What is local SEO? Guide to ranking in local search results
Learn what local SEO is, how it works, and why it's vital for businesses. Discover strategies to boost visibility in Google’s local search and map pack.
What is local SEO?
Local SEO stands for local search engine optimization. It’s the practice of optimizing and promoting a business or organization’s digital assets to increase their online visibility for searches related to a particular geography. These assets can include websites, local business listings, backlinks, social profiles, and other media.
Local SEO comprises all the normal tasks of traditional SEO, like keyword research, website optimization, and link building. But local SEO includes an additional layer of appearing prominently in results shown to searchers located near the business or whose searches imply or state a specific geography (e.g., Mexican restaurant near me, or Mexican restaurant San Jose).
Brands that benefit the most from successful local SEO campaigns must meet two criteria:
- They must serve at least some of their customers or clients face-to-face instead of being a virtual brand
- They must have some form of physical street address and phone number, even if it’s a home address (P.O. boxes and virtual offices do not count as physical addresses in Google’s local search system)
Why does local SEO matter for these businesses and organizations that meet both criteria? Because local SEO is essential to the goals of being found online and chosen by local consumers for a transaction.
How local SEO works
Google is the dominant online platform in the local SEO space. It’s successfully developed a local business index which is continuously used by the public to discover the products and services of real-world communities.
An introduction to Google’s local algorithm
Google uses a set of rules and calculations called an algorithm to determine which results will show for each Google searcher. Its local algorithm is separate from its organic algorithm, and its exact contents are proprietary and secret.
Local SEOs and local business owners carefully study Google’s local search results in an effort to understand at least some of the factors that contribute to local visibility.
Searches that are considered local fall into two different categories:
- The most obvious version is when the searcher includes geographic language in their search, specifying that they want to see information about resources in a particular location. This could include searches like Mexican restaurants San Francisco, Mexican restaurants near me, or Mexican restaurants near Union Square.
- Alternatively, some searchers won’t include any geographic modifiers in their searches because they’ve come to depend on the fact that Google already knows the location of their mobile phone, laptop, or other device. Typically, a search for something like Mexican restaurant will be considered by Google to have a local intent, and it will return local results without the searcher needing to specify location.
Understanding Google’s local and localized results
When Google believes that a search has a local intent, there are five main products they can show to searchers.
1. Google Business Profiles
If a searcher looks up a particular brand name (called a “branded search”), or if Google believes there’s a single brand that best meets the searcher’s needs, it will typically show a Google Business Profile to the right of the organic search engine results.
Google Business Profiles (GBPs) are the main local business listings in Google’s environment. Local entities that meet all of the requirements of the Guidelines for representing your business on Google can create Google Business Profiles for free.
2. Local packs
When Google believes that a searcher wants to see a variety of local results, it will typically return its product called a “local pack.” Though the number of listings in the local pack can vary, the most common number of results is three. Local packs can also contain paid advertising.
There are multiple versions of the local pack, with each variety highlighting slightly different features, including reviews, pricing information, phone numbers, website links, booking buttons, and other information.
When a local pack bears the heading “Places” (seen above), clicking the “more places” link at the bottom of it typically takes the searcher to the expanded Google.com/search results known as the Local Finder. (More on that next.)
If the local pack heading is “Businesses” (seen above) and ends with a link to “More businesses,” this typically takes the user to Google’s paid lead generation program instead of to the Local Finder. Businesses must become part of Google’s Local Service Ads program to appear in this version of the Local Pack.
3. Local Finders
When searchers click on the “more places” link at the bottom of a local pack, they’re taken to an expanded set of Google.com/search results known as the Local Finder. This results set can contain multiple pages of local business listings.
4. Google Maps
Alternatively, searchers can click on the Maps tab at the top of their Google results to access Google.com/maps-based results. These look similar to the Local Finder results but are not the same and can feature a different ranking order. Google Maps is typically the default navigational app on Android phones and devices.
5. Localized organic results
In addition to the four purely local products we’ve just looked at, Google will also customize its organic results to show local information when it believes a search has a local intent. The organic results can include a variety of multimedia components, including links to websites, image and video content, shopping results, etc.
