Local SEO basics every small business should know

Take out your phone and search for "plumber near me", or whatever your own trade is. Before the ordinary list of websites, Google will often show a map with a handful of businesses pinned on it, each with star ratings, opening hours and a button to call. That small box is where a lot of local customers make up their minds. Getting into it, and into the results just below it, is what local SEO is mostly about.

The encouraging part is that the basics are free, and none of them need technical skills. They do need a little care and some patience. So let's take them one at a time, in the order we'd tackle them ourselves. If you'd like to tick things off as you go, there's a checklist at the end that saves your progress in your browser.

What is local SEO, and how is it different from regular SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization: the work of helping your business appear when people search. Regular SEO is about ranking for a topic wherever the searcher happens to be. Local SEO adds a place.

When Google decides a search has local intent (someone typing "dentist", "tire shop" or "birthday cake order" almost always wants one nearby), it mixes in results from Google Maps and from businesses' Google Business Profiles. People in the industry call the map section the "local pack". You don't need the jargon, but it helps to know there are two places you can appear: the map results, and the regular results underneath them. Everything below helps with both.

How does Google decide which local businesses to show?

Here Google is unusually open. Its own help pages say local results are based mainly on three things:

• Relevance: how well your listing matches what the person searched for.
• Distance: how far your business is from the searcher, or from the place they mentioned in the search.
• Prominence: how well known your business is, judged from things like reviews, links and mentions around the web.

You can't change distance, and we'll come back to why you shouldn't try. Relevance and prominence, though, are largely in your hands. Every step in this guide feeds one or both of them.

Step 1: Claim and complete your Google Business Profile

Your Google Business Profile (it used to be called Google My Business) is the free listing that feeds the map results, the information panel people see when they search your name, and Google Maps itself. If you only do one thing from this guide, make it this one.

1. Find out if you already have one. Search for your business name on Google Maps. Listings are sometimes created automatically, so one may exist already. If it does, choose the option to claim it. If not, you can create one from Google's Business Profile page at google.com/business.
2. Verify it. Google needs proof that you really are the business. Depending on your situation it may ask for a short video of your premises, a phone call or text, an email, or a postcard with a code. The options vary from business to business, so simply go with what you're offered.
3. Fill in everything. Not just the minimum. A complete profile gives Google more to match against searches, and gives customers fewer reasons to look elsewhere.

The details that matter most

• Business name. Use your real name, exactly as it appears on your sign and your paperwork. Adding keywords ("Smith Plumbing Best Emergency Plumber Boston") breaks Google's guidelines and can get your profile suspended. It's the most common shortcut people take, and the most common way they lose their listing.
• Primary category. Pick the one that describes your core business as specifically as possible. "Wedding photographer" beats "Photographer" if weddings are what you do. You can add secondary categories for the rest. Take a few minutes over this choice; it has a big influence on which searches you appear for.
• Address or service area. If customers come to you, show your address. If you travel to them (cleaners, electricians, mobile dog groomers), Google asks you to hide your address and list the areas you serve instead.
• Hours, including holiday hours. Few things lose a customer faster than driving to a locked door that Google said was open.
• Description. You get up to 750 characters. Say what you do, who for and where, in plain sentences.
• Photos. Real photos of your work, your team and your premises. Stock images tell customers nothing.
• Services or products. List them, with a short description wherever the profile allows it.

One more thing about addresses. Your address has to be a real place where you do business. Google's guidelines don't accept P.O. boxes or mailbox services. It's tempting to rent a mailbox in the busier town next door to look closer to more customers, but that's exactly the kind of thing that gets profiles removed. This is what we meant about not trying to change distance.

Step 2: Make your name, address and phone number match everywhere

SEO people call this NAP consistency, for name, address and phone. The idea is simple. Your business is mentioned in lots of places online: your website, Facebook, Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing, industry directories, your local chamber of commerce. When all of them agree, search engines can be confident they're describing the same business. When they don't (an old phone number here, a previous address there), that confidence drops, and so does the trust of any customer who notices.

