What is local SEO, in plain terms, is the work of making your business appear when someone nearby searches for what you sell. It is a different discipline from general SEO, it is judged by Google on different signals, and for most service businesses it is the only kind that matters. This post explains how it works, how to tell whether you need it, and what to do first if you do.
What is local SEO and how it differs from ordinary SEO
Ordinary SEO competes for a term nationally. Local SEO competes for a term within a radius. Search for driveways and Google shows you national guides. Search for driveways near me, or search for driveways from a phone in Luton, and Google shows a map with three businesses on it, then the ordinary blue links underneath.
That map block is the local pack, and it is the single most valuable piece of real estate in local search because it sits above everything else and carries a phone number. Ranking in it is driven mostly by your Google Business Profile rather than your website, which is why a business with a weak site sometimes outranks a business with a good one.
The three things Google weighs
Google states its local ranking factors openly in its own Business Profile help documentation. There are three.
- Relevance. How well your profile matches what was searched. Categories, services and description do most of this work.
- Distance. How far you are from the searcher, or from the place they named. You cannot change this, which is why a business in one town rarely dominates the pack in the next town over without a physical presence there.
- Prominence. How well known the business is. Reviews, mentions across the web, and links all feed this.
Two of those three are things you can act on. Distance is the reason a single location business cannot simply decide to rank across an entire county, and it is worth knowing that before you buy a package that promises it.
Does your business actually need it?
You need local SEO if you serve customers in person or travel to them. Trades, clinics, salons, garages, removals firms, cleaners, restaurants, solicitors, accountants with a walk in office. If a customer would reasonably type your service followed by a town name, local search is where your enquiries live.
You probably do not need it if you sell nationally online with no service area, if you sell business to business through outbound rather than search, or if your entire customer base comes from a channel that has nothing to do with Google. In that last case, our comparison of social media against a website is a more useful read.
The order to do it in
- Claim and finish the Google Business Profile. Correct primary category, every relevant secondary category, real opening hours, service area, services listed individually, and photographs that are yours rather than stock. Most profiles we audit are half complete.
- Fix your name, address and phone number everywhere. One format, used identically on your site, your profile and every directory. Our post on Google Business Profile for Luton trades covers the detail.
- Build a page per service and per town you genuinely cover. Not thin copies with the town name swapped. Real detail about the area, the jobs you do there, and the work you have done.
- Get reviews steadily and legally. Ask every satisfied customer. Never incentivise, never filter out unhappy ones before they reach Google, and never write them yourself. Under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 the Competition and Markets Authority can fine businesses for fake or incentivised reviews without going to court first.
- Post to the profile weekly. Our post on the best time to publish Google posts covers cadence.
How long before it shows
Google Business Profile changes can move the pack within days. Website driven improvements take months. A realistic expectation for a competitive town is movement in the pack inside a quarter and meaningful organic movement across two to three quarters, assuming the work is actually being done. Anyone promising page one in thirty days is selling something else.
Frequently asked questions
Can I rank locally without a website?
In the map pack, sometimes yes. A complete profile with strong reviews can hold a position on its own. You will struggle to hold it against a competitor who has both, and you lose every search where the customer wants to read about you before calling.
Does hiding my address hurt me?
Service area businesses that visit customers are allowed to hide the address, and Google supports it. It does not remove you from local results, but distance still applies from your registered location, so it does not let you rank everywhere.
How many reviews do I need?
There is no threshold. What matters is being competitive with the businesses already in the pack for your term, and having a steady flow rather than twenty reviews arriving in one week.
Where to start
Knowing what local SEO is matters less than knowing which part of it your business is failing at right now. For most of the companies we audit it is one of three things: an incomplete profile, no town level pages, or no review flow. We will tell you which one it is for you. Our local SEO service starts with that audit, and you can get in touch to have it run on your business.