What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is the practice of making a business visible to people searching for products or services in a specific place — “dentist near me”, “bike repair Lyon”, “open late pharmacy”. Those searches often show a map with a handful of businesses (the local pack) above the regular results, and the same data feeds Google Maps, voice assistants and AI answers about local options.

It matters for any business that serves customers at a location or within an area: shops, restaurants, clinics, trades, agencies with offices.

How Google ranks local results

Google’s help page on local ranking names three main factors:

• Relevance — how well a business profile matches the search. Accurate categories, services and descriptions help.
• Distance — how far the business is from the searcher or the location in the query.
• Prominence — how well known the business is, both online and offline: reviews and ratings, links, articles, directory listings and your website’s overall standing in search.

The building blocks

1. Google Business Profile. Claim and verify it, choose precise primary and secondary categories, add hours (including holidays), photos, services and products, and keep it current.
2. Consistent NAP. Your business Name, Address and Phone number should be identical on your site, your profile and major directories.
3. Location pages. One genuinely useful page per real location, with address, map, hours, staff, services and directions — not doorway pages with swapped city names.
4. Reviews. Ask real customers, make it easy, and reply to reviews, including critical ones.
5. Local links and mentions. Local press, chambers of commerce, sponsorships, suppliers and community sites.
6. LocalBusiness structured data on your site to state your details unambiguously.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Dentist",
  "name": "Riverside Dental Care",
  "url": "https://www.riverside-dental.example/",
  "telephone": "+1-555-0142",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "48 Mill Street",
    "addressLocality": "Portland",
    "addressRegion": "OR",
    "postalCode": "97201",
    "addressCountry": "US"
  },
  "openingHoursSpecification": [{
    "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
    "dayOfWeek": ["Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday","Thursday","Friday"],
    "opens": "08:00", "closes": "18:00"
  }]
}
</script>

Use the most specific schema.org subtype of LocalBusiness that fits (here, Dentist). This structured data doesn’t replace your Business Profile, but it reinforces the same facts on your own site.

Common mistakes

• Stuffing keywords into the business name (“Riverside Dental – Best Dentist Portland Teeth Whitening”), which breaks Google Business Profile guidelines and can get a listing suspended.
• Fake or incentivized reviews. They violate Google’s policies, and in the US the FTC’s rule on fake reviews also prohibits them.
• Virtual offices or P.O. boxes listed as storefronts.
• Inconsistent details after a move or a phone number change.
• Serving several countries without hreflang when you have localized sites for each market.

How to check and build

Create your LocalBusiness markup with the Schema Generator and paste the script tag into your location pages, then confirm it with the Schema Validator. The full process is in the Local SEO Checklist: How to Show Up in Google Maps and the Local Pack.

Frequently asked questions