What is Local SEO?

Local SEO helps a business appear when people search for services in a specific area, for example "emergency plumber near me" or "dentist in [city]". Google has said local results are based mainly on relevance, distance, and prominence, which is shaped by factors like reviews, links, and how well-known a business is.

Core local SEO tasks include completing and maintaining your Google Business Profile, keeping your name, address, and phone number consistent across directories, earning genuine reviews and responding to them, building service and location pages on your website, and adding LocalBusiness schema markup.

For service businesses that depend on nearby customers, local SEO is often one of the most direct paths to calls and bookings. The same signals also feed AI assistants, which frequently draw on business profiles, reviews, and directory data when recommending local providers.