Local marketing: Local SEO that lets nearby customers find you on the map.

Local SEO, the core of local marketing, is everything a business does to be found, called and visited on maps and in local search results, whether it welcomes customers at a physical address or serves a specific area. We wrote this guide for the marketing teams of businesses with a location, such as clinics, restaurants, retail chains, field service companies and hotels, and for multi-location brands. The rules come from the Google Business Profile Help Center, Google Search Central and the documentation published by Apple, Bing and Yandex; the source of every claim is listed by number at the end of the page. You won’t find ranking hacks or statistics of unclear origin here.

Our local marketing work has five parts: setting up Google Business Profile by the rules and keeping it active, asking real customers for reviews and replying to them consistently, building a location page on your website for every branch, keeping your Apple, Bing and Yandex map listings in sync with the same information, and measuring how all of this affects calls, direction requests and website visits, location by location. The ten sections below explain how each of these is done.

What is local SEO, and who is it for?

Local SEO makes sure that when someone nearby looks for a product or service, your business shows up with the right address, hours, phone number and reviews. The search might be “dentist near me”, “pharmacy open now” or “boiler repair”; for searches like these, the map and business profiles dominate the results page. Much of the decision is made on the profile, before anyone reaches your website: people read the rating and reviews, check the hours, then call or ask for directions. Google gives profile owners a performance screen that counts each of these interactions separately: calls, direction requests, website clicks, messages and bookings.³

This work pays off most for clinics, restaurants, cafés and stores whose customers come from within a certain radius; service and repair businesses that travel to the customer; hotels people find through directions; and chains that carry the same brand across many locations. For a business that doesn’t meet customers in person and sells only online, the priority channel is search results rather than the map profile; in that case our SEO consulting page is a better place to start.

How do you rank higher on Google Maps?

Google ranks local results on three factors: relevance, distance and prominence.¹ The weight of each factor isn’t disclosed; Google writes that it keeps the details private to make the system as fair as possible for everyone, and that you can’t request or pay for a better local ranking.¹

The last row explains why reviews get so much attention: Google writes that more reviews and positive ratings can help a business’s local ranking.¹ Distance is the one factor marketing can’t change; someone searching far from your business not seeing you isn’t a bug, it’s how the system works.

What does a visitor see in map results?

In map results, a visitor first sees each business’s name, rating and review count, category and whether it’s open right now; tapping the profile opens photos, reviews, hours and the call, directions and website buttons. Every part of this screen is fed by information you enter or your customers leave: you write the name, category and hours; the rating and reviews come from real customers.

Those buttons are the unit of measurement in local marketing. Google’s performance screen separately counts how many times the call button was tapped, how many people asked for directions, how many clicks the website link got, how many separate conversations started by message and how many bookings were completed.³ Views are reported as the number of people who saw the profile on Search and Maps.³

What rules apply to a Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business)?

A Google Business Profile is filled out according to Google’s guidelines for representing your business: the name matches the real-world name, the address is precise and has signage, categories are few and to the point, and the phone number goes directly to the business.² The table below shows the rules we apply field by field during setup and the mistakes we run into most often; all of the rules come from the same guidelines.²

How do you keep a profile up to date and active?

A profile is kept verified and up to date, with replies to reviews and photos and videos added regularly, and Google itself recommends these steps for improving local ranking.¹ After setup, most of the work is this maintenance cycle. Here is what we do on the monthly calendar:

• Verification and access: the profile is verified in the business’s own account; we’re added as managers, and ownership stays with you.
• Accurate information: the address, hours, category and attributes are updated with every change; holiday and seasonal hours are entered in advance.
• Photos and video: real images of the entrance, interior, team and products are added regularly; no stock images.
• Posts: announcements, offers and events are shared as posts on the profile; posts appear inside the profile on Search and Maps.⁴
• In-store products: in retail, where the feature is available, products in the store can be listed on the profile.¹

Posts have a lifespan: Google archives posts without a date range once they are more than 6 months old.⁴ That’s why we enter offers and events with their dates, and tie general announcements to the calendar and refresh them. An expired campaign, an old menu photo or the wrong hours show visitors the business’s past, not its present.

How should you ask for reviews, and what is prohibited?

Reviews are requested from every customer without discrimination, using the review link or QR code Google provides; offering a discount, gift or money in return is prohibited.⁵ Google is unequivocal: getting customers to write a review, change their review or remove a negative one in exchange for incentives such as free or discounted products and services counts as fake and misleading content and is strictly prohibited.⁵

The Maps content policy spells out the prohibitions: reviews and ratings paid for directly or in kind, content not based on a real experience, content posted from multiple accounts by one person or at their request, discouraging negative reviews and asking only satisfied customers for reviews.⁶ Content based on a conflict of interest, such as from current or former employees or contractors, is also prohibited; businesses can’t pressure customers to write a review while they’re on the premises or ask for specific wording in a review.⁶

The flow we build has four steps:

1. Touchpoint: the review link and QR code are added to receipts, post-appointment messages, emails and cards at the checkout; every customer gets the same request.
2. Timing: the request is sent after the service is complete; no pressure while the customer is on site.
3. Reply: replies are polite, short and specific to the review; rather than the same thank-you for everyone, reviews where useful information can be shared come first, and negative reviews get a timely reply addressed to the person.⁵
4. Feedback: recurring themes in reviews (waiting time, price, cleanliness) are separated by location and passed to the operations team every month.

