Local SEO
Win the Map Pack. Own “Near Me.”
Local SEO makes your business visible to people searching for something nearby. It runs on a different system than ordinary web search - one that ranks business entities, not web pages, where your distance from the searcher is a factor you cannot change, and a free Google Business Profile matters more than your website.
The pillars of ranking locally
Google Business Profile
Claim, verify and complete every field - primary category, hours, attributes, photos. It's the single largest local ranking lever, and it's free.
Reviews & Reputation
Quantity, recency, velocity and response rate. A steady flow of recent, answered reviews now outranks a bigger pile of old ones.
NAP & Citations
Your Name, Address and Phone matching exactly across every directory, platform and data aggregator that mentions you.
On-Site Local Signals
LocalBusiness schema, a crawlable NAP, genuine location pages and mobile speed - the layer your website contributes.
Where local ranking signals come from (industry estimate)
| Signal group | Estimated weight |
|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | ~32% |
| On-page signals | ~19% |
| Review signals | ~16% |
| Link signals | ~15% |
| Behavioural signals | ~8% |
| Citation signals | ~7% |
Your first 30 days
- Claim and verify your Google Business Profile
- Set a precise primary category - check what competitors in the local pack use
- Complete every attribute, hours and 10+ real photographs
- Audit NAP across every citation and fix mismatches
- Set up a simple review-request flow and answer every existing review
- Add NAP as crawlable text and LocalBusiness schema to your site
Mistakes that cost businesses the map pack
- Never claiming or completing the Business Profile
- Wrong or overly generic primary category
- Gated or incentivised review requests - a policy violation
- Inconsistent NAP after a move or number change
- Templated location pages that differ only by city name