If your customers are in a particular town, city or region, local SEO is how you make sure they find you when they search. It's one of the most useful things a small business can understand, and one of the most over-complicated. Here it is in plain English, with a checklist at the end you can work through this week.
What local SEO is
When someone searches for a service with a place in mind, such as "electrician Paisley", "café near me" or "accountant in Ayr", Google tries to show the nearby businesses that best match. Local SEO is the work that helps your business be one of them.
The two places you can appear
- The map results: the map and short list of businesses near the top of many local searches. These come mostly from Google Business Profiles.
- The normal results: the familiar list of web pages below. These come from websites.
A strong local presence works on both, and each supports the other: a good website helps your Business Profile rank, and a good profile sends people to your website.
Step 1: your Google Business Profile
Your free Business Profile is often the first thing a local customer sees, sometimes before your website. Get it right:
- Claim and verify it. If you don't, anyone can suggest edits to your listing.
- Use your real business name. Adding keywords or town names to your name breaks Google's guidelines and can get your profile suspended.
- Choose the right primary category. It's one of the strongest signals for which searches you appear in. Add secondary categories only where they genuinely apply.
- Service-area business? Hide your address. If you visit customers rather than having them visit you, which is common for trades, cleaners and many home-based businesses, set your service areas and hide your address.
- Never create listings at addresses where you don't work. A profile needs a real location you staff. Virtual offices and borrowed addresses in towns you'd like to rank in are against the rules, and they get removed.
- Fill in everything else: hours, services, photos, a description in your own words and a link to your website.
- Post updates. Offers, news and recent work show customers, and Google, that you're active.
Step 2: reviews
Reviews help you rank, and they're what persuades people to pick you over the next result. The best way to get them is simply to ask, at the right moment, usually just after a job's gone well. Send a short message with a direct link to your review form (you'll find it in your Business Profile), and reply to every review you get, good or bad, politely and promptly. Don't offer incentives for reviews, and never post fake ones. It breaks the rules and customers can usually tell.
Step 3: your website
Your Business Profile gets you on the map. Your website gives Google, and customers, the detail behind it.
- Say where you work, naturally. Mention the towns and areas you serve on the pages where it matters, in sentences a person would actually write.
- A page for each main service. "Boiler servicing" and "bathroom installation" each deserve their own page with their own title. One page that lists everything ranks for nothing in particular.
- Location pages, done properly. If you genuinely serve several areas, a page for each can help, but only if each one is useful in its own right: what you do there, who you work with, how you work together and local questions answered. Copying one page and swapping the town name is called a doorway page, and Google demotes them.
- Structured data. Schema markup describes your business, services and service area in a format search engines read directly.
- Speed and mobile. Most local searches happen on phones, often on the move. A slow site loses people before it loads.
Step 4: consistent details everywhere
Your business name, website, email, phone and address (if you show one) should be written identically everywhere they appear: your website, your Business Profile, social profiles, directories and local listings. Inconsistent details make it harder for Google to be confident they're all the same business.
Good places to be listed include your local chamber of commerce (Scotland has a network of them), trade bodies and accreditation schemes for your industry, and reputable UK business directories. Quality matters far more than quantity.
Step 5: links from your community
Links from other relevant local websites, such as suppliers, partners, local news, event pages and community groups, are a strong signal that you're a real, trusted local business. Sponsoring a local team, taking part in an event or being featured as a supplier often earns them naturally.
Step 6: measure it
Set up Google Search Console (it's free) to see which searches you appear for and how often people click. Your Business Profile has its own performance view too, showing calls, direction requests and website visits. Check both monthly. Local SEO compounds slowly, so look at the trend over months rather than weeks.
What local SEO isn't
It isn't a trick, and no one can honestly guarantee you the top spot. Be wary of anyone who promises that, or who suggests fake listings, fake reviews or stuffing your business name with keywords. These can work briefly, then cost you your listing.
Your local SEO checklist
- Claim, verify and complete your Google Business Profile
- Pick the right primary category
- Hide your address if you're a service-area business, and set your service areas
- Ask happy customers for reviews, and reply to every one
- Give each main service its own page
- Mention the areas you serve, naturally
- Keep your business details identical everywhere
- Add schema markup to your website
- Make sure your site is fast and works beautifully on phones
- Set up Search Console and check it monthly
Want this built in?
Every G² site is built for local search from day one, and our SEO service on the Growth plan adds keyword research into how people in your area search. We work with businesses across Scotland, from Glasgow and Ayrshire to Edinburgh and Dumfries and Galloway. If your current site is holding you back, a website redesign can put it on a stronger footing.