What Is Local SEO, and How Does It Help Your Business Grow?
Local SEO helps nearby customers find you in Google's map results, local search, and AI assistants. Here's how it works and what actually moves the needle.
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Local SEO is the work of making your business show up when people nearby search for what you offer. That includes the map results at the top of Google (often called the “map pack”), the regular search results below them, Google Maps itself, and increasingly the answers AI assistants give when someone asks for a recommendation near them.
If customers come to you, or you go to them within a defined area, local SEO is usually the highest-return marketing you can do. These are people actively looking for your service, in your area, often ready to call today.
Where local search results show up
When someone searches “plumber near me” or “best Thai food in Thousand Oaks,” Google typically shows:
- The map pack: a map with three business listings, pulled from Google Business Profiles. This is prime real estate, and most clicks for local searches happen here.
- Local organic results: regular website listings, which favor pages clearly tied to the location.
- AI Overviews: for many searches, an AI-written summary that names specific businesses.
Outside of Google, the same signals feed Apple Maps, Bing, and AI assistants like ChatGPT and Gemini when people ask them for local recommendations.
How Google ranks local businesses
Google has said publicly that local results are based on three main factors:
- Relevance: how well your business matches what someone searched for. Clear categories, services, and descriptions help Google make the match.
- Distance: how far your business is from the searcher, or from the location in their search. You can’t change where you are, but you can make sure Google knows exactly where you are and which areas you serve.
- Prominence: how well known and well regarded your business is. Reviews, links, mentions across the web, and your overall online presence all contribute.
Everything in local SEO is about strengthening relevance and prominence, and removing any confusion about location.
The essentials of local SEO
1. A complete, active Google Business Profile
Your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is the single most important local SEO asset. Make sure it has:
- The right primary category (this matters more than almost anything else) and relevant secondary categories
- Accurate hours, including holiday hours
- Your services, with clear descriptions
- Real photos of your business, team, and work, added regularly
- A link to the most relevant page on your website
- Answers to common questions
Keep it active. Post updates, add photos, and respond to every review.
2. Consistent name, address, and phone number everywhere
Your business name, address, and phone number (often shortened to NAP) should match exactly on your website, your Business Profile, and every directory, from Apple Maps and Bing to Yelp and industry listings. Inconsistent details create doubt about which information is correct, and doubt costs rankings.
3. Reviews, and how you respond to them
Reviews are one of the strongest prominence signals, and they’re what customers read before choosing you. Ask every happy customer for a review, make it easy with a direct link, and respond to every review, positive or negative, thoughtfully and promptly. Never buy or fake reviews; it violates Google’s policies and can get your profile suspended.
4. A real page for every location
If you have multiple locations, or serve several distinct cities, each one deserves its own page with genuinely useful, unique content: the services offered there, the team, directions, local photos, and reviews from customers in that area. Thin pages that just swap the city name don’t help, and can hurt.
5. Local structured data
LocalBusiness schema tells search engines your exact name, address, phone, hours, coordinates, and service area in a machine-readable format. It removes ambiguity for Google and gives AI assistants clean facts to work with.
6. Local links and mentions
Links and mentions from local sources build prominence: chambers of commerce, local news, community organizations, event sponsorships, suppliers, and local business associations. These are often easier to earn than national links, and more relevant.
Local SEO for service-area businesses
If you travel to customers (contractors, cleaners, mobile services) and don’t serve people at your address, you can hide your address on your Business Profile and set a service area instead. Your website then does more of the work: clear service pages, the areas you cover, and reviews from customers across those areas.
How AI assistants recommend local businesses
When someone asks ChatGPT or Gemini “who’s a good dentist near Westlake Village?”, the assistant draws on what it can find and trust: Business Profiles and map data, reviews, directories, local articles, and business websites. The businesses that get recommended tend to have:
- Consistent, complete information everywhere
- Plenty of recent, detailed reviews
- Websites that clearly state services, locations, hours, and prices
- Structured data that confirms those facts
In other words, good local SEO is now also good AI SEO. The same work gets you into the map pack and into the answer.
How to measure local SEO
- Google Business Profile performance: searches, views, calls, direction requests, and website clicks from your profile
- Google Search Console: impressions and clicks for local searches, by page
- Map pack visibility: where you appear for your key searches across your service area
- Leads: calls, form submissions, and bookings, which is what actually matters
Common local SEO mistakes
- Stuffing keywords or cities into your business name on Google
- Using a virtual office or PO box as an address
- Duplicate or outdated listings floating around directories
- Ignoring reviews, or only responding to negative ones
- Dozens of near-identical city pages
- Choosing a primary category that’s too broad
How we help
Local SEO is available as an add-on to any of our plans, at $349 per location per month. It includes Business Profile setup and ongoing management, accurate directory listings, a dedicated page for every location, local schema, and local reporting. See our Local SEO service and the areas we serve for details, or get started and we’ll take a look at how you show up today.
From the archive: first published in 2023. We keep older Field Notes online as a record of how search has evolved, and add updates where our thinking has changed.
