Show Where You Are Based, Without a Google Account
Contact pages can now carry a map. It uses Apple's mapping service, which for our purposes has two advantages: it does not require you to create an account with anybody, and it does not load a tracking script onto your visitors.
Location, not address
To be unambiguous: this shows a market, not your front door. City or region level. Nobody should be publishing a home address on an actor website, and the map is deliberately not precise enough to do it by accident.
Why location on the page matters at all
Because casting is geographic before it is anything else. Local hire is a real category with real budget consequences, and a page that does not say where you are makes somebody guess or skip you.
It also affects search. Somebody looking for an actor in a specific city is running a local search, and a page that names the city has a chance of appearing in it. A page that does not, does not. This is the cheapest local SEO available and most actor sites skip it.
If you work in more than one market
Say so plainly in text rather than trying to express it on a map. "Based in Manchester, local hire in London and Leeds" is more useful than any map, and it uses the exact phrasing casting uses.
The map then shows your primary base and the text does the rest.
The tracking point, briefly
Embedding the common alternative loads a third-party script that observes your visitors. For a site whose visitors include casting directors and agents, quietly handing their browsing to an advertising company is worth avoiding when there is an alternative that works just as well.
It is also faster, which fits the work in faster page loads.
Optional, and off by default
Plenty of actors should not have a map. If you travel constantly, if you are between markets, or if you simply do not want it, leave it off and put your market in the text. The map is decoration in service of a fact, and the fact is what matters.
Related: contact details in one place and creating a contact page.
Create your free actor website and say where you work.
