How to excel at Local SEO

If you run a business that serves a specific area - whether that's a single town, a particular county, or a handful of postcodes - then local SEO deserves your attention far more than it probably gets. The good news is that your competition is, generally speaking, no better at it than you are. Which means that getting the basics right puts you ahead of the pack faster than you might think.

Your Google Business Profile is doing more work than you realise

Or rather...it should be.

Your Google Business Profile (it used to be called "Google My Business") is the single most important tool in your local SEO arsenal, and it's free. The problem is that most businesses set it up once, verify their address, and then never touch it again.

The fields that matter most are your primary and secondary categories, your business description, your services list, and your opening hours. Keep them accurate, keep them complete, and keep them up to date. Google rewards profiles that look like they're being actively managed, so post updates, add photos, and respond to reviews. On which note...

Reviews - they're NOT just about volume

Yes, you need a lot of them. But Google also cares about recency, and consistency, so a business that has 12 reviews from the last month will generally outperform one with 200 reviews from three years ago. Build a simple process for asking satisfied customers to leave a review, and make it easy for them to do so.

And when you get a negative review (which you will), respond to it calmly, professionally, and without being defensive. Remember that the response isn't just talking to the person who left the review, it'll be read by every potential customer who reads it afterwards.

NAP consistency — boring but important

Your business's name, address and phone number - NAP for short - must be used consistently wherever your business is listed online, be that on your website, Yell, Yelp, or wherever. Those three pieces of information need to be identical, because Google cross-references these citations to verify that you are who you say you are. Inconsistencies (be that an old phone number here, a slightly different business name there) send conflicting signals and erode trust.

Understand what Google is actually trying to do

Google's local ranking algorithm boils down to three factors (a) proximity (how close the business is to the searcher), (b) relevance (how well your business matches the search query), and (c) prominence (how well-known and trusted Google considers you to be).

You can't do much about proximity (you are where you are, at the end of the day). But relevance and prominence are both within your control, through your content, your citations, and your reviews.

Organic strength and local rankings are not separate things

This one surprises people - your position in what is called the Local Pack (the map results that appear at the top of local searches) isn't determined solely by your Google Business Profile. The overall strength of your website, its domain authority, the quality of its content, and how well it ranks organically, all feed into your local visibility. This means that you should treat it as one combined strategy, not two separate ones.

Landing pages for each area you serve

If you cover multiple towns or areas, a single "Contact us" page isn't going to cut it. A dedicated page for each service area, that talks specifically about that location, references local landmarks or communities, and is optimised for location-specific search terms, will serve you considerably better. But don't be tempted to just have identical pages which just change the name of the town - that'll do more harm than good.

Schema markup — tell Google what it would otherwise have to guess

Schema markup is structured data added to your website's code (we covered it in more detail in our post earlier this year) that tells Google explicitly what type of business you are, where you're located, what your opening hours are, and what your customers think of you. It won't transform your rankings overnight, but it removes ambiguity, which Google tends to reward.

Citations: quality over quantity

Not all directories are worth your time. In the UK, the tier-one citations you need are Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Maps, Yell, and a handful of industry-specific directories relevant to your sector. Getting listed in 200 low-quality, irrelevant directories is not the same as being consistently and accurately listed in 20 good ones, so be sure to focus on the ones that matter.

Internal linking if you have multiple locations or services

If you've built those service area landing pages, make sure they're actually connected to the rest of your site. A page that exists but isn't linked to from anywhere is, for all practical purposes, invisible. Build a logical hierarchy with services at the top, and locations below, and make sure the internal linking reflects it.

Track what's actually working

Google Business Profile Insights tells you how many people found your profile, how many clicked through to your website, and how many asked for directions or called you. That's useful, but it's only part of the picture. Combine it with Google Search Console and Google Analytics, and you'll start to get a genuinely useful view of what's driving enquiries. As we've said before: measure first, market second.

At the end of the day, local SEO is not some mystical dark art (despite what some people would have you believe). It's largely a matter of doing the unsexy foundational work consistently, and doing it better than your competitors who (more often than not) are probably not doing much, if anything, themselves.