Local SEO for Small Businesses: How to Get Found on Google

If your customers are local, being visible when they search for what you do matters more than almost anything else your website does. Local SEO is the work that gets you there: appearing for searches like “plumber near me” or “accountant in Leeds”. Those searches show a map with a short list of businesses, usually called the local pack, followed by the normal website results.

The good news is that most of it is free and within your control. Google says local results are based mainly on three things: how relevant your business is to the search, how far you are from the searcher, and how prominent your business is. In this guide I’ll explain what each one means and walk through the steps I’d take to improve them for any small business.

According to Google’s own guidance, local results are based primarily on:

• Relevance: how well your Business Profile matches what someone searched for. Your categories, services, description and website content all feed into this.
• Distance: how far your business is from the location in the search, or from the searcher if they don’t name a place. You can’t change where you are, but you can make sure Google knows exactly where you are and which areas you serve.
• Prominence: how well known your business is, both offline and online. Google says this draws on information from across the web, such as links, articles and directories, and that your review count and rating also play a part.

Google is also clear that there’s no way to pay for a better local ranking. Ads can appear above the map, but they’re labelled as sponsored and are separate from the organic local results.

Your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is the listing that appears in Maps and the local pack. If you only do one thing after reading this, get this right. It’s where I start with every local business.

• Claim and verify it. Verification tells Google you’re authorised to manage the business, and unverified profiles are less likely to show.
• Use your real business name. Google’s guidelines for representing your business say the name must match how you’re known in the real world. Adding keywords or locations to the name, such as “Smith Plumbing – Emergency Plumber Leeds”, breaks the guidelines and can get your profile suspended.
• Choose your primary category carefully. It’s one of the most important relevance signals. Pick the most specific category that describes what your business is, then add only a few secondary categories that genuinely apply.
• Set your address or service area correctly. If customers visit you, show your address. If you travel to customers and work from home, hide your address and set a service area instead.
• Fill in everything else. Opening hours (including holiday hours), phone number, website link, services, products and a clear description of what you do.
• Add real photos. Your premises, team, vehicles and work. Keep adding new ones over time.
• Post updates. Offers, news and recent projects keep the profile active and give searchers more reasons to choose you.

Your website is a big part of how Google judges relevance and prominence, and it’s where many searchers go before they pick up the phone. When I build a site for a local business, these are the things I make sure are in place:

• A dedicated page for each main service. One page that lists everything you do is far weaker than individual pages that explain each service properly.
• Genuinely useful location pages, if you serve several areas. Each one should contain real local information, such as jobs you’ve done there, specific considerations for that area or who covers it. Near-identical pages that only swap the town name are treated by Google as doorway pages and can hurt you.
• Your name, address and phone number shown consistently, usually in the footer and on the contact page, matching your Business Profile exactly.
• Local business structured data to help search engines read your details accurately.
• A fast, mobile-friendly design with click-to-call buttons. Most local searches happen on phones, often when someone needs help quickly.
• Clear calls to action on every page, so visitors know how to get a quote or book.

Link your Business Profile to the most relevant page on your site. For a single-location business that’s usually the homepage; for a multi-location business, link each profile to its own location page.

Reviews influence rankings and, just as importantly, whether people choose you once they see you. The aim is a steady flow of honest reviews rather than a sudden burst.

• Ask every customer, not just the happy ones. Google’s content policies prohibit discouraging negative reviews or only asking customers you expect to rate you well.
• Make it easy. Share your review link in follow-up emails, on invoices or with a QR code.
• Never offer incentives. Google doesn’t allow discounts, freebies or payment in exchange for a review, or for changing or removing a negative one.
• Reply to every review. Thank people for positive ones and respond calmly and helpfully to criticism. Future customers read the replies as closely as the reviews.

Since 6 April 2025, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act has made it unlawful in the UK to submit or commission fake reviews, or to hide the fact that a review was incentivised. If you publish reviews on your own website, the Competition and Markets Authority expects you to take reasonable steps to prevent fake ones, including having a clear review policy. Its fake reviews guidance explains what that involves.

Directory listings, often called citations, help confirm that your business is real and where it is. Consistency matters more than volume.

• Claim your listings on Bing Places and Apple Business Connect so you appear correctly in Bing and Apple Maps too.
• Add your business to the directories that genuinely matter in your sector, such as trade bodies, accreditation schemes and reputable industry sites.
• Check that your business name, address and phone number are identical everywhere. Old addresses and phone numbers left on directories confuse customers and search engines alike.
• Avoid low-quality directories that exist only to sell links. They add nothing and can do harm.

Prominence grows when other local organisations mention and link to you. The best opportunities usually come from things you’re already doing:

• Sponsoring a local sports team, event or charity.
• Featuring in local news, for example a new premises, an award or a community project.
• Being listed by suppliers, partners or manufacturers you work with.
• Joining your local chamber of commerce or business network.
• Publishing helpful content that local people and organisations want to share.

Avoid buying links. Google’s spam policies treat paid links intended to manipulate rankings as link spam.

• Business Profile performance: shows how many people called, asked for directions or clicked through to your website from your listing.
• Google Search Console: shows which searches your website appears for and how often people click.
• Google Analytics: add tracking parameters to the website link on your Business Profile so you can see how many visitors and enquiries it sends.
• Ask new customers how they found you. It’s simple, and it fills gaps the tools miss.

• Stuffing keywords or town names into your Business Profile name.
• Using a virtual office or mail-forwarding address to appear in a town where you’re not based. Google’s guidelines don’t allow this.
• Creating more than one profile for the same location.
• Building dozens of near-identical location pages.
• Letting opening hours go out of date, especially over bank holidays.
• Ignoring reviews, or arguing with reviewers in public.
• Different phone numbers or addresses on your website, profile and directories.

Fixing an incomplete or inaccurate Business Profile can make a noticeable difference within weeks. Prominence, built through reviews, links and reputation, grows over months and keeps compounding. Local SEO works best as a steady habit rather than a one-off project, and a business that keeps its profile active and its reviews flowing is hard for competitors to overtake.

If you’d rather have help, I offer SEO for small businesses, covering local search alongside the technical and content work that supports it. If your website itself is holding you back, my guide to what a new website costs is a good place to start.

• Google Business Profile Help: How to improve your local ranking on Google
• Google: Guidelines for representing your business on Google
• Google Maps: Prohibited and restricted content
• Google Search Central: Spam policies
• CMA: Fake reviews guidance (CMA208)