Local SEO: What Actually Works for Small Businesses

You’ve been told to “do SEO” for your business. So you hired an agency, or read some blog posts, or bought a course. You optimised your title tags, wrote some blog content about industry trends, maybe even built a few backlinks.

And nothing happened. At least not locally.

Your site might rank on page 3 for broad national terms nobody converts on. Meanwhile the bloke down the street with a website from 2014 is sitting in the Map Pack getting 50 calls a week.

That’s because generic SEO and local SEO are fundamentally different games. Different algorithms. Different ranking factors. Different strategies. And most small businesses are playing the wrong one.

Why Generic SEO Advice Fails Local Businesses

Here’s the disconnect: most SEO content online is written for national or e-commerce brands. The advice (build domain authority, target high-volume keywords, create pillar content) is fine for a SaaS company trying to rank for “project management software.” It’s largely useless for a plumber in Brisbane trying to rank for “emergency plumber near me.”

Local search has its own algorithm. Google uses a separate system for local results (the Map Pack) that weighs different signals than organic results. Proximity to the searcher, Google Business Profile signals, review quantity and quality, local citations. These matter far more than your domain authority when someone searches for a local service.

46% of all Google searches have local intent. When someone searches “electrician,” “best coffee shop,” or “accountant near me,” Google doesn’t show the website with the most backlinks. It shows the nearest, most relevant, most prominent local business.

If your SEO strategy isn’t built around those signals, you’re optimising for the wrong algorithm.

Google Business Profile: The Foundation of Everything

Your Google Business Profile (GBP) is the single most important asset in local SEO. Full stop. If you do nothing else from this article, do this properly.

Complete Every Field

Google has confirmed that profile completeness is a ranking factor. Businesses with complete profiles are 2.7x more likely to be considered reputable and 70% more likely to attract location visits.

That means:

• Primary and secondary categories: Choose your primary category carefully, as it’s the strongest signal. Add all relevant secondary categories but don’t stuff irrelevant ones.
• Business description: Use all 750 characters. Include your services, service areas, and what makes you different. Naturally include your primary keywords but don’t keyword-stuff.
• Services and products: List every service individually with descriptions. Google uses these for keyword matching.
• Attributes: Business hours, payment methods, accessibility, amenities. Fill in everything that applies.
• Photos and videos: Businesses with more than 100 photos receive 520% more calls than average. Upload regularly: exterior, interior, team, work examples.

Posts and Updates

GBP posts don’t directly boost rankings, but they signal activity. An active profile tells Google (and customers) that you’re a going concern, not an abandoned listing. Post weekly: offers, updates, events, new services.

Q&A Management

The Q&A section on your GBP is often neglected. Seed it yourself. Ask and answer common customer questions. This gives Google more content to match against queries, and it pre-empts customer objections.

The Review Strategy That Actually Moves Rankings

Reviews are the second most important local ranking factor according to every major local SEO study. Not just the number of reviews, but the velocity, the recency, the keyword content, and the diversity of platforms.

Volume Matters, but Velocity Matters More

A business with 300 reviews that hasn’t received one in three months sends a weaker signal than a business with 150 reviews that gets 5 new ones every week. Google wants to see consistent, ongoing social proof.

How to Systematically Generate Reviews

Stop hoping customers leave reviews. Build a system:

1. Identify the trigger point: The moment of highest satisfaction. Project completion, successful service call, delivery confirmation.
2. Make it frictionless: Send a direct link to your Google review page via SMS or email within 24 hours of that trigger point. Not a link to your GBP, a direct review link.
3. Follow up once: If no review after 3 days, send one follow-up. Not pushy. Just a reminder.
4. Respond to every review: Every single one. Positive reviews get a genuine thank-you that naturally mentions your service and location. Negative reviews get a professional, empathetic response.

A consistent system like this can generate 10-20+ reviews per month depending on your customer volume. That compounds fast.

Keywords in Reviews

Google highlights review text that matches search queries. When a customer writes “best emergency plumber in Newstead,” that review content helps you rank for that query. You can’t ask customers to include specific keywords (that violates Google’s guidelines), but you can prompt specificity: “We’d love to hear what service we helped you with and what you thought of the experience.”

Local Citations: Boring but Essential

A citation is any online mention of your business name, address, and phone number (NAP). Directories, industry listings, local business associations, chamber of commerce sites. Anywhere your NAP appears.