How are location pages and structured data set up?

Each location gets its own page on the site with its address, hours, phone number, services and directions; this information is also passed to Google with LocalBusiness structured data (machine-readable markup using the schema.org vocabulary). Google writes that with this markup you can tell it about your business hours, different departments within the business and more, and that a knowledge panel showing the business’s details may appear in results for business searches.⁷

The only required properties in the markup are name and address; recommended ones include opening hours, coordinates, phone number, the location’s URL and departments.⁷ The details matter: coordinates are given with at least 5 decimal places of precision, the phone number includes the country and area code, and the URL points to a working page for that location.⁷ After setup, we validate the markup with Google’s Rich Results Test.⁷ To see your site’s overall health, including structured data and how AI and superintelligence-driven search see it, you can run our free AI visibility analysis.

A location page also supports the prominence factor. Because Google counts the number of sites linking to a business toward prominence,¹ we make sure links from local press, chambers of commerce, professional associations and industry directories point to the relevant location’s page. Name, address and phone number (NAP) are kept in exactly the same form on the site, the profiles, directories and social accounts.

How are multi-location brands managed?

A multi-location brand opens a separate profile for every physical location; all locations in the same country carry the same name, and categories are chosen with the same logic at locations that offer the same service.² No second profile is created for the same location; the exceptions are departments with their own name and a separate customer-facing operation, and individual practitioners such as doctors or lawyers who can be contacted directly.²

As the number of profiles grows, the work shifts from editing one by one to managing in bulk. Google writes that businesses with 10 or more profiles for the same business can request bulk verification with a spreadsheet; service-area businesses aren’t eligible, and agencies that hold several businesses in one account can’t use bulk verification either.⁸ That’s why we keep the profiles in the brand’s own business group and work with manager access.

How do you show up on Apple, Bing and Yandex maps?

For the three maps outside Google, the business needs to claim its own listing: Apple Business on the Apple side, Bing Places for Business on the Microsoft side and Yandex Business on the Yandex side. Apple and Bing offer these listings for free.⁹¹⁰

On the Yandex side, the timelines are documented too: review can sometimes take up to three days, a published business can be found in Yandex search the next day, and if an application stays unchanged for more than two weeks, you’re asked to contact support.¹¹ Online-only businesses without an address customers can visit are shown on Yandex with a separate profile page instead of a map card.¹² Apple’s announcement doesn’t list the countries separately; during setup, we check which features the account offers for your business in your country.⁹

Listings managed separately drift apart over time: hours updated on Google stay outdated on Apple, a location that has moved still shows the old address on Yandex. That’s why we feed all four platforms from the same master spreadsheet and push every change to all four in the same round.

How are local SEO services measured, and what happens in the first 30 days?

In local marketing, the measure is the actions a profile generates: calls, direction requests, website clicks, messages and bookings, read location by location on Google’s performance screen.³ The same screen also shows the search terms people used to find the profile; this is where you track which queries you appear for.³ We add campaign tags (UTM) to the profile link, so what visitors from the profile do on the site is tracked separately in Google Analytics 4.

1. Week 1 · Audit: the Google, Apple, Bing and Yandex listings for every location are compared against the location list; duplicate profiles, wrong categories, missing hours and names that break the naming rule are flagged.
2. Week 2 · Fixes: profiles are corrected according to the guidelines, missing listings are created and sent for verification, and website links are pointed to the location pages.
3. Week 3 · Reviews and content: the review link and QR code are placed at the touchpoints, a reply template is set up, the first photos and posts are added and LocalBusiness markup is put in place.
4. Week 4 · First review: calls, direction requests and website clicks are reported by location; the next month’s priorities are chosen together.

How to choose a local SEO agency

Local SEO can be run by the business itself, by a freelance local SEO specialist or by an agency; the difference becomes clear as the number of locations grows.

Ask whose account the profile will live in, how reviews will be requested, which platforms are covered and which actions the report will show by location. Then check these points:

1. Profile ownership: your Google Business Profile is verified in your own Google account and the partner is added as a manager. If a partner holds the profile in their account, leaving them means asking for a listing with your whole review history back.
2. Business name: a plan that adds a neighborhood, a service or words like “near me” to the name breaks Google’s naming rule and puts the profile at risk of suspension.
3. Review method: buying reviews, discounts for reviews and flows that only send the link to happy customers are prohibited; a lasting rating comes from asking everyone the same way.
4. Platform coverage: whether Apple, Bing and Yandex listings are managed from the same master sheet as Google.
5. What the report shows: calls, direction requests and website clicks by location, alongside site traffic.
6. Guarantees: Google doesn’t sell local rankings and no one can change distance; a promise of the top spot on the map ignores both.

Local SEO pricing: what drives the cost?

The fee for local SEO services follows the amount of work each location needs. The main factors:

That’s why we share estimated ranges instead of a list price: we go through your locations and platforms in the first meeting and agree on scope, term and fee in writing. The service includes no ad budget; the fee pays for the work itself.

Local SEO pricing: estimated ranges

Estimated range, excluding VAT; rows marked “/ month” are monthly, the others are one-off. Scope is confirmed in a written proposal after the first meeting. As of October 2026.

If you’d like to talk about how your locations look on the map today, pick a meeting day below.