What local search is
Search for “plumber near me” or “dentist in [town]” and Google shows a group of local businesses, usually with a map, star ratings, hours, and buttons to call or get directions. Google Maps shows the same listings. They come from Google Business Profiles, the free listings businesses create and manage, and each one links to the business’s website.
Local SEO is the work of showing up in those results. It involves your Business Profile and your website, and each supports the other.
How Google ranks local results
Google publishes the three main factors it uses (Google Business Profile Help):
- Relevance, defined as “how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for.” Google advises you to “provide complete and detailed business info” so it can match you to the right searches.
- Distance, or “how far each business is from the customer who’s searching.” When the searcher doesn’t share a location, Google uses what it knows about where they are.
- Prominence, meaning “how well-known a business is.” Google says it’s based on things like “how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have,” and that “more reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking.”
The same page says local ranking can’t be requested or paid for.
Distance is out of your hands. Relevance and prominence aren’t, and they depend mostly on accurate information, real reviews, and a website that explains what you do.
Your Google Business Profile
Follow the guidelines
Google’s guidelines set the rules for what a profile can contain (Business Profile guidelines). Four of them affect most local businesses.
Use your real business name. “Your name should reflect your business’s real-world name,” and adding a tagline, a list of services, or a city to it isn’t permitted. Extra wording can get a profile suspended.
Keep one profile. “There should only be one profile per business,” so duplicate listings for the same business need to be merged or removed.
Pick as few categories as you can. Google says to “choose the fewest number of categories it takes to describe your overall core business” and not to use categories as keywords.
If you travel to customers, hide your address. Google says a service-area business “should hide your business address from customers” and list a service area instead, one that “shouldn’t extend farther than about 2 hours of driving time from where your business is based.”
Fill in the rest
Google’s own tips for ranking are to verify your business; keep your hours, address, and category complete and accurate; upload photos and videos of what you offer; and reply to reviews. When your hours change for a holiday, change them on the profile the same day you’d change the sign on your door.
Google’s guidance on AI features in Search also recommends keeping Business Profile information current (Google Search Central), so the same facts feed more than one kind of result.
Reviews
Reviews count toward prominence, and they sit on your profile for anyone deciding whether to call you.
Google offers a link or QR code that takes customers straight to your review form (Tips to get more reviews). Make asking for a review part of how you finish every job.
Don’t pay for reviews in any form. Google says offering incentives, “like free or discounted goods or services,” in exchange for reviews is “considered fake & misleading content and is strictly prohibited,” whether the incentive is to post, change, or remove one. Federal rules point the same way. The FTC’s rule on consumer reviews prohibits, among other things, fake reviews, buying positive or negative reviews, undisclosed reviews from company insiders, and certain review suppression practices (Federal Register).
When you reply, Google recommends being professional, polite, and personal: use the reviewer’s name and respond to what they said. Never include a customer’s private details. On a negative review, a calm reply that apologizes where appropriate and offers to make it right will also be read by everyone who looks at your profile later.
If a review breaks Google’s content policies, you can flag it for Google to review.
Your website’s part
Your Business Profile links to your website, and the website is where you can explain each service in full. A profile holds a category and a short description, while a site can hold a page for every service you offer.
One page per service
If you do drain cleaning, water heater installs, and repiping, give each its own page. Explain what the job involves, how pricing works, how long it takes, and the questions customers ask about it. A specific search has more to match against on a page like that than on one “Services” page with a bulleted list.
Service-area pages, done right
Pages for each town you serve can help you show up there, but Google’s spam policies draw a line. They describe doorway abuse as “when sites or pages are created to rank for specific, similar search queries,” with examples including “having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page” and “creating substantially similar pages that are closer to search results than a clearly defined, browseable hierarchy” (Google spam policies).
A useful area page says things that are only true of that place: the neighborhoods you cover, jobs you’ve done there (with photos), local conditions that affect the work, and how quickly you can get there. If the town name is the only thing that changes from one page to the next, don’t publish it.
Structured data
Structured data is code on your pages that states business facts, such as your name, address, phone, and hours, in a format search engines read directly. Google’s LocalBusiness markup requires a name and address and recommends details like telephone, opening hours, and URL (Google Search Central). Google also says it “does not guarantee that features that consume structured data will show up in search results.” Keep the markup in line with what’s on the page and on your profile.
Links from other local sites
Google counts “how many websites link to your business” toward prominence. For a local business, the natural places to look are organizations that already know you: a chamber of commerce or trade association you belong to, a supplier or manufacturer that lists local installers, a team or event you sponsor, and businesses you work alongside. Earn them through those relationships. Google’s spam policies treat buying or selling links for ranking purposes as link spam, including “exchanging goods or services for links” and partner pages that exist only for cross-linking (Google spam policies).
Keep your facts consistent
Your business name, address, phone number, and hours should read the same on your website, your Business Profile, and any other listing. When they disagree, customers and search engines have to guess which is right.
Check your own site
- Search your exact business name on Google Maps. Confirm the profile is yours, verified, and complete, and that today’s hours are right.
- Search your phone number and your address to find duplicate listings, which need to be merged or removed.
- On your phone, inside your service area, search for your main service plus “near me” and your main service plus your town. Results depend on where the searcher is, so try from a few locations if you can.
- Count your recent reviews and check that each one has a reply.
- Compare your profile name and categories with the guidelines. Look for taglines or keywords in the name and categories you don’t need.
- Open your website’s service pages. Each main service should have its own page with real detail, and each area page should say something specific to that town.
- Paste a page address into Google’s Rich Results Test to see whether your business markup is found and valid.
A checklist
- Your Business Profile is verified, and the name matches your real-world business name.
- Hours, phone, address or service area, and website link are complete and accurate.
- The primary category is the closest match, and extra categories are added only where they’re true.
- Service-area businesses hide their address and list a realistic service area.
- You ask every customer for a review with a direct link or QR code, and never offer anything in return.
- Every review gets a professional, personal reply.
- Your website has a page for each main service.
- Any service-area pages contain local information, not just a swapped town name.
- LocalBusiness structured data is present, valid, and matches the page.
- Name, address, phone, and hours match across your website, profile, and other listings.
How we handle it
Every site we build includes the SEO foundation local search relies on: clear page structure, metadata, and structured data describing your business. In our site builder you can add service pages, each built around one service, and service-area pages for the places you work.
We also offer a Google Business Profile setup add-on, where we set up or clean up your profile so you show on Google Maps, and a “We write the text” add-on if you’d rather not write the service pages yourself. To show your Google reviews on your website, the Google reviews add-on displays your newest reviews and keeps them updated automatically.