Thirty-five days ago, this business didn’t show up in the top 20 on Google for their primary service area. Not rank 20. Not rank 15. Their actual average position was 61st. Today they’re averaging rank 5, sitting right on the edge of the Map Pack. Here’s the exact playbook we ran.
Why Rank 61 Is Essentially Invisible
To understand why this result matters, you need to understand what rank 61 actually means in local search.
The geo grid tool we use to measure local rankings only displays up to position 20. When a business shows up as “20+” on the grid, it means Google couldn’t find them in the top 20. The real number could be 30, 40, or in this case, 61.
At rank 61, no customer searching for this company’s services in their area would ever find them organically. They were invisible. Every lead was coming from somewhere other than Google search, referrals, word of mouth, repeat customers. The moment someone new searched for what they offer, a competitor captured that lead instead.
What We Did
We didn’t pick one thing and hope it worked. We ran a complete overhaul across four areas simultaneously.
Google Business Profile optimization. We audited the entire profile and rebuilt it from the ground up. Category, description, services, products, photos, posts, Q&A. Every field treated as a signal. Incomplete profiles tell Google nothing. Complete, active profiles tell Google exactly who you are, what you do, and where you do it.
Review generation. We helped them collect reviews from past customers they’d never asked. Most businesses have a long list of satisfied customers who were simply never prompted to leave a review. Tapping that existing base created an immediate surge in review volume and recency, two of the factors Google weights most heavily for local rankings.
Citation building. We added approximately 50 new citations pointing back to their website. Citations are mentions of the business name, address, and phone number across online directories, industry sites, and local listings. Each one is a trust signal. Each one tells Google this business is real, established, and located where it says it is. Fifty new consistent citations in 35 days is a significant trust signal injection.
Individual service and location pages. We started building out dedicated pages on their website for each service they offer and each area they serve. One catch-all services page can’t rank for specific searches. A page built specifically around “commercial cleaning services in Winter Park” can. This is an ongoing build, not a one-time task, but the early pages were already indexing within the 35-day window.
The Result
Average rank went from 61 to 5.
The geo grid went from a sea of 20+ red squares to a mostly green grid sitting just outside the top three. The next phase of work gets them into positions 1, 2, or 3 across the core of their service area.
What this represents in real terms: customers searching for their services in their city are now finding them. That pipeline was closed before. It’s open now.
Why All Four Levers Mattered
It’s worth being direct about this: no single piece of this drove the result alone.
The GBP optimization without the citations would have improved things modestly. The citations without the GBP cleanup would have pointed traffic toward a weak profile. The reviews without the service pages would have helped the profile but not the website rankings. Each piece amplified the others.
Local SEO works this way. The businesses that jump the most do it because they work multiple signals at the same time, not because they found one secret tactic.
If you want to see what your current geo grid looks like and where the biggest gaps are in your local SEO, we run free audits for businesses in the Orlando and Central Florida area. Comment “audit” or reach out to DropShadow Agency and we’ll take a look.
DropShadow Agency is a marketing agency based in Orlando, FL helping local businesses get found online.
