Who needs local SEO?
Any business that serves customers in a specific area: shops, restaurants, clinics, tradespeople, law firms, agencies and service businesses that visit their customers.
The main parts of local SEO
- Google Business Profile: a complete, verified profile with the right categories, hours, photos and services.
- Reviews: a steady flow of genuine reviews, with replies from the business.
- Consistent listings: the same name, address and phone number on your website, directories and social profiles.
- Local pages: service and location pages that match what people search for in each area.
- Local links and mentions: from local news, associations, partners and events.
- Technical basics: a fast, mobile-friendly site with LocalBusiness structured data.
Google ranks local results by relevance, distance and prominence. You can’t control where a searcher is, but you can control how relevant and well known your business looks.
How to start with local SEO
- Claim and verify your Google Business Profile.
- Choose the most accurate primary category and add secondary ones carefully.
- Use your real business name only: Google’s guidelines say not to add keywords or taglines.
- If you serve customers at their location and do not receive visitors, hide your address and list service areas.
- Add accurate hours, phone, website and services, and real photos.
- Ask customers for honest reviews and reply to each. Do not offer rewards for positive reviews.
- Keep your name, address and phone identical across your website and directories.
- Build a page for each service and each area you really serve.
Local SEO example
This example is illustrative. An electrician in Uppsala completes the Google profile, adds photos of recent jobs, builds one page for emergency repairs and one for fuse box upgrades, and asks each customer for a review. Over a few months, the business appears more often in the map results for “electrician Uppsala”.
Local SEO mistakes
- Creating duplicate Google profiles for the same business.
- Stuffing keywords into the business name.
- Making pages for towns you do not serve: Google treats those as doorway pages.
- Buying or faking reviews.
- Letting hours and phone numbers go out of date.
Local SEO FAQs
Do I need a website for local SEO?
A profile does much of the work, but a website gives you service pages, proof and bookings you control.
How long does local SEO take?
Google says changes can take from hours to months. Fixing a wrong listing can show within days, while competitive rankings take months.
Related reading: backlinks for local SEO, map packs and our local SEO service.