in every job, in a way that takes them about thirty seconds. Asking only the customers you expect to be happy (review gating) breaks Google's review policies, and so does offering a discount or gift for a review. Fake reviews are prohibited outright.

Some professions have advertising rules of their own. The South Carolina Supreme Court regulates lawyers, so a law office should confirm the current rules before using client reviews in its marketing. Bigger review problems are quoted separately as part of our digital marketing work.

Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30, according to the National Hurricane Center. Before the season, confirm hours and photos. During a storm, set special hours or mark the profile temporarily closed and post a reopening note. The day you reopen, clear it on Google, Apple and Bing.

Every plan covers these changes during our hours, Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 18:00 Eastern, and we show you how to set special hours from your own phone for nights and weekends.

A Business Profile can list up to 20 service areas. Pick the towns you drive to and want more work from. Say you run a two-truck HVAC company out of Lexington (a made-up example): start with Lexington, Irmo, Chapin, Cayce, West Columbia and Columbia. The list doesn't put you in the map for every town on it, because distance still counts; farther towns need a real page on your site, like our pages on SEO in Columbia, SC and Myrtle Beach SEO.

Each real, staffed location gets its own profile, page and reviews. Our plans count websites, not locations: Tri-County covers two sites and Whole State four, and several locations on one site usually means more target keywords.