Local search is the block of three business cards shown under a map. On queries containing location signals — "near me", a city, a neighbourhood — that block sits above the organic results.
Three factors decide local ranking
- Proximity: distance from the searcher. You cannot control this.
- Relevance: how well your business information matches the query. You can control this.
- Prominence: review count, rating, web presence, brand recognition. You can control this.
Google Business Profile
This is the centre of local SEO. Complete it fully:
- Category: get the primary category right — it has the single largest effect
- Description: state clearly what you do and where you do it
- Hours: keep them current, including holidays
- Photos: add them regularly; profile activity is itself a signal
- Services and products: enter them individually to widen query matching
- Q&A: post and answer your own frequently asked questions
NAP consistency
Your Name, Address and Phone must be written identically everywhere online. Even "St." versus "Street" weakens matching. Find and correct stale entries in directory sites.
Reviews
Review volume and average rating affect ranking directly. But the deeper points are these:
- Make asking for reviews a process — an automatic prompt when service completes
- Reply to every review, especially the negative ones
- Words used in reviews contribute to matching; encourage customers to describe what you did
- Never buy fake reviews; detection costs you the profile
Local content
With multiple locations, build a distinct page for each. Give each one location-specific content: the team, photos, parking, transit. Duplicating a template with the city name swapped creates a duplicate content problem.
Measurement
In Business Profile insights, watch: search volume, direction requests, phone taps, website taps. The return on local SEO usually shows up in those three actions rather than in web traffic.