Local SEO – Ultimate Guide 2025

What is Local SEO

Local SEO is a type of SEO that focuses on organic search presence and visibility within areas such as states, cities, and suburbs. Local SEO applies to many different businesses, including Service Area Businesses (SABs) such as those doing SEO for tradies or businesses that have multiple physical locations, including shopfronts, clinics, dealerships, franchisees, and more.

Customers prefer to support local businesses, and optimising for local search can help improve the visibility of your business when these customers are searching for products or services you offer. As noted in our previous article about mobile SEO (insert link when live), a mobile device will commonly show Local Pack results from Google Maps when users type the phrase “near me” or use location based keywords. In fact, about 93% of searches with local intent feature a Local Pack in the SERPs.

It’s also important to note that other search engines benefit from Local SEO including Bing and Apple Maps.

The Basics of Local SEO

Google Business Profile Optimisation

Google Business Profile (renamed from Google My Business in late 2021) is a local business management tool by the search engine that integrates with Google Maps and Search. It allows businesses to manage their online presence on Google Search, including hosting reviews, displaying NAP (Name, Address, & Phone Number) details, and other features such as posting updates and managing business attributes.

Optimising your Google Business Profile (GBP) can lead to better results in the SERPs for Local Pack rankings, which are one of the highest positions you can show (even above Google Ads and organic position 1). This can increase your click-through rate (CTR) while showing off your credibility with starred review ratings.

Well, if you haven’t already got one, see our steps below on setting up your Google Business Profile.

1. Enter your business name, address, and phone number, ensuring it’s consistent with your website, social media, and other local directory listings (more on this later!).
2. Update your business hours. Again, ensure consistency across other channels.
3. Select the most accurate primary category for your business, and add relevant secondary categories if applicable.
4. To give customers more details about your business, add relevant attributes, such as whether it is wheelchair accessible or has free Wi-Fi.

Once your Google Business Profile is created, you can further optimise by doing the following:

• Upload clear images of your business, including its exterior and interior, jobs on site, products, and team.

Note: Many local SEO guides advise filename optimisation and geotagging images. However, according to testing from Sterling Sky, geotagging images and filename optimisation don’t have a measurable effect on Local Pack rankings.

• Write a unique business description that eloquently provides your business’s value proposition and includes the natural placement of keywords.
• Add your business products or service offerings to give customers an idea of what you provide. Natural placement of keywords relevant to content is ideal; keyword stuffing is not and can lead to disapprovals.
• Encouraging and promptly responding to all reviews. This includes both positive and negative reviews.
• Answer common questions about your business in the Q&A section to provide information to customers quickly. You can do this yourself or answer customer’s Q&As.
• Share updates, including news, promotional offers or upcoming events to engage customers.

Google Business Profile optimisation, much like SEO, is an ongoing process. It’s important that you regularly update and maintain your GBP to keep on top of your Local SEO.

Conduct a NAP Audit

In optimising your Local SEO, you’ll discover the value of local business citations in building your brand on search engines. While it’s tempting to go full throttle and sign up for as many directories as possible, it’s worth spending the time to research the site you’re looking to enter your NAP into. You should be assessing the following when it comes to good sites:

• Is it relevant to your location, industry, product or service?
• Does the site contain spam or harmful content?
• Does it exist as a content farm or contain irrelevant, obtrusive, or potentially offensive display advertisements?
• Does the site have a good Domain Authority (DA), Domain Rating (DR) or Trust Flow?
• Is the site part of a legitimate network, avoiding association with private blog networks (PBNs) or other questionable black hat link building? [rel=”nofollow”]
• Is the site regularly updated and maintained?
• Does the site offer a verification process for businesses?
• Can you easily update or remove your information if needed?
• Does the site provide any additional features like customer reviews or ratings?

Also as mentioned before, a consistent NAP is also important when conducting your NAP audit. Existing citations and new ones should follow exactly the same NAP. While it’s not stated explicitly, it is important to ensure other business information such as trading hours are also consistent.

Imagine a search engine bot who’s trying to piece all these fragments of your business information together when they don’t all align. The same goes for your users too.