Need to know: Google’s local results are centered on the location of the searcher
In studying local SEO, a foundational fact you need to know is that Google’s local and localized results are customized on the basis of the physical location of the searcher at the time they search. A searcher located in the downtown of a city may see completely different results than one located just a few blocks away or on the outskirts of town.
You can take your phone with you and replicate this behavior by performing the same search as you move around your hometown.
Because Google’s algorithm is centered on the location of the searcher at the time of search, this means that there are no #1 local search rankings. Businesses should not set being #1 for all searchers as a goal, because this isn’t realistic unless they have little or no local competition.
Instead, local businesses and organizations can engage in local SEO to become as visible as possible to as many people as possible in their varying geographic markets.
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Key benefits of local SEO for businesses
Local SEO has become an established marketing practice because of the many benefits it can deliver to local brands and organizations.
These benefits can include:
Increased visibility in local and organic search results
Earning a prominent place in Google’s results enables local brands and organizations to be discovered by real-world communities so that they can be chosen for transactions. Over 99% of today’s consumers read the reviews contained in local business listings before visiting a business.
Listings like Google Business Profiles enable searchers to access contact information, driving directions, multimedia content, and even connect with business owners via reviews and messaging.
Localized organic results are a rich source of multimedia information, including links to brand websites, listings on other local indexes or business directories, audio/visual content, social media content, and shopping functionality.
More foot traffic, phone calls, and sales
Google Business Profiles are designed to connect the public with local brands and organizations. They make it easy for people doing branded searches to quickly find basic information like address, phone number, and driving directions.
For those doing non-branded searches (like chiropractors near me or San Francisco pharmacy open now), earning high visibility in Google’s local packs drives discovery, website clicks, phone calls, foot traffic, and sales.
Influential free sales force via reviews
As mentioned earlier, less than 1% of people don’t consult online local business reviews when looking to do business locally. It’s hard to imagine a more influential form of digital content! The reviews contained in Google Business profiles and highlighted in some local packs act as a free salesforce for your brand when they contain positive sentiment.
Google averages all the ratings each GBP has received into an overall star rating. This helps customers in a hurry make a quick evaluation of the quality of nearby offerings. If the local business you’re marketing earns a competitive star rating, people will choose it over competitors with lower average star ratings.
Free business intelligence and quality control
Local business reviews provide a continuous stream of free business intelligence, alerting brands to whether their customer service standards are being upheld at a specific location. While local business owners may, at first, fear the challenges of being publicly reviewed, bringing an actionable mindset to this valuable form of user generated content can typically dispel most reputation worries.
Large brands spend huge sums of money trying to gain insight into audiences. This type of information is available for free within reviews. Reviewers are very frank about what they like and dislike about any business they patronize.
Thanks to reviews, smart brands can respond to complaints with operational changes based on discovered consumer demand. This is a form of quality control that’s hard to replicate anywhere else in the online or offline worlds.
A customer retention powerhouse
Brands that experience a high level of churn have to constantly invest in replacing lost customers with new ones. Review responses can stem the flow.
An astounding 73% of unhappy customers will give a local business a second chance if an owner’s response to their negative review deftly resolves their complaint. While the exact dollars will be different for each unique business, it’s easy to see that any enterprise will be better off retaining nearly three-quarters of their dissatisfied customers instead of losing them.
A competitive advantage over less-motivated peers
Each local business exists within a market made up of the set of competitors Google shows in its local packs and Maps to searchers, based on their location at the time of search. A strong investment in local SEO can enable a business to become more visible in its market than less-motivated competitors who are failing to make strategic marketing decisions.
With this in mind, it’s time to look at the factors that are believed to contribute to how businesses rank within Google’s local packs, finders, and Maps.
Local SEO ranking factors to know
Google offers its own documentation on How to Improve Your Local Ranking in its system, and while its algorithm is a carefully-guarded secret, local SEOs have been studying Google’s results for two decades to try to identify possible local ranking factors.
