Where they started
A well-run boutique hotel with a booking engine nobody reached. On the grid, it sat at the edge of the city: three or four positions deep, sometimes off the pack entirely, even for streets it was on. The Google Business Profile read like an afterthought: one category, no service attributes, a photo set from the soft opening years earlier. Meanwhile the property is a five-minute walk from a concert venue that sells out most weekends, and none of that traffic found them.
What we did
- Rebuilt the GBP as a landing page, not a form. Correct primary and secondary categories, full amenity and service attributes, weekly photos, and a post cadence. The profile started converting proximity into calls instead of wasting it.
- Built “hotels near [landmark]” pages for the city’s five demand anchors. The venue, the convention centre, two transit hubs, and the old town. Each page written for someone standing there with a phone, with walking times, directions, and real availability.
- Installed a review-velocity system with a post-stay flow. A timed message after checkout turned a trickle of reviews into a steady stream, which is the signal the local algorithm reads fastest.
- Earned 12 local links from travel guides and event listings, enough to firm up relevance for the anchor pages without chasing vanity domains.
The grid tells the story better than any single number: the property moved from the edge of the city into the top three across the cluster of blocks where its guests actually search. Calls followed. This is a small, honest engagement: no viral link, no algorithm luck, just the boring local mechanics done properly.