If you run a business that serves a particular area, local SEO can help more customers find you online. Whether you’re a café, plumber, accountant or solicitor, appearing in local search results at the moment someone needs your services can make a huge difference to the number of enquiries you receive.
The good news is that you don’t need a huge marketing budget to get started. A few simple improvements to your Google Business Profile, website and online presence can quickly improve your visibility in local search results. In this guide, we’ll explain what local SEO is, why it matters, and the practical steps that work in 2026 to help you attract more local customers.
What is local SEO?
Local SEO is the practice of optimising your business’ assets (like your website, Google Business Profile or social media) to improve your ranking in local search results and AI answers. It’s important for any business that serves a local area.
When you help Google, other search engines and LLMs understand what your business is, what you offer and how trustworthy you are, it can help you show up in results such as Google’s local pack or the traditional ‘blue links’. For example, I searched ‘craft beer near me’ and it returned an AI Overview along with the local pack (also known as the map pack) and traditional organic results:
The businesses showing up in the local pack, and the #2 and #3 ‘blue link’ positions, have great reputations and pages tailored to my local area.
Why is local SEO important?
Local SEO is important because many people turn to search engines when they need a local business. If you’re not showing up there, you’re missing out – and if you are but you’re not in the top 3 results, you’re leaving traffic for your competitors to get. Businesses in the top 3 results in Google’s local pack get 126% more traffic and 93% more calls, website clicks, and requests for directions compared to businesses ranked in spots 4-10.
What is the difference between local SEO and traditional SEO?
Local SEO and traditional SEO are closely linked. Essentially, local SEO includes everything that’s involved in traditional SEO, but targets customers within the local area your business operates in.
While traditional SEO targets a global or national audience and depends heavily on things like backlinks and high-quality content to rank, local SEO is more focused on proximity, reviews and how consistent a business’ information is across the web.
All businesses with an online presence should follow the 4 pillars of SEO. But only businesses with a physical location or that serve a particular area need to add local SEO to the mix, too.
5 tips for getting started with local SEO
If you’ve never focused on local SEO for your business before, it can feel difficult to know where to start and get overwhelming pretty quickly. Luckily, getting the basics right is simple once you know what you’re doing – take a look at our 5 tips to help you get off the ground.
- Claim your Google Business Profile and optimise it
Your Google Business Profile, often referred to simply as ‘GBP’, is crucial for appearing in Google’s map pack. Bing has its own version called Bing Places for Business, which you could also set up. But since Google consistently has at least a 90% share of the search engine market, we’ll only talk about GBPs here.
Luckily, it’s super easy to set up your GBP. Head to the Google Business Profile page and click ‘Create your profile’ to get started. Follow the instructions to verify your business location, then fill out all the sections.
Your name, address and phone number (also referred to as NAP) must be consistent across all the places it appears on the internet. If it’s not, it’ll confuse Google and other search engines and LLMs, which could mean that you don’t show up in search results or AI answers.
- Collect reviews
Once your GBP is live, you should start to collect reviews. 71% of consumers use Google to read local business reviews, so collecting them on your GBP is a good place to start.
The more positive reviews you have, the more customers will trust you. So the same is true for search engines and LLMs’ algorithms – they’re more likely to recommend you in results if you have a high number of reviews with a good average rating. Recommended local businesses have an average of 4.3 stars on ChatGPT, 4.1 on Perplexity, and 3.9 on Gemini, according to SOCi Local Visibility Index.
Look back at my screenshot of the recommended businesses for my craft beer search – they all have a rating of 4.3 and above with at least 75 reviews.
Ask your customers to leave a review after they buy something from you. If you run a restaurant, you could add a QR code to your GBP on your receipts or on the tables. If you run a service-based business, you could ask them to leave a review when you send them their invoice.
You might get emails from companies saying you can pay them to generate reviews. Never do this – it’s against Google guidelines and the law, and could result in permanent removal of all reviews, suspension of your Google Business Profile, and local search ranking drops.
- List your business on relevant directories
Listing your business on relevant directories helps users discover your business online. Search engines and LLMs also use them to verify that your business is real. So, submit your business to popular directories in your industry and local area, along with the big national players. For example:
- Yell
- Yelp
- Industry-related directories (like TrustATrader for tradespeople or Foursquare/Tripadvisor for hospitality)
Remember I said you need to make sure your NAP is consistent across the web? This is where this comes in. Submit the same information on all the directories you list your business in.
- Do local keyword research
Now you’ve sorted your GBP and submitted your business to directories, you can turn your focus to your website.
Do some local keyword research to understand how people search for the services you offer. For example, if you’re an electrician, customers are likely to search for the types of carpentry services you offer as well as simply ‘electricians’.
Google Keyword Planner is a good free way to help you discover the types of keywords customers use to discover your services. You can put in a general term and it will show you related search terms that you might want to target.
You could search ‘electricians’ to see the other types of keywords searchers use when looking for an electrician, and the average number of monthly searches there are:
What you find can help you prioritise which phrases to use on your website, or which pages to add. In this example, we can see that emergency electricians and commercial electricians have a lot of searches, so if you offer an emergency service or work on commercial premises, it’s worth having pages on your website targeting these keywords.
It’s worth noting that Keyword Planner won’t show you an absolute number of monthly searches unless you have a campaign set up in your Google Ads account. It’ll just show you a broad range, such as 1k-10k. Tools like Ahrefs and SE Ranking can give you more accurate numbers, but you need to pay for them and the numbers are still based on estimates.
- Improve your on-page SEO
Once you’ve completed some keyword research, you can use that research to improve your website’s on-page SEO. Strangely enough, on-page SEO refers to anything you do to the content on a web page to help it rank higher in search results and AI answers.
Create pages targeting the keywords that your customers are searching for. I talk more about on-page SEO best practices in my 4 pillars blog post, but key things you want to do on your website’s pages are:
- Add a descriptive meta title for each one that includes a focus keyword or phrase without being spammy
- Use headings to help users skim read and understand the hierarchy of information
- Add alt text for images so customers using screen readers can hear a description of the image
- Include internal links to other pages to help customers navigate your website and to ensure search engine crawlers can discover your content
You might also want to start your own blog that answers questions your customers typically search for. A blog is a great way to build authority with your readers and search engines.
Can you do local SEO without a website?
Technically, you can do local SEO without a website. If you’ve got a GBP, Bing Place, and social media accounts along with listings in local directories, the chances are you’ll show up in local search results.
But the problem is, you don’t own any of these profiles.
So if the directory is taken down, or your Google Business Profile or social media is mistakenly suspended, you’re in danger of losing everything you’ve built. If you’ve got your own website, you’ve got an asset that you can always control.
Plus, having a website gives you more opportunity for growth. If you’ve got plans to open more locations or employ more people to service more customers, your website can help facilitate that through running Google Ads or collecting emails for email marketing.
So, that’s a quick overview of local SEO and what to do to get started in 2026. We know it’s difficult to find the time to market your business online, so we’re here to help. Find out more about our SEO services, get in touch with us on 01603 339048 or send us a message.