Here's how to tidy it up, gently and in order:

1. Write down your official version. Your name, address and phone number exactly as you want them to appear. Choose one format and stick to it, for example "Suite 4" rather than "Ste 4" in some places and "#4" in others.
2. Search for yourself. Search your business name, and separately your phone number. Note every listing that comes up.
3. Fix the ones you control first. Your website, Google Business Profile, Facebook page, Apple Business Connect (which feeds Apple Maps) and Bing Places for Business.
4. Then work through the directories that matter in your trade. A wedding venue and an accountant will have very different lists.

A word of caution: you don't need to pay for services promising listings on hundreds of directories. A handful of accurate listings on sites people actually use is worth far more.

Be the business Google can describe with confidence: one name, one address, one phone number, everywhere.

Step 3: Give your website clear local signals

Your Business Profile and your website work as a pair. Google looks at your site to understand what you do, and many people tap through from your profile to check you out before they call. Here's what helps:

• One page for each main service. A page about "gutter cleaning in Lowell" can rank for that search. A single "Services" page that lists eight things in a paragraph rarely ranks well for any of them.
• Say where you work. Mention your town and the areas you serve naturally in your page text, and put your full name, address and phone number in the footer of every page.
• Write clear title tags. The title tag is the clickable headline that shows in search results. "Gutter Cleaning in Lowell, MA | Smith & Sons" tells people far more than "Home".
• Make your phone number tappable so mobile visitors can call in one tap.
• Add LocalBusiness structured data. This is a small block of code, invisible to visitors, that hands search engines your name, address, hours and phone number in a format they can read reliably.

If you serve several towns, you might be tempted to create a pile of near-identical pages, each with a different town name swapped in. Please don't. Google calls these doorway pages and treats them as spam. A page for a particular town is only worth having if you have something genuinely specific to say about your work there.

Not sure your website is up to this? It may be one of the signs it's time to redesign your website. Every site we build through our website design service comes with these basics in place.

Step 4: Earn reviews, and reply to every one

Reviews help in two ways. They're part of how Google judges prominence, and they're often the deciding factor for the person reading them. A business with recent, specific reviews looks alive and cared for.

• Ask, and make it easy. Your Business Profile can give you a short review link to send by text or email. The best moment to ask is right after a job has gone well.
• Ask everyone, not just the happy ones. This surprises many owners. Google's policies don't allow you to selectively ask only the customers you expect to be positive. You also can't offer discounts or gifts in exchange for reviews.
• Reply to every review, good or bad. Thank people by name. For a negative review, stay calm, keep it short and offer to sort it out directly. Remember that you're writing for the future customers who will read the exchange, not only for the reviewer.
• Never buy reviews or write your own. Fake reviews break Google's rules, and in the United States the Federal Trade Commission has rules against them too.

Step 5: Keep it fresh and measure what happens

Local SEO isn't a one-off task, but it doesn't need much time once the foundations are in. A short monthly routine is plenty:

• Check your profile for changes. Anyone can suggest edits to a public listing, and Google sometimes applies them. Make sure your hours, phone number and categories are still right.
• Add a few new photos of recent work.
• Reply to new reviews.
• Look at the numbers. Your Business Profile shows how people found you and what they did next: calls, direction requests and website clicks. Google Search Console, also free, shows which searches led people to your website.

You'll also see an option to publish updates and offers on your profile. It's optional. It won't transform your rankings on its own, but it's a handy place for seasonal news, and it shows customers someone is paying attention.

How long does local SEO take to work?

The honest answer is that it varies, and anyone who promises a particular ranking by a particular date is guessing. A complete, verified profile can start appearing for some searches fairly quickly. Climbing above well-established competitors with years of reviews usually takes months of steady effort.

What we can say is that the businesses that do well locally are rarely the ones with clever tricks. They're the ones that kept doing the basics after everyone else got bored. If you'd rather hand the work to someone, our search engine optimization service covers local SEO, and our Rare Find package on the pricing page includes local SEO setup as part of a new website. And if you'd like faster results while the slow work builds, our article on why we choose Google Ads and SEO explains where paid ads fit.

Your local SEO checklist

Here's everything above, in order. Tick items off as you finish them. Your ticks are saved in this browser only, so you can come back next week and pick up where you left off.

Local SEO questions