Start with the profile, not the website
For local searches, your Google Business Profile is doing more work than your homepage. Get these right before anything else:
- Primary category chosen by looking at what the businesses currently ranking use, not by what sounds most professional
- Every service listed, each with a short description in the words customers use
- Service area or address, matching how you actually work. Hide the address if customers never visit you
- Hours, including holidays and genuine after-hours availability
- Photos of the real business, uploaded on a schedule rather than once
- Reviews arriving steadily, with replies to all of them
Then build the pages the profile cannot
The profile puts you in the map. Your website is how you rank for everything else, and it needs two kinds of pages:
- A page per service you want more of. "Water heater replacement" needs its own page with prices signals, timelines and photos. A bullet on a services list will not rank.
- A page per town you genuinely serve. Written with real local detail, not a template with the city name swapped in. Google has been ignoring those since about 2013.
Make your details agree everywhere
Name, address and phone should be identical on your site, your profile, and the directories that carry a copy: Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing Places, the BBB, and the trade directories for your industry. Old listings with a previous phone number are the most common cause of a business that "should" rank and does not. Fix the wrong ones and delete duplicates.
The technical basics that actually matter locally
- Speed on a phone. Most local searches are mobile and impatient. Compress images, cut unused scripts, aim to be usable in two seconds.
- Click-to-call in the header on every page, and a phone number that is text, not an image.
- LocalBusiness schema with your real details, so machines can read what humans see.
- An HTTPS certificate and no broken pages. Unglamorous, still true.
What to measure
Track four things monthly: map position for your main terms in each town, calls and direction requests from the profile, tracked calls from the website, and new reviews. Rankings alone can improve while the phone stays quiet, which usually means you are ranking for the wrong terms or the page is not convincing.
What to ignore
Directory submission packages, exact-match domains, keyword-stuffed business names, and anyone selling links. Google has been discounting all of it for years, and the business-name trick can get your profile suspended.
Common questions
How long does local SEO take?
Profile fixes can move things in weeks. Reviews, citations and new pages compound over months. Competitive city markets take longer than suburban ones.
Do I need a blog?
Only if you will keep it up and write things customers actually search for. Three good service pages beat twenty thin blog posts for a local business.
Can I rank in a town without an office there?
On your website, yes, if you build a real page and genuinely serve there. In the map results, proximity limits how far you can reach.
Is local SEO worth it if I already run ads?
They cover different ground. Ads stop the moment you stop paying; local SEO keeps producing calls and makes your ads cheaper by improving the pages they land on.
Where to start
Work top to bottom and stop when you run out of time. The profile and the service pages carry most of the result. Our local SEO service page explains how we run this as an ongoing programme, and the locations hub shows what a proper city page looks like.