Why Citations Matter

Citations validate your business information. Google cross-references your NAP across the web. Consistent information builds trust in your listing’s accuracy. Inconsistent information (different phone numbers, old addresses, misspelled business names) creates doubt and suppresses your rankings.

The Citation Strategy

Tier 1 - Core platforms: Google Business Profile, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Facebook. Get these right first.

Tier 2 - Major aggregators: In Australia, this means Yellow Pages, True Local, Yelp, Hotfrog, and any industry-specific directories (e.g., HiPages for tradies, TripAdvisor for hospitality).

Tier 3 - Local and niche directories: Local business associations, council websites, industry bodies, sponsor pages. These carry less individual weight but build the citation network.

The critical rule: NAP consistency. Your business name, address, and phone number must be identical everywhere. Not “mostly the same.” Identical. “123 Smith Street” and “123 Smith St” are different to Google. Pick a format and use it everywhere.

Citation Cleanup

If your business has been around for a while, there’s probably inconsistent or outdated information scattered across the web. Old addresses from a previous location. A phone number you changed three years ago. A former trading name.

Audit your citations. Search your business name, phone number, and address. Find every listing and either update it or request removal if it’s no longer relevant. This is tedious work, but inconsistent citations actively harm your rankings.

Understanding the Map Pack vs Organic Local Results

This is where most small business owners get confused. When you search for a local service, Google shows two types of results:

The Map Pack (Local Pack)

The top section with a map and three business listings. This is prime real estate. Businesses here get the majority of clicks for local searches. The Map Pack is powered primarily by your Google Business Profile, reviews, citations, and proximity to the searcher.

Organic Local Results

The regular blue-link results below the Map Pack. These are influenced by traditional SEO factors (on-page optimisation, backlinks, domain authority) but with a local lens. Google still considers geographic relevance for these results.

You Need Both

The Map Pack drives calls, directions, and immediate enquiries. Organic results drive website traffic, which feeds your broader marketing funnel. The ideal position is appearing in both, Map Pack and organic results for the same query. This is entirely achievable and should be the goal.

The strategies overlap but aren’t identical. GBP optimisation and reviews primarily power Map Pack rankings. On-page SEO and content primarily power organic local rankings. Citations and local links help both.

On-Page SEO for Local Businesses

Your website still matters. It reinforces your GBP signals and powers your organic local rankings.

Location-Specific Page Optimisation

Every page on your site should signal where you operate:

• Title tags: Include your city/suburb and service. “Emergency Plumber Brisbane | [Business Name]” not just “Plumbing Services.”
• Meta descriptions: Mention your service area naturally.
• H1 headings: Include location where it makes sense.
• Body content: Naturally reference suburbs, landmarks, and areas you service. Don’t keyword-stuff. Write for humans who live in your area.
• Schema markup: Implement LocalBusiness schema with your full NAP, service areas, opening hours, and geo-coordinates. If structured data is new to you, our technical SEO primer covers what you need to know.

Service Area Pages

If you serve multiple areas, create individual pages for each. But, and this is important, these cannot be thin doorway pages. Google explicitly penalises templated pages where only the suburb name changes. Each service area page needs unique content about that area, specific to how you serve it.

NAP on Your Website

Your business name, address, and phone number should appear on every page (usually in the footer) and be consistent with your GBP listing. Use structured data markup on this information.

What to Do This Week

Local SEO isn’t something you “do once.” But you can make significant progress quickly:

1. Audit your GBP: Is every field complete? Are your categories right? Do you have recent photos?
2. Set up a review system: Create the direct review link, draft the SMS/email template, identify the trigger point in your customer journey.
3. Check your citations: Search your business name and phone number. Find and fix inconsistencies.
4. Optimise your homepage: Title tag, meta description, H1, and body content should all reference your primary service and location.
5. Add LocalBusiness schema: If it’s not there, add it. This is table stakes.

These five things will move the needle more than any amount of generic blogging or link building. Not sure where to start? Get a free teardown and we’ll tell you which of these your business is missing. Speaking of which — if you’re curious about how backlinks actually work for local businesses, our link building guide breaks down the mechanics.

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Want the Full System?

This article covers the essentials, but local SEO is a connected system where each piece reinforces the others. We’ve put together a comprehensive breakdown of the entire strategy, from technical foundations to advanced Map Pack tactics.

Read our complete Local SEO guide. Or if you want to know what’s holding your site back right now, request a free teardown.