The short answer
Nine times out of ten it is one of three things: you have no Google Business Profile or it is half filled in, you have almost no reviews, or your website never actually says what you do and where you do it. Fix those and most businesses move.
1. Your Google Business Profile is missing or half done
This is the big one and it catches nearly everybody. For local searches, the map results sit above the website results. If your profile is not there, or it is there with no categories, no services and no photos, you are not in that pack.
What to do: claim it, pick the right primary category, list every service, add ten or more real photos, and post to it weekly. Almost nobody posts. It is free and it moves the needle.
2. You have barely any reviews
Reviews are the single fastest lever a local business has, and they cost nothing. A business with forty reviews will usually beat a better business with four, because Google reads reviews as proof that you are real and active.
What to do: ask after every single job, while they are still happy. Send the direct review link, not a "please find us on Google". Most people say yes if you actually ask.
3. Your website never says what you do or where
Open your homepage and read the browser tab. If it says "Home" or just your business name, Google has almost nothing to work with. Your page title and headings are the strongest signals you control.
What to do: your title should read like what a customer would type. Not "Welcome to our site" but the service and the place you serve.
4. You have one page trying to do ten jobs
If you offer six services and they all live in one paragraph on the homepage, you are competing for six things with nothing dedicated to any of them. Businesses that rank have a real page per service.
5. Your site is slow, especially on a phone
Most people find you on a phone on mobile data. If your site takes five seconds and jumps around while it loads, a chunk of visitors leave before it finishes, and Google notices that.
What to do: compress your images, ditch autoplaying video in the hero, and test on a real phone on mobile data rather than on your laptop.
6. Your details are different everywhere
If your business name, address and phone number are written differently across your website, your Google profile, Facebook and old directory listings, Google gets less confident that they are all the same business. Confidence is what ranking is built on.
What to do: pick one exact format and make every listing match it, character for character.
7. You are invisible to AI as well as Google
People increasingly ask ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity who is best at something in their area, and take the answer at face value. Those tools read structured data, reviews and consistent citations. If your site has no structured data and your reviews are scattered, you will not be in the answer.
This is the newest gap and it is the one most businesses have not even checked yet. Ask an AI tool who the best in your trade is in your suburb and see whether your name comes up.
How long does fixing it take?
Profile and review work can move things in weeks. Real ranking on competitive terms takes months, because Google has to recrawl, re-trust and re-rank you. Anyone promising you page one in seven days is having you on, and you should walk away from them.
Joe LawrenceFounder, Smarta Sprint. Builds and runs businesses in Brisbane.