Local SEO for agencies: reviews that win the instruction
A vendor choosing between three agents checks Google before booking a valuation; an employer checks before signing terms with a recruiter. What they find is written by buyers, tenants and candidates — the side of the market you do not charge. We do the work that makes it read well anyway.
What local SEO means for an agency
It means being on the shortlist before the first conversation — found for "estate agents in" your patch or "recruitment agency" and your sector, with a rating and a run of recent reviews that survive scrutiny from the person about to pay you. In practice: the right categories for each desk, fees stated where you can state them, photographs of the patch and the people, and requests timed to the moments the market feels good about you.
Where agencies lose the instruction
Six things we find on nearly every agency profile we audit. All six are visible to the person deciding whether to sign with you.
Your reviews come from the side you do not charge
Buyers, tenants and candidates write the reviews; vendors, landlords and employers read them. A thread of tenant complaints about deposits tells a landlord exactly how you will treat their property, and "never heard back" from twenty candidates tells an employer how you will treat their brand. That is not unfair — it is the product, seen from the other side.
The portal carries your stock, Google carries your name
A vendor finds the sold boards and the Rightmove listings, then Googles the agency itself — and finds three reviews, the newest a year old. The portal cannot answer "will they actually look after me", which is the only question being asked at that point.
The valuation never gets booked
"Estate agents in" a town returns a map, three names and three ratings. The shortlist is made there, on rating and the newest handful of reviews, before fees are ever compared. If you are not in the three, your valuation pitch never happens — and you never know it did not.
The fallen-through sale writes your reviews
The chain collapsed through nobody's fault and the agent got the one-star. Left unanswered, that review is your shopfront; answered calmly — what happened, what you did, when it finally completed — it reads as the one agent in town who communicates when it goes wrong.
Your fees are a secret the reader prices in
Agencies that hide fees are assumed to be expensive. A stated percentage or a clear "from" filters out nobody worth having — the vendor who only wants the cheapest was never yours — and it wins the one who just wanted a straight answer.
A negotiator who left still ranks at your office
Personal brands are the trade's habit: a star negotiator or a billing consultant sets up their own listing at your address, then leaves — and the listing stays, collecting the calls and reviews your office should be getting.
What we do for an agency
The same engine as everything else we run, set up for a trade where the reviewer and the payer are different people.
Categories and services for each desk
Real estate agency, letting agent, employment agency — the primary category chosen against the work worth most to you, and each service line listed separately: sales, lettings, property management, or the sectors your desks cover. Fees stated where you can state them.
What profile optimisation covers →Photographs of the patch and the people
The shopfront, the team, sold and let boards in the streets you actually cover — or the consultants behind the desks. A vendor is choosing people to hand their biggest asset to; a faceless profile asks them to do it on faith.
Requests timed to the good moments
Completion day and move-in day. The placed candidate at the end of their first week, the employer after the first successful placement. The landlord after the first smooth tenancy. Never mid-chain, and never to someone whose sale just collapsed.
How the review requests work →Replies written for the paying audience
Every review answered within 24 hours — including the tenant's deposit dispute and the candidate who never heard back. The reply is not for them; it is for the landlord or employer reading it. What happened, what you did, a named person to contact, and nothing given away about the people involved.
How review management runs →One listing per real office, leavers untangled
A listing for each genuine staffed branch — never one per desk or per town you want to rank in — and departed negotiators' and consultants' listings reported and moved. Directories and the portals' own agent pages checked so nothing contradicts the profile.
How the citation clean-up runs →The terms with a signature behind them, tracked
Not "estate agent" alone — the searches with an instruction behind them: estate agents in your patch, sell my house, letting agents near me, your sector plus recruiter, tracked across the towns you actually cover.
How map pack ranking works →The systems we connect to
Requests fire off the CRM at completion, move-in or placement, so nobody on the desk has to remember. These are the ones we see most in UK agencies.
The long-established estate agency CRM. Sales completing and tenancies starting are both clean triggers.
Newer and built around the customer journey, which makes the post-completion ask easy to time well.
The recruitment industry standard; placements falling out of the ATS work directly as the trigger.
UK-built recruitment CRM, strong on candidate engagement — the first-week check-in is already in the workflow.
Alto, Jupix, Vincere, JobAdder and a spreadsheet all work too. Where a system cannot be connected we work from a weekly list of completions and placements, and the client never sees the difference.
How it runs
One call, one login handover, and photographs taken on a normal day at the branch — boards, desks and the people who answer the phone.