Bearing in mind that Google is continuously tweaking its algorithm and its results, here’s a checklist of factors that are strongly believed to influence local pack rankings:
Proximity of searcher to business
As mentioned earlier, local search results are customized to the location of the searcher. Because of this, the business you’re marketing has the best chance of being visible to the customers nearest to it.
Address
In addition to considering the proximity of a business to each searcher, local brands have to assess whether any address they consider will put them at a ranking advantage or disadvantage in a given market.
For example, a downtown location in a busy business district may generate more foot traffic, sales, and reviews, signaling to Google that the business at this address is a more popular choice than one in a less populous area of town. An address that’s centered in the community a business most wants to reach is a ranking advantage.
Meanwhile, businesses that choose an address that falls outside Google’s concept of a city’s borders will struggle to be shown to users inside the borders (unless there’s little or no competition). Before a local business rents or buys premises, they should type the city name into Google Maps and look at the red dotted border (shown above).
Some businesses eventually end up deciding they need to move because the address they’ve chosen has put them at a competitive disadvantage.
Keywords in GBP business name field
Businesses with names that naturally contain keywords that closely match the search term a user is looking up have a ranking advantage. For example, a business named “Bob’s Christmas Tree Farm” is going to have a better chance of being ranked well for a user searching for Christmas tree farms than one named “Happy Memories.”
It’s important to note that Google’s bias towards keywords in business names can tempt business owners to add extra keywords to this field of the GBPs. However, this is a violation of Google’s guidelines. Names on GBPs need to reflect how the business is named on real-world signage.
If you realize that the name of a business you’re marketing is putting it at a competitive disadvantage, you might want to consider getting a legal DBA to improve the name.
GBP categories
In creating a GBP, you’re allowed to choose one primary category and nine additional categories. Failure to choose accurate categories will put the business at a ranking disadvantage.
Before you choose categories for a GBP, research which ones have been selected by the top competitors in your market. Using a Chrome extension like GMBSpy enables you to see all the categories associated with any listing.
Review factors
Star ratings, review count, and review velocity have all been cited as theoretical local pack ranking factors. A general best practice is to set the goal of earning an average star rating and volume of reviews that’s equal to or slightly better than your top competitor, and to earn fresh reviews at an equivalent or slightly increased velocity.
However, be careful with review velocity. Earning too many reviews at once can cause them to be filtered out as spam by Google.
Organic factors
Every GBP contains a field which can link to any page on the brand’s website. The authority of the GBP landing page is believed to contribute to its local pack rankings. Semrush’s guide to organic ranking factors will walk you through the elements that are believed to influence organic rankings.
Hours of operation
Local pack rankings shift based on whether businesses are open or closed at the time of search. Choosing open hours strategically can put brands and organizations at a competitive advantage if they’re offering services when other nearby options are closed.
Other GBP factors
Based on the categories chosen, different GBPs feature different additional fields that can enrich listings, drive user behaviors like dwell time and clicks, and influence conversions. These include:
- Photos
- Videos
- Menus
- Attributes
- Services
- Products
A good rule of thumb is that if Google offers you a GBP field, you should experiment with it to see how it impacts not only rankings, but also searcher interactivity.
How to optimize for local SEO: A checklist
Conduct local market research
If you have the advantage of marketing a brand new business or a new location of an existing brand, get off on the best possible foot by:
- Doing keyword and competitive research to pick an ideal name or DBA for the business
- Researching Google’s sense of the market by looking at mapped borders and discovering any particular business districts (like auto rows or doctors’ parks) that are relevant to the business
- Doing formal surveys or social media polls to discover local consumer demand
- Investing in keyword research to discover search language people use when searching for the goods, services, and features offered by the business
Develop a publishing strategy
Based on the findings of your consumer, market, and keyword research, create a content plan designed to fulfill all of the needs you’ve discovered. Content can include text, photography, graphics, video, audio, and interactive media like apps and tools. While each form of content can have its own goals, a general recommendation is to publish materials that showcase why your brand is an expert in its subject.
Although the website is the obvious home base for key business content, a full publishing strategy could also include additional platforms like local business listings, review response content, blogs, podcasts, private forums and servers, social media platforms, third-party platforms, video channels, paid digital and offline media, and so much more.
