How to Do Local SEO (A Practical Guide for Local Businesses)
Local SEO gets your business in front of people searching for what you offer near them — and the competition is often far lower than national or global SEO. A florist competing locally against 10 businesses is very different from competing against 10,000 nationally. Here's the practical playbook.
Claim and fully optimise your Google Business Profile
If you haven't claimed your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business), do it now — it's the single most important local SEO action. Complete every field: business name, address, phone number, hours, category, description, website, and photos. Incomplete profiles rank lower.
Semrush's Listing Management tool audits your Google Business Profile and highlights missing fields that affect your local ranking. It also identifies inconsistencies across other directories.
Budget alternative: Ubersuggest (from $29/mo)
Build consistent local citations
Citations are mentions of your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) on other websites — directories like Yelp, Yell, and industry-specific directories. Consistency is critical: if your address is formatted differently across sites, it confuses Google.
Semrush's Listing Management pushes your NAP data to 70+ directories simultaneously and monitors them for inconsistencies. Moz Local does the same thing at a competitive price point.
Budget alternative: Moz Pro (from $49/mo)
Generate and respond to Google reviews
Reviews directly influence your local pack ranking — more recent, higher-rated reviews = better position. Ask every satisfied customer for a review with a direct link to your Google review form. Respond to all reviews, positive and negative.
Semrush's Listing Management monitors and alerts you to new reviews across platforms so you can respond promptly. Response rate is a signal Google watches.
Budget alternative: Morningscore (from $49/mo)
Optimise on-page local SEO signals
Your website needs explicit local signals: include your city and service area in title tags, headings, and page content. Add a LocalBusiness schema markup with your full NAP data. Create separate landing pages for each location you serve.
Rank Math has a dedicated Local SEO module that generates LocalBusiness schema automatically and checks your on-page local signals against best practices — without requiring any code.
Budget alternative: Seobility (from $0/mo)
Track local rankings separately from national rankings
Local rankings vary by searcher location. Set up rank tracking with location targeting to see your actual rankings as they appear to local searchers — not the generic position that national tracking reports.
SE Ranking's local rank tracking lets you set a specific city or postcode as the tracking location — so you see rankings as a local customer would, not the averaged national position.
Budget alternative: Morningscore (from $49/mo)