What Is Local SEO?

Where this comes from

The ranking factors below are Google's own, from its Business Profile help pages, read on 21 October 2026 and linked at the bottom of this page. The practical parts come from setting up local search for our own studio in Melbourne, which we wrote up step by step in The Climb.

Local SEO and regular SEO

Regular SEO is about ranking your website for a search anywhere. Local SEO is about searches where the location matters: "electrician near me", "physio Box Hill", "cake shop open now". For those, Google shows a map with three businesses first, and most people pick from those three before scrolling to the websites below. Local SEO is how you get into that box, and how your website backs it up.

Google's three local ranking factors

The five parts of local SEO you control

Almost every piece of local SEO work fits under one of these:

• Google Business Profile. The free listing that feeds the map pack. Google says businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up, so fill in categories, services, hours, photos and service area. You qualify if you meet customers at your address or travel to them. A rented mailbox or virtual office doesn't.
• Reviews. Google names review count and ratings as part of prominence. Ask every happy customer, make it one tap with a direct link, and reply to every review, good or bad.
• Consistent details (NAP). NAP is your name, address and phone number. They should read exactly the same on your website, Business Profile, Facebook and every directory, so Google can be sure they're all the same business.
• Service and suburb pages. A page for each service you offer helps relevance. A page for a suburb helps only when it says something true and specific about working there: jobs done, travel time, local conditions. Twenty copies of one page with the suburb swapped out help nobody.
• Local links and mentions. Links from your supplier, a trade association, a local sports club you sponsor or a council directory all count toward how well-known you are.

The basics in one afternoon

1. 1

   Claim and verify your Business Profile

   Go to google.com/business, claim your listing, and verify it. If you work from home and travel to customers, hide your address and set a service area, as Google's guidelines ask.

2. 2

   Fill in every field

   Main category, extra categories, each service, hours, phone, website, and at least a handful of real photos of your work. Use your real business name with nothing added. Google's guidelines don't permit taglines or extra words in the name.

3. 3

   Match your details everywhere

   Copy your name, address and phone from the profile, character for character, into your website footer, Facebook page and any directory you're listed in.

4. 4

   Send your first review requests

   Copy your review link from the profile and text it to your last ten happy customers. Reply to each review when it comes in.

What local SEO can't fix

Distance is the one factor you don't control. A business in Ringwood won't usually show in the map pack for someone searching in St Kilda, however good its profile is. Google also says there's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking, so anyone selling a guaranteed map-pack spot is selling something Google says doesn't exist. What you can do is win the area you really serve, and let your website rank for the wider searches where the map matters less.

Things that get profiles suspended

Each of these goes against Google's guidelines for Business Profiles:

• A virtual office or rented mailbox used as your address.
• Extra words in the business name, like "Smith Plumbing Best Plumber Melbourne".
• A second profile for the same business to cover more suburbs.
• Bought or swapped reviews.

Sources

1. Google Business Profile Help: Tips to improve your local ranking on Googlehttps://support.google.com/business/answer/7091

   Relevance, distance and prominence, complete information, reviews, and that there's no way to pay for a better local ranking.

2. Google Business Profile Help: Guidelines for representing your business on Googlehttps://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177

   Who qualifies, hiding a service-area address, business name rules, and virtual offices.

Where to next

• Step 03 of The Climb: speaking your city's language →

  How we made our own site relevant to Melbourne searches.

• Step 06 of The Climb: setting up a Google Business Profile →

  The eligibility question, and the profile we set up.

• Search, ads and Business Profile help →

  What we do once the site is live.

Local SEO, built into the site