There’s a version of SEO that involves 200 ranking factors, a subscription to something expensive, and a monthly report you don’t read.
And there’s the version that matters if you serve customers within about twenty miles of where you are: being the one that comes up when someone nearby needs what you sell, right now. That’s local SEO, and most of it is unglamorous housekeeping rather than anything clever.
The gap between businesses that do it and businesses that don’t is enormous, and it usually has nothing to do with who’s better at the job. It’s about who’s easier for Google to be certain about.
What local SEO actually is
When someone searches plumber near me or commercial cleaning [your town], Google shows two different things:
- The map pack — three businesses with a map, star ratings and a phone button. This is the prize. It sits above everything and most of the clicks go here.
- The blue links — ordinary results, where your website pages compete.
They’re won differently. The map pack is decided mostly by your Google Business Profile, your proximity to the searcher, your reviews and your consistency across the web. The blue links are decided mostly by your website — its pages, its structure and its content.
You need both, and they feed each other. Doing one and ignoring the other is the most common local SEO mistake I see.
The seven things that move the needle locally
In rough order of return for effort.
1. Fix your Google Business Profile properly, in one sitting
It’s free, it’s the most-quoted source about your business anywhere, and roughly nine in ten of the profiles I audit have been set up once and never touched.
An afternoon’s work:
– Primary category = the thing you most want to be phoned about. Most businesses set this years ago and have since changed direction.
– Services and service areas filled in fully, not left at defaults.
– Hours correct, including bank holidays.
– Photos — real ones, of real work, added regularly. Profiles with recent photos get more engagement, and it signals a business that’s trading.
– Sign in every few months. Dormant profiles get treated with suspicion, and anyone can suggest edits to one you’re not watching.
2. Give every service its own page
The single biggest website factor, and the one most local businesses fail. A page can only be understood as one thing. If you sell six services and describe them in a paragraph on your homepage, you’re asking to be found for six things while offering evidence of none.
One service, one page, with the service name in the page title, the heading and the URL. Web design →
3. Use the words your customers use
If they search boiler repair and your site says domestic heating solutions, you’ve made yourself hard to match — and you’ve done it to sound professional, which is the sad part.
Write down the last ten things customers actually phoned up and asked for, in their words. Those words go on the site.
4. Get reviews, recently, and reply to them
Recency does a lot of work. Forty five-star reviews that stop in 2021 read like a business that may have stopped trading. A steady trickle — two or three a month — beats a burst.
Ask at the moment of relief: when the job’s done and it went well. Not by email a fortnight later. And reply to every one, including the awkward ones, because the reply is read by the next customer, not the one who complained.
5. Make your name, address and phone number identical everywhere
Identically. St. in one place and Street in another. An old mobile on a directory you’ve forgotten. A trading name on one listing and the limited company name on another. That’s how a search engine concludes it might be looking at two different businesses and trusts both of them less.
Audit: search your own phone number in quotes and see what comes back.
6. Appear in at least three places you don’t own
A trade body, a directory, a local news mention, a supplier listing, a chamber of commerce, a sponsorship. One source is a claim; three is a fact. This is also increasingly how AI assistants decide whether to name you.
7. Answer the questions people actually ask, on your website
An FAQ using their exact words — “how much does a new bathroom cost?”, not “Pricing information”. Answer first, sell second. This wins featured snippets, and it’s what AI assistants quote back to people. Content marketing →
What to do about AI answers
Something has changed in the last eighteen months and it doesn’t show up in your website stats.
A growing number of people no longer search and scan results. They ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or Google’s AI summary: “who’s the best electrician near me?” — and they get three names. They contact one of the three.
If you weren’t one of the three, you don’t show up in your figures as a lost customer. You don’t show up at all.
The reassuring part: the work above is largely the same work. Clear pages, one service per page, real proof, consistent details, corroboration elsewhere. AI assistants are pickier about verification than Google is, but they’re pickier about the same things.
Want to know where you stand? Open ChatGPT and type “who are the best [what you do] in [your town]?” Don’t mention your name. See whether you’re in the three. Then read the 20-point AI checklist, which walks through the whole thing in about twenty minutes.
The 90-day version, if you only have a few hours a month
Month 1: Google Business Profile properly overhauled. Consistent name, address and phone everywhere you can find. Start asking for reviews systematically.
Month 2: A page for each service you sell, written in your customers’ words, with real prices or ranges on at least one of them.
Month 3: An FAQ answering the ten questions you’re genuinely asked, plus three third-party listings you don’t own. Then re-run the searches you care about and compare.
That’s it. That’s most of local SEO. Everything beyond it is refinement, and refinement only pays once the basics are in place.
Common questions
What is local SEO?
Local SEO is the work that gets your business found by people searching nearby — in Google’s map pack, in “near me” searches, and increasingly in AI assistant answers. It’s driven mainly by your Google Business Profile, your reviews, whether your business details are consistent across the web, and whether your website has a proper page for each service you sell.
How do I get my business to show up on Google Maps?
Claim and complete your Google Business Profile, set your primary category to the service you most want enquiries for, fill in your services and service areas, add real photos regularly, and build a steady flow of recent reviews. Then make sure your name, address and phone number are written identically everywhere else online. Proximity to the searcher matters too, which is why you’ll rank better in your own town than in the next one along.
How long does local SEO take to work?
Google Business Profile improvements can show within two to four weeks. Website changes — new service pages, better content — typically take two to four months to move meaningfully. Anyone promising first-page rankings in thirty days is selling you something.
Do I need to pay for local SEO?
No. Everything in this article can be done by a business owner with a few hours a month, and most of it is free. You pay someone when you don’t have those hours, or when your market is competitive enough that the basics aren’t enough on their own.
How much does local SEO cost?
Agencies typically charge £500–£2,000 a month on retainer. I work in dedicated days at £350 a day — a local SEO overhaul for a small business is usually two to four days of work, then occasional days to keep it moving.
Want to know where you actually stand?
Send me your business name and the three searches you most want to win. I’ll run them, tell you where you appear, who’s beating you and why — free, and in plain English.
Quite often the fix is an afternoon’s work you can do yourself, and I’ll tell you when that’s the case.
