Local SEO: The Signals That Still Move the Needle
Photo by David Vives on Unsplash
Local SEO attracts elaborate advice because the basics are dull. For most businesses serving a physical area, the outcome is largely determined by three things.
1. Your Business Profile, filled in completely
Google Business Profile is the single highest-leverage asset in local search, and most are half-finished. Categories are the part people get wrong most often: the primary category does more work than any other field, and picking the closest match rather than the most flattering one matters.
Beyond that: real opening hours including holidays, services listed individually, photographs that are not stock, and the questions section answered by you before someone else answers it wrongly.
2. Consistent details everywhere you appear
Name, address and phone number should be identical across every listing. "Suite 4" in one place and "Ste 4" in another is a small inconsistency that becomes a large one when it is replicated across forty directories.
Audit the places you already appear before adding new ones. Old listings from a previous address are the usual culprit, and they can outlive the business that created them.
3. Reviews, gathered continuously
Review count and recency both matter, and recency is the one businesses neglect. Forty reviews from three years ago reads worse than twelve from the last six months. Build the request into the job — an SMS after completion outperforms anything sent later.
Respond to the negative ones plainly and without argument. Prospective customers read the response more carefully than the complaint.
Where links come in
Local link building is the part with the least competition, because it cannot be outsourced to a link farm. Chambers of commerce, local associations, the charity you sponsor, the supplier who lists their stockists, the venue whose partners page you belong on.
These links are unglamorous, invisible to national competitors, and disproportionately effective — precisely because they are earned by being a real business in a real place.