Every local business or organization becomes a publisher as soon as they step onto the web. Your communication strategy will be an ongoing core component of your local search marketing plan.
Develop and publish your website
At minimum, a local business website needs to describe:
- What the business does
- Where the business is
- How to connect with the business
Small local businesses may only require a modest website containing key pages like:
- Home page
- Contact page
- About page
- A unique page for every major product and service
- Reviews/Testimonials page
However, the more complex the business model, the more opportunities it has to develop a site that offers a more helpful and customized experience for each visitor.
For example, businesses with multiple locations, practitioners, or public-facing departments can develop landing pages for each entity, designing and optimizing them for discovery in the search engine results and use by local consumers.
Be sure that every page you publish has been created for human use (not just in an attempt to earn rankings), and that it reflects the findings of your keyword and consumer research.
The elements of almost any page that can be optimized with your important keyword phrases include:
- Title tag
- Headers
- Main body content
- Meta description
- Internal links to the page from site menus and other pages
Don’t forget to optimize these elements with your geographic terms (city names, neighborhood names, zip codes, and phrases like near me, etc.). Never assume that Google or the public intuits where your business is located. On-page local SEO means combining brand, product, service, and feature terms with geographic modifiers.
One of the best things you can do to grow your website’s authority over time and increase its chances of being brought up as an appropriate answer by Google for searchers is to earn links from relevant, high quality third-party sites. The best local links typically stem from local or industry publishers that are considered authorities in their fields.
If link building is a new concept for you, read Link building for SEO: A guide to the basics.
Another promotional effort that’s worth your time to learn about is the use of schema in the local business website context. Schema is a form of structured data markup used to define a variety of aspects of your business, such as name, address, phone number, and other relevant information.
Read this beginner’s tutorial to understand how schema markup can make your website contents more intelligible to search engines. Going forward, we expect to see schema being discussed in lots of conversations about how to earn inclusion in environments like Google’s AI Overviews, so study up now!
Create, claim, and optimize your Google Business Profile
Once you’ve published your website, you’re ready to head to this Google resource to create your Google Business Profile. Be sure you’ve:
- Gathered together the accurate name, address, phone number, hours of operation, landing page link, and at least a few initial photos before you start
- Reviewed Google’s documentation on its verification process so that you know what to expect
- Filled out any relevant fields Google offers you in the initial listing creation process
Once your listing is verified, ongoing optimization opportunities will be influenced by the categories you’ve selected. In general, however, here are core fields most businesses should plan to keep updated over time to grow user engagement:
- Hours of operation:Manage seasonal hour changes for accuracy and learn to set special hours.
- Images/videos:Add fresh media at a regular cadence that matches or surpasses the publishing rate of your top competitor; use images and videos to showcase all possible. aspects of your business or organization that could influence searchers to choose you
- Review acquisition:Create a review acquisition program based on in-person requests at the time of service plus the collection of text/phone numbers and email addresses to follow up afterwards; the rate at which you receive fresh reviews should match or surpass that of your top competitor.
- Review response: Respond to all incoming reviews as quickly as possible to defend brand reputation and improve customer retention. Give thanks for positive reviews and offer to make things right when negative reviews come in.
- Review analysis:Glean valuable business intelligence by analyzing review sentiment over time. This will enable you to catch emergent problems for quick resolution and help you identify new trends in local consumer demand.
- Google Updates (formerly known as Posts): Use this form of GBP microblogging to highlight content designed to convince users on the verge of a transaction to choose you. Limited offers, major sales, and upcoming events make good Updates content. Post at a rate that matches or surpasses that of your top competitor.
- Q&A:With the proviso that some local SEOs are now speculating that this feature could be replaced with an AI-driven feature, it may still be worth your time to upload and answer your organization’s top FAQs in this feature, as well as answering any questions that come in from the public.
- Attributes:Select any attributes (like “women-led” or “wheelchair accessible entrance”) that are applicable to your business.
- Other features: If, based on your categories, Google offers you other features like menus, service options, products, etc., make use of them.
Defend your GBP and local community with spam fighting
Unfortunately, Google’s local index is filled with two forms of spam:
- Google business profiles that violate the Guidelines for representing your business on Google
- Google business profiles containing reviews that violate Google’s prohibited and restricted content guidelines
Spammers and scammers in the Google local environment typically act in two ways:
- They create ineligible GBPs or GBPs with inaccurate information and fake reviews in an attempt to achieve high visibility in Google’s system
- They target legitimate businesses with malicious edits, listing hijacking, and fake reviews with the goal of harming competitors’ ranking and reputation
GBP spammers operate by deceiving the local community you serve. Unfortunately, this means that honest local business owners and marketers have to become spam fighters to protect their own neighbors from GBP review fraud and from listing spam, reporting suspicious activity to Google in hopes of removal. Regularly monitor your own listing and market for signs of spam.
Build structured citations
Structured citations are listings of your business or organization on other formal local business indexes like Yelp, Nextdoor, Facebook, YP.com, etc. Software like Semrush’s Local Listings Management Tool can help you scale the work of creating and managing this set of local business listings so that searchers are encountering reliable information about your enterprise wherever they go on the web.
Structured citations also frequently come up as entries in Google’s organic results for branded searches. They add to your digital footprint, giving you more control of the screen real estate that searches see when they look up your brand.
In addition to general local business indexes (like Yelp or Nextdoor) that are appropriate for most brands, some industries have their own directories, like ZocDoc for medical professionals and Findlaw for lawyers. Pay attention to the results that come up for your core search phrases. If a particular directory is being highly ranked for them by Google, it’s a smart idea to get listed there.
Build unstructured citations
Unstructured citations are mentions of your business on any digital platform other than a local business listing index. This could include hyperlocal or industry blogs, local online news sites, community hubs, and a variety of other third-party publications.
Over time, local businesses should strive to earn as many unstructured citations as possible to grow their authority and brand recognition.
Quick tips for earning unstructured citations include:
- Cross-promoting with fellow local business owners (e.g., a local caterer recommending a local event center and vice versa)
- Hosting, sponsoring, or participating in local events
- Sponsoring local teams and organizations
- Being interviewed by or contributing content to local or industry publications
- Being newsworthy to local newspapers
- Earning local awards
- Joining industry or local associations that list their members
Contribute to social communities
According to a recent survey by GatherUp, more than half of consumers are now consulting social media platforms for local business recommendations. Make maximum use of the opportunity to:
- Be part of the conversation on any social platform where your brand is being discussed
- Be responsive to consumers who reach out to you via social media instead of via other channels like phone or email
- Increase brand recognition by contributing positively to the social platforms preferred by your community.
Google Business Profiles not only allow you to link to your social profiles, but tests have been spotted of Google pulling live social posts right into listings. There’s industry speculation that, if Google moves forward with the test, social posts could replace Google Updates at some point. Now’s the time to start building out a strong social media presence that’s accessible, responsive, and helpful to the local public.
How to measure local SEO performance
While sales will be the best indicator of whether your local SEO efforts are succeeding, here are three key ways to track your local search performance over time:
GBP insights
The performance tab (shown above) of your New Merchant Experience dashboard that automatically comes with your GBP listing reports on:
- Clicks-to-website (how many people are clicking over from your GBP to your website)
- Clicks-to-call
- Clicks for driving directions
- Bookings (if applicable)
Ideally, you want to see steady growth in these metrics over time, but many businesses experience seasonal spikes and dips.
If you see a sudden, unexpected drop in your stats, check the local SEO news sources you follow to see if others are reporting similar behavior. If so, this could suggest that there’s either been a minor or major Google update or there’s a bug in Google’s system that it needs to resolve.
If you see no news about either of these causes, you may need to do an audit to see if something about your listing has changed (like a penalty or a spam attack), or if something in your market has changed (like a new competitor investing more in their marketing and outranking you).
