Local SEO: the checklist that gets you into the map pack
Google Business Profile optimisation, citations and review strategy — the local ranking factors that actually move position.
- Google Business Profile completeness is the single highest-leverage local factor.
- Reviews affect ranking, not just conversion — velocity matters more than total count.
- Citation consistency across directories is a hygiene factor you fix once.
- Local SEO moves faster than national — often eight to twelve weeks to visible change.
Local is a different algorithm
The map pack is ranked on proximity, prominence and relevance — a different weighting from organic blue links. You can rank in the map pack while barely ranking organically, and vice versa.
The practical consequence is that local SEO gives faster results. Eight to twelve weeks to visible movement is normal, against four to six months for competitive national terms.
Google Business Profile first
Complete every field. Not most — every one. Primary category chosen precisely, secondary categories added, services listed individually with descriptions, hours including holiday hours, attributes ticked.
Add photos monthly. Profiles with recent photos outperform dormant ones. Geotagging is a myth; frequency is not.
Use Google Posts weekly. They expire after seven days, which tells you how much Google weights freshness here.
Reviews: velocity over volume
A business with 40 reviews gained steadily over a year outranks one with 200 gained in a single month. Google reads bursts as manipulation.
Ask every customer, systematically, at the moment of maximum satisfaction. Build it into your process rather than remembering occasionally.
Reply to all of them, including the good ones. Reply text is indexed and it is a free place for relevant keywords used naturally.
Citations are hygiene, not strategy
Get your name, address and phone number identical across the major directories — Apple Maps, Bing Places, Yelp, Facebook, and the significant industry-specific ones for your sector.
Identical means identical. ‘Street’ and ‘St’ are different strings. Fix it once, then stop thinking about it. Citation building is a solved problem and paying monthly for it is usually waste.
Location pages if you have multiple sites
One page per location, each with unique content. Not a template with the city name swapped — Google detects that instantly and it can suppress all of them.
Each page needs genuinely local content: the actual address, embedded map, staff who work there, local landmarks, reviews from that location’s customers, and services specific to that branch.
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Related questions
How long does local SEO take?
Eight to twelve weeks for visible map pack movement in most markets. Faster in less competitive areas, slower in dense metros where every competitor is also optimising.
Do I need a physical address?
For the map pack, yes — Google requires a real address or a defined service area. