When someone in Dundee searches for a plumber, a solicitor or somewhere to eat, Google has to decide which local businesses to show. It decides partly on the business, and partly on how clearly the website tells it three things: what you do, where you are, and how to get hold of you.
In September 2026 we checked 100 randomly chosen Dundee business websites for our Dundee Digital Benchmark. On those three questions, most sites leave Google guessing. Here’s the checklist that came out of it, in the order we’d fix things.
How the 100 sites did on local signals
Only 20 of the 100 manage the basic three together: Dundee in the title, a phone number and a DD postcode on the home page. 14 show none of the five signals at all.
1. Put Dundee in your page titles
The page title is the blue link in Google’s results and one of the strongest signals on the page. Fewer than half the sites we checked mention Dundee in theirs. “Smith & Co | Home” tells Google nothing; “Smith & Co | Family Solicitors in Dundee” tells it almost everything.
Lead with what you do and where, then your name. Keep it under about 60 characters so it isn’t cut off. Do the same on every important page, not just the home page: your service pages are usually what people land on.
2. Make your address and phone number impossible to miss
Put your full address, with the postcode, and your phone number on the home page and the contact page, as text rather than inside an image. Then check they’re exactly the same everywhere: your website, your Google Business Profile, Facebook, directories. “Unit 4” in one place and “4” in another, or an old number still on a listing somewhere, weakens the link Google makes between them.
3. Let phone users call with one tap
More than half the sites we checked had no tap-to-call link. On a phone, someone ready to ring you now has to copy the number, switch apps and paste it. Some won’t. Wrap every phone number in a proper call link. It’s a two-minute job and it’s the most direct route from search to a customer.
4. Tell Google you’re a local business, in its own language
Structured data is a small block of code, invisible to visitors, that states your business type, address, phone number, opening hours and area served in a format search engines read directly. Only 18 of the 100 sites had it. On a site built with WordPress, just 3 of 38 did.
It won’t rank a weak site on its own, but it removes guesswork. And the AI assistants that now answer “who’s a good electrician in Dundee?” rely on exactly this kind of clear, structured fact.
5. Look after your Google Business Profile
For “near me” searches, the map listing often matters more than the website. Make sure the category is right, the hours are current (including holidays), and the photos are real and recent. Answer reviews, good and bad, calmly and quickly, and report fake ones through the profile rather than arguing with them. And link the profile to the most relevant page on your site, not automatically the home page.
6. One page per service, not per town
If you offer several distinct services, give each its own page with its own title: “Boiler Servicing in Dundee”, “Emergency Plumbing in Dundee”. That gives Google a precise page for each search.
What doesn’t work any more is a stack of near-identical pages for every town within 30 miles, with the town name swapped. They’re thin, they look templated because they are, and they can drag the whole site down. If you genuinely work in Perth or Angus, say so on your service pages and show the work you’ve done there.
7. Get the basics right underneath
- A meta description on every key page. Nearly a third of the sites we checked had none, so Google wrote their snippet for them.
- One main heading (H1) that says what the page is about. 28 sites had none at all, even with the page fully loaded.
- Both versions of your address working. 17 sites broke on either the www or the plain version of their domain.
- A sitemap, submitted in Google Search Console. 20 sites had none we could find.
The ten-minute version
- Search your business name and your main service plus “Dundee”. What shows up?
- Check your home page title says what you do and “Dundee”.
- Check your address and phone number are on the page as text, and identical to your Google Business Profile.
- Tap your phone number on your own phone. Does it dial?
- Check your Google Business Profile hours and category.
If you’d rather someone did the full check for you, that’s where our local SEO work starts. We’ll run your site through the same tests as the benchmark and send you the results in plain English. Ask for your scorecard.
Got a problem like this? Good. We like those.
Tell us what you’re dealing with and we’ll tell you honestly what we’d do.