A 15-minute audit
Your profile as a vendor or employer sees it — the rating, who the reviews are from, the replies they will judge you by — and which agencies sit above you on the searches with signatures behind them. Yours to keep either way.
Profile, services, branches
Categories corrected, each service line listed, fees stated where you publish them, real photographs up, branch listings verified and any leavers' listings at your address reported and moved.
Requests keyed to completions and placements
Vendors and buyers asked on completion, tenants at move-in, landlords after the first tenancy runs smoothly, candidates at the end of week one. The back catalogue of past clients is worked in careful batches — an agency gaining eighty reviews in a fortnight looks like exactly what it would be.
One report
New reviews, rating, response time, and from Growth up where you rank on each term and how many valuation and enquiry calls came from Google. One page, no login.
What we won't publish for an agency
Agency is a trade people start out not trusting, so everything published has to survive a sceptic. These are the rules that catch agencies out.
The full policy, and the law behind each rule, is published.
Read the full compliance policy →What it costs
The same two plans as everything else we run. One extra instruction a quarter usually covers the fee several times over; the work is making sure the vendor comparing three agents tonight puts you on the shortlist.
Proof that reviews come in — cheaply, and with no risk.
- Google Business Profile set up & optimised
- Automated review requests, with photo mechanic
- Every review replied to within 24 hours
- Customer Feedback System
- Monthly report
Where "trust us" becomes "here are the calls you got."
Priced on your market, your ad spend and how fast you want to move.
Foundation covers the profile, the photography, the review engine and replies. Growth adds weekly posts, rank tracking on your instruction terms, call tracking and citation clean-up. Priced per branch, ex VAT — a second office is its own profile, its own reviews and its own plan. No contract — cancel any month. Compare all three plans in full.
Questions we get asked
PermittedCan an agency ask clients for Google reviews?
Yes. Asking a real client for an honest review is permitted and normal — what is not permitted is offering anything in exchange, or asking only the side of the market you already know is happy. Timing does the filtering legitimately: a vendor on completion day or a candidate at the end of a good first week, asked properly, is as likely to leave a genuine five stars as any customer in any trade we work in.
Two audiencesTenants and candidates write most of our reviews, but landlords and employers pay us. Does that not work against us?
Only if the reviews are unmanaged. A landlord reading tenant reviews is not looking for a tenant-friendly agent — they are looking for evidence you communicate, handle deposits properly and fix things. Twenty reviews saying "they answered the phone and sorted it" is the best instruction-winning copy you can own, whoever wrote it. The engine asks both sides, and the replies are written knowing exactly who reads them.
PortalsOur properties are all over Rightmove and Zoopla. Is Google really where vendors check?
A portal shows what you have sold — it cannot answer the one question being asked, which is whether you will look after the vendor. That question is asked on Google, in the thirty seconds after a vendor sees your board or your listing and before they book the valuation. It is also where the comparison happens: three agents, three ratings, one screen. The portals bring the stock to the market; the Google profile decides whose market appraisal gets booked.
StructureWe have three branches. Can they share one listing and pool the reviews?
No, and be suspicious of any setup that says otherwise. Google ranks offices individually: each genuine branch gets its own profile, its own reviews and its own ranking in its own patch. Pooling them splits your reviews across three weak listings and confuses the map for all three. What carries over is the system — the second and third branches build faster because the process is proven — but the engine runs per branch, and that is how it is priced.
VolumeWe complete eight or nine sales a month. Is that enough volume for a review engine?
Easily. Eight completions a month, asked properly, builds a steadier and more believable stream than a business asking five hundred customers in one blast — and "recent" beats "many" with the reader. A vendor shortlisting agents is looking for a good rating on reviews from this quarter, not a giant number from 2019. Low volume is the normal shape of this trade, and the engine is built for it.
Honest answerWe run a desk inside a national franchise and head office controls the brand. Can you still help?
Honestly, probably not — and do not pay anyone until this is settled. The engine needs control of the listing: categories, photos, replies and review requests all live on the profile, and if head office owns it and will not delegate, there is nothing to run. The conversation to have first is with your franchisor about who controls the Google listing for your patch. If the answer is you, we can talk. If the answer is them, the spend belongs at head-office level, not yours.
Related services
Fifteen minutes on your agency
What a vendor or employer finds tonight — your rating, who wrote your reviews, the replies they will judge you by — and the three things we would change first. Free, and yours whether or not you hire us.