Grimsby Local

The problem

Grimsby, Cleethorpes, and the surrounding areas didn't have a proper local business directory. People relied on Facebook groups, word of mouth, or outdated listings. Businesses — especially small ones — had no easy way to get in front of local customers without paying for ads on platforms that don't care about their community.

And the existing options? Slow template sites with no SEO strategy, buried behind page after page of national chains on Google. When someone searches "plumber near me" or "restaurant in Cleethorpes," local businesses were invisible.

What we built

Grimsby Local is a full business directory covering 12 areas across North East Lincolnshire. 885+ businesses listed across 8 categories — from home services and restaurants to health, beauty, and automotive. Residents can browse by area, search by category, and find what they need instantly.

Businesses get a verified listing for free, with the option to sponsor their profile for £4.99/month for enhanced visibility.

Built for "near me"

This wasn't just a directory with a search bar. Every page was engineered from the ground up to rank for local search — the kind of queries real people type into Google every day.

The result: when someone in North East Lincolnshire searches for a local service, Grimsby Local competes with — and often outranks — the national platforms.

• JSON-LD structured data on every business listing — LocalBusiness schema, opening hours, geo coordinates, reviews. Google doesn't have to guess what the page is about. It knows.
• Per-area and per-category landing pages — so "plumbers in Grimsby" and "restaurants in Cleethorpes" each have a dedicated, indexable page with relevant content. Not one generic search page.
• Server-rendered, zero JavaScript bloat — pages load fast on any device, any connection. Google rewards speed, and so do users. No spinner, no skeleton screens. Content is there instantly.
• Semantic HTML throughout — proper headings, landmark roles, meaningful link text. Accessible by default, which is also what search engines prefer.
• Cloudflare edge hosting — served from the nearest data centre to the user. Sub-second page loads globally, with automatic caching and DDoS protection built in.

The results

Grimsby Local now serves 135,000+ requests per month and continues to grow. Businesses are getting found by customers who would never have discovered them otherwise. The directory has become a genuine resource for the area — not just a listing page, but something people actually use.

This is the project that proved the model. Build something custom, make it fast, align every technical decision with how people actually search — and it works.