Local SEO: how customers in your city find you

A hair salon in Leeds is not competing with the world. It is competing with twenty other salons within two kilometres. That is why local SEO has its own rules — and thankfully, they are far simpler than the usual SEO arms race.

What Google actually weighs in local search

When someone searches "plumber near me" or "plumber Leeds", Google ranks on three things: relevance (does your profile match the query), distance (how close you are to the searcher), and prominence (how well known you are — reviews, mentions, links). You cannot change distance. You can change the other two considerably.

The Google Business Profile is the foundation

For a local business, the profile often drives more calls than the website itself. What usually gets left half-finished:

• Primary category — pick the most specific one available. "Dental clinic", not "Healthcare".
• Every service listed individually — each one is another chance to appear.
• At least 15-20 photos — interior, team, finished work. Profiles with photos get noticeably more direction requests.
• Opening hours including holidays — Google displays "Closed" prominently, and that costs visits.
• A 750-character description with your city and services worked in naturally.

NAP must be identical everywhere

NAP is name, address, phone. If your site says "12 High Street", your profile says "12 High St", and a directory says "12, High Street" — Google is not certain these are the same business. Pick one exact format and reuse it verbatim: on the site, in the footer, on the profile, on social pages, in every directory.

Reviews: volume, freshness, replies

Ten reviews from three years ago are worth less than five from the past two months. Build a habit: after every completed job, send a short message with a direct review link. Reply to all reviews, good and bad — far more people read the reply to a negative review than read the review itself, and that is where the impression is formed.

City pages — but done honestly

If you serve three cities, three separate pages make sense, provided they are genuinely different. Different project examples, different references, real details about coverage and response times. Duplicated pages with the city name swapped out have not worked for years, and Google spots them easily.

The technical side people forget

• LocalBusiness schema markup — address, hours and phone in structured form.
• Mobile speed — local searches are overwhelmingly mobile and often on weak connections. A site taking over three seconds loses a meaningful share of visits.
• A server near your audience — if your customers are local, a 500 ms TTFB from a distant data centre is pure waste. Our plans include a global CDN, so static assets are served from the nearest edge.

What to track

The Business Profile shows how many people requested directions, called, or clicked through. Search Console shows which queries you appear for. Check those two monthly — that is the entire reporting you need. More on hosting-side factors on our WordPress hosting page.

A realistic schedule

Week one: finish the profile, unify NAP. Week two: schema markup and speed. Then ongoing — two new reviews a month and one useful article on the site. Local ranking movement typically shows up in six to twelve weeks.