Local SEO: how to win your area on Google

If your business serves a particular town, city or region, local SEO is one of the best investments you can make after your website itself. When someone searches "plumber near me" or "family solicitor in Leeds", the three businesses in Google’s map pack get most of the calls. The good news is that local SEO is methodical rather than mysterious. Do the fundamentals well and you will outrank many competitors, because most of them have not.

How does Google rank local businesses?

Google says it ranks local results on three things: relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is how well your profile matches the search. Distance is how far you are from the searcher or the place they named. Prominence is how well known and well reviewed your business is, online and off. You cannot move your office, but you can work on the other two.

Start with your Google Business Profile

Your Google Business Profile is the listing that appears in Google Maps and the map pack. It is the foundation of local SEO.

• Complete every field: name, address or service area, phone, website, hours and opening date.
• Choose the most specific primary category, such as "Conveyancing solicitor" rather than "Lawyer". It is one of the strongest signals you control.
• Add secondary categories for your other main services, and list every service with a short description.
• Upload real photos of your team, premises and work, and add new ones every month.
• Post weekly: an update, an offer, a recent job or an answer to a common question.
• Reply to every review, positive and negative, within a couple of days.

Reviews: the signal searchers see first

Reviews influence both your ranking and whether people choose you. Google looks at how many you have, how good they are and how recent they are. A steady flow every month beats a burst once a year.

The simplest way to get more reviews is to ask every happy client, every time. Send a short text or email with a direct link within a day of finishing the job. Automating the request means it never depends on someone remembering. One of our clients, a Greater Manchester plumbing company, went from 12 to 67 Google reviews in five months this way.

Citations: make your details match everywhere

A citation is any mention of your business name, address and phone number on another website: directories such as Yell, Bing Places and Apple Business Connect, and the directories that matter in your sector. Google uses them to confirm you are real and where you say you are. The rule is consistency. Even small differences, such as an old phone number or "St" against "Street", can blur the picture.

Local pages: rank for every area you serve

One contact page cannot rank for every town you cover. Create a page for each office, and for the key towns you serve without an office, with real local detail: the area you cover, local clients, how to find you, and the services you offer there. A page that only swaps the town name will not rank, and it will not persuade anyone.

Turn map views into clients

Rankings are only worth having if the calls are answered. Many callers from Google Maps hang up when they reach voicemail and call the next business on the list. A missed-call text back, sent automatically within seconds, keeps the conversation going. Track calls, direction requests and enquiries from your profile so you can see what local SEO produces.

About the author

Stacey G, Senior SEO and Account Manager. Stacey leads organic growth: SEO, local SEO, AEO and GEO. She gets clients found and chosen on Google, in Google Maps and in AI answers from ChatGPT and Google.

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