Local SEO is the work of appearing when someone nearby searches for what you do. Google decides these results using three factors it publishes openly: how well your business matches the search, how far you are from the person searching, and how well known your business is. A Google Business Profile, the free listing that produces your entry in maps and local results, is the main thing you control.
In plain English
Imagine someone stopping a stranger in the street and asking where to get a bike fixed.
The stranger runs three checks without thinking about it. Does that place actually fix bikes, or does it just sell them. How far away is it. And have I heard of it, does it have a decent name locally.
That’s exactly what Google does. It calls the three checks relevance, distance, and prominence, and every piece of local SEO work is an attempt to improve one of them.
Why this matters for your site
For a business with a physical location or a service area, local results often matter more than ordinary search results. Someone searching for a plumber near them is closer to buying than almost any other kind of searcher, and the map results sit above the regular ones on the results page.
The other reason is that one of the three factors is fixed. You can’t move your premises closer to every customer. That makes relevance and prominence the entire available surface, which is a smaller and more focused job than general SEO.
The three factors
Relevance. How well your profile matches what the person searched for. Google’s advice here is unglamorous: fill the profile in completely and accurately, so it can match your business to the right searches. The category you choose, the services you list, and the description all feed this. In our experience, a business sitting under the wrong primary category is the most common fixable problem in local search, and it’s invisible for exactly the terms that matter most.
Distance. How far you are from the searcher, or from the place named in the search. If they don’t say where they are, Google uses what it knows about their location. This isn’t something you can optimize. It’s something you plan around, by understanding that your visible radius is smaller than you think.
Prominence. How well known the business is. Google says this draws on information including how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have, and that more reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking. This is where your website, your press coverage, and your reputation feed back into the map.
What a Google Business Profile actually is
It’s a free listing, owned by Google rather than by you, that produces the panel appearing next to your name in search and your pin on the map. It holds your name, address, phone number, hours, categories, services, photos, and reviews.
Two things about it surprise people.
It can be edited by others. Google accepts suggested edits from the public, so information can change without you doing anything. Profiles need checking, not just setting up.
It isn’t your website. It can’t carry your full range, your explanations, or your case for being chosen. Businesses that treat the profile as a substitute for a site tend to appear on the map and lose the comparison that follows.
What this looks like in practice
A dental clinic with two locations ranks well for its brand name and poorly for anything else.
Both profiles are complete. Both have good reviews. The problem is the primary category: both are set to “dentist” while the practice’s actual business is orthodontics, which is a separate category and a separate set of searches.
Changing the primary category on the location that does the orthodontic work is a two-minute edit affecting one of the three factors Google names. It’s also the kind of thing nobody notices for years.
What people usually get wrong
“We rank number one, I checked from the office.” You checked from inside your own catchment. Distance is measured from the searcher. Your position is different for everyone.
“More categories is better.” Google asks for categories that describe your business as precisely as possible. Our own reading of that, and what we see in practice, is that a sharp primary category beats a long list of loosely related ones.
“We’ll just get more reviews.” Reviews help, and buying them or incentivizing them breaks Google’s policies and risks the profile. There’s no shortcut here worth the exposure.
“Local SEO is separate from normal SEO.” Prominence draws on the same links and reputation that ordinary search uses. They’re the same reputation viewed from two angles.
What you can do about it
Claim and verify every location you operate. An unverified or unclaimed profile is one you can’t control.
Check your primary category against the searches you actually want. This is the highest-value edit available to most businesses.
Make sure your name, address, and phone number are identical everywhere they appear online. Inconsistency here confuses the match.
Ask satisfied customers for reviews, and reply to them, including the bad ones. Don’t buy them.
Add structured data marking up your business details on your own site, which helps Google connect the site to the listing.
If you run several locations and the profiles have drifted apart, our local SEO work covers bringing them back into line, which is mostly a matter of deciding what the correct version is and then making everything say it.
Google’s guidance on improving local ranking is short, official, and worth reading in full before paying anyone for local SEO work.
Words you will hear
Google Business Profile. The free Google listing that produces your entry in maps and local results.
Map pack. The block of three local results with a map, shown above ordinary results.
NAP. Name, address, phone number. The details that need to match everywhere.
Citation. A mention of your business details on another website, such as a directory.
Service area business. A business that travels to customers rather than receiving them, which changes how the profile is set up.
For SERP, local results and rich result, see What is a SERP? For search intent, see What is search intent?
