What is local SEO, in plain terms?
It is being shown for searches that have a place in them, or a place implied. Type plumber Wakefield, or just plumber from a phone in Wakefield, and Google returns two things: a map with three businesses pinned on it, and the usual list of websites below. Local SEO is the work of getting into both.
The two are decided differently. The map, which the trade calls the local pack, is driven by your Google Business Profile and by where the searcher is standing. The list below is ordinary search, driven by your website. Plenty of businesses are strong in one and invisible in the other, and it pays to know which you are.
What decides who appears in the local results?
Google says three things, and it has said the same three for years: relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is whether your profile and site plainly match the search. Distance is how far you are from the person searching. Prominence is how well known you are, measured through reviews, mentions and links.
Distance is the one you cannot argue with. A Halifax firm will not appear in the Sheffield map pack however good its reviews, because Google is drawing that map for somebody in Sheffield. Relevance you control completely: the primary category on your profile, the services listed, and the words on the page your profile links to. Prominence takes longest and is where reviews earn their keep.
How do you rank in more than one town?
On the map, you mostly cannot without a real presence there. A single-location business gets one pin, and the pin shows for searches near it. So a Bradford roofer wanting Leeds work will struggle in the Leeds map pack, and adding towns to the business name will not change that; Google removes those and can suspend the profile.
In the ordinary results it is a different story. A page written for roofing in Leeds, with jobs done in Leeds on it, can rank in Leeds from a Bradford postcode, and this is where location pages come in. The businesses in these guides do it: Bond Brickwork is in Brighouse and ranks for developments across Yorkshire, because the site names the places the work was done.
What should be on a location page?
Evidence that you genuinely work there. The specific services you offer in that town, jobs you have completed there with photographs, how you cover it and how quickly, reviews from customers in that area, and the practical detail a local would expect: the parts of town, the kind of property, the travel time from your base.
What sinks a location page is copying the Huddersfield one and swapping the town. Google recognises the pattern, buyers recognise it faster, and a set of near-identical pages can do more harm than good for the whole site. If you have nothing real to say about a town yet, leave the page unbuilt and do a job there first.
Do reviews and citations still matter?
Reviews matter a great deal and citations matter a little. A steady flow of Google reviews that mention the service and the town, replied to by you, is the strongest prominence signal a small business has, and it doubles as the thing that persuades the person reading. Ask after every job, make it easy with a link, and answer the poor ones politely.
Citations, the directory listings that carry your name, address and phone number, were once the whole game. Now they are a tidy-up job: make sure the details match everywhere, claim the free ones that matter in your trade, and stop paying for the rest.
What does local SEO look like when it works?
One van, one town, first on Google for the phrase that matters. Dolphin Heating in Huddersfield is a single Gas Safe engineer whose customers often specifically want a female gas engineer, so that is the phrase the website is built around. It is first for female gas engineer Huddersfield and named in the AI answer to the same question, and the enquiries it brings are exactly the ones Fay wants.
That is local SEO done properly: the right phrase, one honest page, the profile and the reviews pulling in the same direction.
