Local SEO
local search optimization / map pack SEO / local search
Local SEO is the work of showing up when somebody nearby searches for what you sell. Google names three factors: relevance, distance and prominence. Distance is the one you cannot change, and Google states plainly that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.
Local SEO is everything that decides whether you appear when somebody a few miles away searches for what you do. Unlike most of search, Google has published what it weighs, and the list is short.
Three factors. Relevance is how well a business profile matches what someone is searching for. Distance is how far each business is from the customer who is searching. Prominence is how well known a business is, which Google says is based on information like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have.
Read those again with a pen. Only two of the three are work you can do. Distance is fixed by where you are and where the searcher is standing, which is why ranking well in your own neighborhood and poorly three towns over is not a failure. It is the system behaving as documented.
Then the sentence worth keeping somewhere you can find it. Google says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking, and that it keeps the algorithm details confidential to make the ranking system as fair as possible. Anybody promising a guaranteed position in the map results is promising something the platform says does not exist.
The other half of local SEO happens on your own site. Part of that is describing your business in a format search engines can read without guessing, using the shared vocabulary at schema.org, whose LocalBusiness type covers a particular physical business or branch of an organization. It is a standard several search engines draw on rather than a Google invention, which is why it is worth doing once properly.
In practice
A plumber ranks first for searches within a mile of the workshop and nowhere twelve miles out. Nothing is broken. Distance is one of the three published factors, and no amount of work on the other two removes it. The realistic goal is to be the obvious answer inside the area you can actually serve, not to appear everywhere.
Not the same as
- Your Google Business Profile
- The profile is one asset. Local SEO is the whole effort, including your website and what other sites say about you.
- Ordinary SEO
- Distance does not apply to a search with no local intent. Local search has a factor nothing else does.
Why it matters to you
This is a rare case where you can hold a proposal against the platform's own published list. Ask which of relevance, distance and prominence a piece of work is supposed to move. If the answer is distance, it cannot. If the answer is a guaranteed position, Google says that is not purchasable.
What to ask or check
- 01Which of the three factors is this work meant to improve?
- 02How far out are we actually trying to rank, and is that realistic given distance?
- 03Has anyone promised a position rather than described the work?
What people get wrong
That enough work can make you rank anywhere. Distance is one of Google's three published local factors and is set by where the searcher is standing, not by effort.
Red flags
- A guaranteed position in the map results. Google says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.
- A proposal that cannot say which of the three published factors it moves.
- A target area far wider than the business could actually serve.
Where you will see it
In the map results and local pack on Google, and in the performance figures on your Business Profile.
Where we fit
Local search work is one of the things we do. What we can describe is the work on relevance and prominence, since distance is not something anybody can move.
See how we do it