Local SEO
Get found by the customers near you.
When someone nearby searches for what you do, you want to be one of the three businesses Google puts on the map — not buried on page two. Local search is its own game with its own rules. Here’s how it’s actually won, honestly.
What local ranking rewards
Three things — and two of them you can move.
Relevance
How well your business matches what someone searches. This is where your Google Business Profile categories, your services, and genuinely local content on your site do the work.
Distance
How close you are to the searcher. You can’t move your business — but you can make sure Google understands exactly where you are and which areas you serve.
Prominence
How known and trusted you are — reviews, consistent citations across the web, and a real reputation. This is the lever most local businesses leave sitting untouched.
The local SEO checklist I work from
Most of local search comes down to a handful of unglamorous things done consistently. Here’s the core of what I audit and build:
- A claimed, complete, correctly-categorized Google Business Profile
- Consistent name, address, and phone (NAP) everywhere you appear
- Citations on the directories that matter for your industry
- A steady, honest flow of real customer reviews
- Location and service-area pages with genuinely local substance
- LocalBusiness schema so search engines read your details cleanly
None of it is magic. All of it is the kind of steady, honest groundwork that separates the businesses in the map pack from the ones wondering why they’re invisible.
The heart of it
Your Google Business Profile
Your Business Profile is the single most important asset in local search — it’s what powers your spot in the map pack. I can’t log in and click around it for you (Google ties that to you, the owner, and that’s a good thing). What I do is audit it against the businesses currently winning your searches, then hand you a specific, prioritized list of exactly what to fix, complete, and add. You make the clicks; I do the strategy.
The lever most ignore
Reviews, done honestly
Reviews are a major local ranking and trust signal, and most businesses leave them to chance. The fix isn’t buying fake ones — it’s a simple, consistent system for asking real, happy customers at the right moment, and responding to every review like a real person. Steady and genuine beats a burst of suspicious five-stars every time.
Storefront or service-area? It changes the game
Not every local business works the same way, and local SEO adapts to which you are. If customers come to you — a shop, an office, a restaurant — your physical address and its consistency anchor everything. If you go to the customer — a plumber, a mobile service, a contractor — then it’s about clearly defining and signaling the areas you serve, without spamming a hundred fake location pages (a classic way to get penalized).
Getting this right matters, because Google treats the two differently. New to all of this? Start with the plain-English primer: what local SEO is, and whether your business actually needs it.
Related
Local, and beyond.
What is local SEO — do you need it?
The plain-English version, and an honest gate on whether it’s even worth your time.
SEO
Local sits on top of solid fundamentals. Here’s the honest version of SEO the whole site is built on.
The family firm behind the work
Salterra has helped local businesses get found for years — and teaches others to do the same.
Other services
Explore the rest.
Web Design
Distinctive sites designed and coded from scratch — fast, sharp on every screen, and built to convert. Never a recolored template.
SEO
Speed, clean structure, and content aimed at what your customers actually search — the honest work that helps you get found. No ranking guarantees.
Website Redesign
A dated or slow site rebuilt from the foundation up — keeping what works, fixing what holds you back, and carrying your search equity across safely.
(FAQ)
Local SEO questions.
01What is the ‘map pack,’ and why does it matter?
02Do you manage my Google Business Profile for me?
03Why does consistent NAP matter so much?
04Can you guarantee I’ll be in the map pack?
Want to win your local search?
Tell me your business and where you’re based. I’ll audit how you stack up against the local winners and hand you a clear, prioritized plan to close the gap.