Local SEO in Amsterdam: how nearby customers find your business

Type “hairdresser” or “emergency plumber” in Amsterdam and you will often see a map with three businesses at the top, with the ordinary results only below. For a business with customers nearby, that map is the most important spot on Google. Google names three things that decide who appears there: relevance (does your business match the search), distance (how close is the searcher) and prominence (how well known and well regarded your business is, online and off).

You cannot change distance. Relevance and prominence you can. The general foundation of a findable website is in our article on SEO for small businesses; this one is about the local layer.

Your Google Business Profile

The Business Profile is the listing with address, opening hours, photos and reviews that Google shows in the map and beside the results. It is free and the most important part of local visibility.

What it should contain

• Primary category: the category that best describes what you do, such as “Hair salon” or “Plumber”. Add extra categories only if they genuinely fit.
• Opening hours: including special hours around public holidays. If they are wrong, a customer ends up at a closed door.
• Services and description: in the words customers use.
• Photos: of your premises, your team and your work. Real photos, not stock images.
• Link to the right page: to your website and, if you have one, the page where customers can book directly.

Do you work at customers’ premises?

A heating engineer or cleaning company that works on site can set a service area in the profile and hide the address. That is only allowed if customers do not visit you. Under Google’s guidelines a virtual office or PO box is not a valid address.

Reviews: ask, reply, keep it honest

Reviews count towards prominence and are often the final nudge for visitors. The difference lies in regularity, not a one-off push.

1. Ask at the right moment: shortly after the appointment, job or stay, with a direct link to the review form.
2. Reply to every review: including critical ones. A calm, specific reply tells future customers more than the review itself.
3. Do not reward reviews: discounts or gifts in exchange for a review break Google’s rules. So does asking only the customers you expect to be happy.

If you show reviews on your own website, the EU Omnibus Directive has applied since 2022: you state whether and how you check that reviews come from real customers.

With the review collection add-on, Vorlyo’s software sends a request automatically after an appointment or job, so it does not depend on who is at the desk that day.

The same name, address and phone number everywhere

Google compares your details across different places. If your salon appears on one site as “Studio Noor” with a mobile number and on another as “Noor Hair” with a landline, it is less certain that both refer to the same business.

• Write it down correctly once: official name, address as the postal service writes it, one phone number.
• Use it exactly the same everywhere: on your website, Business Profile, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Facebook, industry sites and booking platforms.
• Moved or new number? update it everywhere at once, including old listings you had forgotten about.

Local pages without copied text

A page per neighbourhood can help, but only if each page has something of its own to say. Ten pages with the same text and a different neighbourhood name dropped in are what Google calls doorway pages, and those count as spam.

• Per service first: a separate page for “boiler replacement” usually achieves more than a page per district.
• Per neighbourhood only with content: a restaurant with two branches has two real pages. A heating engineer can explain per district what is different, such as parking in De Pijp or old buildings in the Jordaan, with projects carried out there.
• Otherwise one service area page: listing the districts and towns where you work, without stretching it artificially.

LocalBusiness markup on your website

Schema.org structured data tells search engines in a fixed format who you are and where you are based. Use the most specific type that fits, such as HairSalon, Restaurant, Hotel, AutoRepair or Plumber, containing:

• name, address and phone number, exactly as in your Business Profile;
• opening hours and, for businesses working on site, the service area;
• a link to your website and to your profiles elsewhere.

How we help Amsterdam businesses with software and a website that is found locally is explained on our Amsterdam page.