Map and Pack rankings
Ranking tools can emulate a customer’s location and give a sense of how a business is ranking in Google’s local packs and maps. Here are three popular tools:
Your best chance of being visible in Google’s packs and maps is for searchers who are physically located nearest to your business when they search. Even so, in competitive markets, it can take considerable effort to become a dominant result for all your most important keyword phrases for nearby searches.
Meanwhile, brands who have achieved this level of nearby visibility may set goals of wanting to expand the geographic area in which they rank. Rank emulating tools help you track whether your visibility is trending upwards or downwards for each important phrase within a geographic radius.
UTM tracking
Urchin Tracking Modules (UTMs) are a method of tagging URLs with a piece of code for the purpose of tracking performance. You can add UTM tracking to your Google Business Profile website links, product listings, Updates, menus, and other features to help gauge how the public is clicking on different elements of your listing.
Knowing which elements of your listing are most popular can help you understand where to budget your marketing efforts. Read Claire Carlisle’s tutorial on implementing UTMs in your GBPs and pair that with a viewing of Joy Hawkins’ video on unlocking local SEO insights from Google Search Console.
Common local SEO mistakes to avoid
You’ll save your brand, organization, or agency major headaches by avoiding the following common local SEO mistakes:
Failure to read Google’s guidelines before taking any action
The two main sets of rules you need to know about in doing local SEO are the Guidelines for representing your business on Google and Google’s prohibited and restricted content guidelines. Be sure to brush up on both documents so that you protect your business from negative outcomes like listing suspensions.
Failure to adhere to Google’s guidelines, even if you’ve read them
Advice from unscrupulous marketers combined with the tough competition of some markets can tempt business owners to break the rules by doing things like keyword stuffing business titles, purchasing reviews, or creating listings for ineligible locations. Don’t do it!
It can be really hard to recover if your listing gets suspended or disabled, and there’s zero guarantee that Google will comply with your requests for reconsideration and reinclusion. Without a listing that’s in good standing with Google, a business can be said to be almost invisible online!
Failure to manage listings for accuracy
Any listing of your business that contains misinformation is a threat to customer acquisition and your reputation. Be sure your basic contact information and hours of operation are consistent and accurate across the web to avoid inconveniencing real-world consumers.
Failure to prioritize reputation management
Too often, this is treated like an afterthought by local brands large and small, but your online reputation is directly connected to rankings and revenue. Review acquisition, response, and analysis should be seen as one of the core components of your local SEO strategy.
Failure to fight spam
Google is clearly overwhelmed by the amount of fraudulent content in its local system. Brands and organizations sometimes feel that it shouldn’t be their job to police Google’s index. Right or wrong, if it’s your rankings at stake and your community being scammed by fraudsters, you have a strong motivation to engage in spam fighting.
Advanced tips to boost local rankings ASAP
Eager for some quick local SEO wins to elevate your online presence? Use these tips:
- Earn your first 10 Google Business Profile reviews:This should give you a local rankings boost.
- Republish your first 10 reviews as social content:This should spark local interest when the community sees how much neighbors love your business or organization.
- Identify your city’s most influential publishers and get mentioned:Whether this involves being a guest on a podcast, getting interviewed by a hyperlocal blogger, or sending an awesome news story to a local reporter, piggyback on existing publications to get in front of their audiences.
- Report all spam that’s outranking you:One of the quickest local SEO wins you’ll ever get comes from getting Google to remove GBP spam listings that are sitting above you in the local finder or Maps (but beware: spammers often come back).
- Join a local business association: Many towns and cities have one of these. Join up and become friends with peers whose businesses have a relationship to yours. For example, yoga instructors should be friends with sporting goods store owners. Photographers should be friends with event planners. Local grocers should be friends with local farmers. Be a good business peer by promoting your related local business owners via the publication of unstructured citations and links on your site, and they can do the same for you. Cross-promotions and referrals are powerful.
Deep dive: How to get your Google Business Profile verified
If there’s one area covered in today’s article that you may experience problems with, it’s likely to be getting through the GBP verification process without a major hassle. Google is constantly refining how it wants business owners to prove that they’re legitimate.
Read The new Google Business Profile verification flow: Platinum Product Expert explains how to succeed.
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