Local Schema Markup Basics

Schema markup for local SEO is a great way to improve search engines’ understanding of your business, especially from a local perspective. There are certain schema types that are relevant for local businesses:

• LocalBusiness: Provides detailed information about your business, including NAP and business hours. It helps search engines understand your business location or geographic service area.
• Organization: General schema type used for any kind of organisation, including local businesses. It provides further information about company structure, social media profiles, and other corporate details.
• Event: Allows markup of information about business’ events, including date, time, location, and ticket information. It helps events appear in event specific search results.
• LocalBusiness: Provides detailed information about your business, including NAP and business hours. It helps search engines understand your business location or geographic service area.
• Organization: General schema type used for any kind of organisation, including local businesses. It provides further information about company structure, social media profiles, and other corporate details.
• Event: Allows markup of information about business’ events, including date, time, location, and ticket information. It helps events appear in event specific search results.
• Product: If you sell products, Product schema is a must. It provides detailed information about products; including price, availability, and reviews. It can lead to rich snippets in search results.
• Review: Markup customer reviews and ratings. Positive reviews in SERPs can improve CTR and influence potential customers.
• ItemList: Particularly useful for creating rich carousel results in SERPs. ItemList can be used with specific schema types that Google supports for carousel display such as LocalBusiness and its subtypes, Products, or Events.

It’s important to note that not all schema implementations will result in rich results or snippets in the SERPs. This depends on various factors, such as search intent, availability, validity for rich results, competition, authority, and ultimately Google’s discretion.

Local Keyword Research

Local & Geo Keywords

We’ve covered keyword research many times before on our blog, including the basics of keyword research. For local areas, adding a location or geo modifier on a broader keyword will be the best way to start. 

Here’s an example: You’re a steel fabrication company located in Ipswich. Let’s break this down.

• “steel fabrication company located in Ipswich”
• “steel fabrication company Ipswich”
• “steel fabrication Ipswich”

Now let’s plug this into a free tool to track an approximate amount of searches per month to get an idea of demand. Using the Google Ads keyword planner for keyword research, we’ve found that steel fabrication Ipswich generates 50 searches per month. Congratulations, your first keyword! Steel is a type of metal right? What happens if we enter metal fabrication Ipswich?

We’d expect that these would have the same volume as Google is smart enough to know that steel is a type of metal, but this doesn’t necessarily mean you would be ranking in the same position for both.

There is a lot of nuance involved in keyword research for local SEO. For densely populated areas it’s often the case that there will be more search volume, as there’s far more demand. 

Industries? Something that is quite niche is going to have less volume than an established one.

Residential or commercial? A business in an industrial area needing steel supplies daily is going to generate more demand for steel fabrication than a coastal suburb that needs builders who specialise in homes with stainless steel materials to avoid corrosion.

It can be tricky, but that’s fine, by paying attention to the details you reap the rewards.

Why Google Ads keyword planner is helpful is you can target by states, cities, and suburbs to avoid the complexities of common place names. Sometimes, you might not find the exact location, but nearby or multiple locations can work too.

Lastly, search volume is important, but don’t get too obsessed. The broader you go, the broader the search intent. Location and geo keywords can help move the intent to a more commercial or transactional intent. This then leads to a chance of your keyword having less competition, which can rank easier than broader keywords, and can result in a quick(er) win for SEO.

Local Competitors & Their Keywords

Let’s say you’ve gone out on your own and you want to start your plumbing business. You know in your local area of Sydney that XYZ Plumbing & Gas Fitting has a well established presence, getting regular work and they’re booked out until Christmas.

You can use a free SEO tool to reverse engineer their keyword strategy and find out the volume and position of their current keyword rankings. 

If they didn’t have much search presence, try searching the keyword live on Google in incognito mode (to avoid personalisation based on your search history) and try and find the top position, and then try their page URL.

Location & Geo Pages

Location pages (interchangeably called geo pages) are designed for brick and mortar locations or service areas of your business. Location pages are commonly led by your broad keyword and the location/service area.

(service/product + area)
(plumber Marrickville)

When done correctly, you’re creating a great user experience for your customers in these areas, and search engines will often reward this with organic and Local Pack rankings for best practice optimisation.

