Search for almost any service in Ashby de la Zouch and the same thing happens. Above the normal search results, a map appears with three businesses pinned to it — a photo, a star rating, opening hours, a "Call" button. Most people never scroll past those three. If you're not one of them, you're invisible to a huge share of the people searching for exactly what you do, in the town where you actually work.
That block is Google's local pack, and it isn't random. Three specific things decide who's in it — and unlike a lot of SEO advice, all three are things a small Ashby business can genuinely influence.
What actually decides the local pack
Google weighs three factors for local results: relevance (does your listing match what was searched?), distance (how close are you to the person searching, or the town they named?), and prominence (how well-known and trusted does Google think you are?).
Being based in Ashby already gives most local businesses the distance factor. That's exactly why it stings when a business still doesn't appear — being local should be the easy part. The gap is almost always relevance or prominence, and both come down to the same underlying thing: how complete and active your Google Business Profile is, and how much of the web (reviews, links, your own site) backs up that you're genuinely trustworthy at what you do.
The mistake almost everyone makes
Most local businesses treat their Google Business Profile as a one-off job: claim it, add a photo, done. Google reads that as a dormant listing, not an active business. Meanwhile the businesses that do show up are the ones treating it as something to maintain — new photos, regular posts, and steadily accumulating reviews with responses.
The other half of the picture is your website. A generic homepage that never mentions Ashby by name gives Google nothing to match against a local search. A site with genuine local content — the actual town, actual landmarks, actual service area — is what lets Google connect "this business" with "this place" confidently enough to rank it there.
Proof: #1 in Ashby's local pack
We've seen this play out for real, for a client of ours based right here in Ashby de la Zouch. Their old site was fairly ordinary — built once, then left alone, the way most local businesses end up. We took a different approach: genuinely local content, and a Google Business Profile that gets worked on every week rather than set up once and forgotten.
The result: they now hold the top spot in Ashby's local pack, above every organic result, for the searches that bring in the work — and visibility has grown several times over since, still climbing week on week.
Nothing about that required a bigger budget than a small local firm can manage. It required treating the profile and the site as things you keep feeding, not things you set up once and forget.
What this means if you're in Ashby and not showing up
If you've searched your own trade in Ashby and not found yourself in that map block, here's the order to work through it:
- Claim and fully complete your Google Business Profile — category, hours, service area, photos.
- Post to it regularly. A dormant profile reads as a dormant business.
- Ask happy customers for a Google review, and reply to every one you get.
- Make sure your website actually names Ashby — genuinely local content, not a generic page that could belong to any town.
If that's more than you have time for alongside running the business, that's exactly what we do — websites and local SEO for businesses right here in Ashby de la Zouch, and a free working example before you pay a penny.
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