Local SEO for advisory firms in Spain: Google and AI answers

A freelancer who has just registered as self-employed types "tax adviser near me" into their phone. Someone else, with a newly formed limited company, asks ChatGPT which advisory firm it would recommend in their city to handle the books. The first sees a map with three listings. The second reads a paragraph with two or three names. If your firm isn't in either place, that client never hears of you.

This article covers how to work on both at once in a small advisory firm (what Spain calls an asesoría or gestoría: tax, accounting, payroll and company paperwork). The general side of GEO for owner-led service businesses is in GEO for local professional services in Spain. Here we get specific to advisory firms: which services to separate, which questions to answer, and what to check by hand.

Why an advisory firm is a different case

An advisory firm sells several services, and people search for each one separately. Someone who needs to file a quarterly return isn't looking for the same thing as someone who wants to outsource payroll for five employees, and neither of them searches for "full-service advisory".

Clients also tend to arrive in a hurry with a specific question. That works in your favour. A specific question has a specific answer, and a clear answer on your site is exactly the kind of text Google and AI assistants can use.

What doesn't change: without a clean local base, nothing else works. If you're missing that base, start with local SEO for physical businesses and come back.

One entity: the same name, address and phone everywhere

Search engines and language models cross-check data. If your site says "Martínez Advisory", Google says "Martínez Asesores S.L." and a directory still lists your old office, you're giving them three businesses instead of one.

Check these places with the same text in front of you:

• Your website: footer, contact page and legal notice.
• Google Business Profile: name, address, phone, hours and website.
• Professional directories: the listing of the professional body or association you belong to, if there is one and it's public.
• General directories where you already appear, even if you didn't add yourself.
• LinkedIn for the firm and for the people who sign off work.

Copy the name, address and phone character by character. Same street format, same prefix, same trading name. If you moved offices, search the old address in Google in quotes and fix what you find.

Google Business Profile: categories and services

On the profile, the primary category carries a lot of weight. Pick the most precise one Google offers for what you really do, and use secondary categories for your other services. If most of your work is payroll and employment, don't make tax the primary just because it sounds broader.

Then fill in the services section with the same names you'll use on the site: tax, payroll, accounting, self-employed, companies. Matching words help everything count as one entity.

Photos of the office and the team, real opening hours (including summer hours if they change) and the profile's Q&A also count. They're small signals, but they say there are people behind the name.

One page per service, not a list of services

The most common mistake on advisory firm websites is a "Services" page with six bullet points. Google has nothing to rank for "payroll adviser in Valladolid" if that phrase only lives in a bullet. An AI has nothing to quote either.

Write one page for each service you actually offer. Each should cover:

• Who it's for: freelancers, limited companies, partnerships, businesses with employees.
• What's included and what isn't. If you don't do personal income tax returns, say so.
• How to get started: what documents you ask for, whether there's a first meeting, whether you work remotely.
• Where you work, with the city and area written in the text, not only on the map.
• Who handles it, by name and, where relevant, professional registration.

You don't need to clone pages per city if you have one office. One good page per service beats twenty with the town name swapped.

FAQs an AI can quote without making things up

Think about what people ask you on the phone every week. What happens if I file a return late? Can I switch advisers mid-year? Do you work with freelancers who invoice clients abroad? How much does it cost?

Answer each question in two or three sentences at the top, then expand if needed. That first block is what gets extracted. The general method is in citeable content for GEO.

Two points that matter more for an advisory firm:

1. Deadlines and rules: if you state a date or a rule, make sure it's current and show when you last reviewed the page. An outdated answer about a deadline does more harm than no answer.
2. Prices: if you don't publish fees, explain what the price depends on (number of invoices, employees, type of company) instead of inventing a range. "It depends" is a fair answer if you say on what.

Reviews: when to ask and how to reply

Google reviews help you on the map, and their text is one of the few outside sources a model can read about you. A review that says "they've done the books for my company since I set it up and they reply quickly" tells more than five stars with no text.

Ask at a natural moment: after a new client's first tax season, after you sort out a letter from the tax office. Send a direct link and no script. Reply to every review, the bad ones too, without client details. In an advisory firm that matters more than elsewhere, because what you handle is confidential.

Structured data: say what kind of business you are

Schema markup won't lift your rankings on its own. What it does is remove ambiguity: it tells the machine what you are, where you are and what you offer.

For an advisory firm, the usual set is:

• AccountingService if your work is accounting and tax, or ProfessionalService if the mix is broader. Both are subtypes of LocalBusiness in Schema.org.
• name, address, telephone, url and openingHours identical to your Google profile.
• areaServed with the city or province where you really work.
• sameAs pointing to the LinkedIn page and the professional body listing, if they exist.

FAQ markup is still useful as structure, but Google no longer shows FAQ rich results for most sites, so don't add it expecting that effect. The full technical guide is in structured data schema for SEO and GEO.

How to check by hand whether AI recommends you

There's no official dashboard that tells you whether ChatGPT mentions you. What you can do is run a fixed check each month:

1. Write ten to fifteen questions the way a client would: "advisory firm for freelancers in [your city]", "who can do payroll for a small business in [your area]", "accountant for a limited company in [your city]".
2. Run them through ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI summary, always the same ones in the same order.
3. Note whether you appear, what they say about you, who they name and which sources they link.
4. If they describe you wrongly (a service you don't offer, an old address), go back to the consistent data section. That's usually the cause.

Answers change from day to day, so look at the trend, not a single screenshot. The detailed method is in how to measure your visibility in ChatGPT and Perplexity.

Where to start this week

• Compare name, address and phone across your site, your Google profile and two directories. Fix whatever doesn't match.
• Review the primary category on your profile.
• Pick the service that brings you the most clients and give it its own page, with five real questions answered at the top.
• Write down your ten test questions and do the first run through the assistants.

For the wider picture of SEO in a small business, see the SEO guide for SMEs, and what we do on AI visibility is on the GEO page.

Frequently asked questions

Does local SEO help if my firm works mostly remotely?

Yes, if you have an address where clients can visit. If you don't see clients at an office, Google lets you hide the address and set a service area. On your site, say clearly which area you cover and that you work remotely.

Do I need a page for every nearby city?

No. If you have no office or clients in that city, a page with its name is filler. One solid page per service that says where you are works better.

How long before I see a difference?

There's no fixed timeline. Changes to your profile and data can show up sooner than new content, and AI answers depend on when their sources are refreshed. Measure monthly with the same questions.

Can I do this myself or do I need help?

Consistent data, the profile and reviews you can handle yourself. If you're not sure what's failing, at Different Growth, a digital studio based in Spain, we run a free audit of your website, your visibility on Google and in AI answers, and how enquiries reach you.

Request a free audit