Consider the following when creating a location page:

• Provide unique, location relevant content
• Optimise SEO meta data with location keywords for title tags and meta descriptions
• Ensure heading tag optimisation (H1, H2, etc.) with location specific information
• High quality images from your location, optimised for image SEO best practices.
• Embedded Google Map of business location (directly linked to your profile) or a service area map
• Provide clear directions and information about parking or accessibility

However, as SEOs we often come across location pages done incorrectly. Unfortunately, from bad website architecture or other SEOs who’ve looked to game Google’s algorithm. Avoid the following when creating a location page:

• Creating a location page with duplicate content from other location pages you’ve built or an extension of another page
• Providing thin or low quality content that provides little value to users
• Keyword stuffing of your target keyword where it doesn’t make grammatical sense (Get a plumber Marrickville to unblock your drains today)
• Further to the above, avoid overusing the same keyword across multiple pages solely for the purpose of creating exact match anchor text in internal links
• Not including unique, location based information for your business location or service area
• Missing or unoptimised location relevant SEO metadata such as meta descriptions and title tags

Local SERP Features

Search results can be enhanced with special features known as SERP features. These features make search results look different and provide more information. They often appear when websites use specific code (called schema markup) to organise content in a way that search engines can easily understand and display (known as rich snippets).

• Local Pack (3 Pack): A box displaying three local business listings with basic information like name, rating, address, and phone number.
• Knowledge Panel: A information box that typically appears on the right side of the SERPs for specific businesses. Provides key details and options to interact, often encompassing rich snippets from schema markup and Google Business Profile.
• Carousel: Displays a scrollable list of items or carousel for your local or service area business. This can be adapted for LocalBusiness types with services, locations served, or featured products. Often derived from ItemList schema markup that enables rich snippets.

Leverage UGC for Local SEO

Encourage Reviews

Reviews play an important part in local SEO. By harnessing positive sentiment, you can help your business’s local visibility and its online reputation. To encourage reviews, you should be making it easy for customers to do so in the first place. Links to leave reviews via your website, email signatures, and email newsletters are a great way to get more valued reviews. 

Utilising a QR code is also a clever option, which you can tack on to your invoices, business cards, or parcels or bags when selling products online or in store.

Optimise and Use Social Media

The use of social media can indirectly assist your business’ local SEO. Having a presence on the major, yet relevant platforms can help build trust and your brand as an entity. A consistent NAP across these platforms, and regularly engaging with your customers through community management can bolster your business. 

To build this local connection with audience, consider the following:

• Develop a local content strategy such as sharing community news, events, or offers specific to your location(s)
• Geo targeted posts
• User generated content (UGC) by encouraging previous customers to share experiences or work done and tag your business
• Leveraging any local hashtags
• Cross promotion with other local businesses you use and recommend
• Showcasing behind the scenes content.

By incorporating this into your marketing, you’re tackling both your local SEO and organic social media posting. 
A social signal positively received by search engines can lead to more traffic for your website.

Other UGC options for Location Pages

Showcasing UGC on your location page is a fantastic way to provide unique and relevant location-specific content. Displaying local testimonials provides immense credibility for customers in that area. Elaborating on that point, local projects such as completed work with before and after shots or case studies either linked externally or directly on your location page is ideal for localised, relevant content. 

UGC such as customer images, or products in use, also affirms trust signals for your local SEO.

Lastly, being involved in your community is not only great for local SEO, but a big part of community brand building. Naturally, your business can be mentioned through word of mouth by engaging in community events and local partnerships, such as sponsorship of sporting, charity, and other events. This type of local traditional marketing is still active and highly valuable even as we head into 2025.

Get Your Business Found Locally With Gordon Digital

By putting these practical methods into action, you’ll improve your local search rankings and build better relationships with your target audience in your area. Don’t let your competitors hog the limelight in local search results. Get started now with our Brisbane SEO company and begin using these local SEO tips for your business.

If you want to step up your local SEO, book a consultation with Gordon Digital and our experts will help you create a strategy to pin your business on top of the local map.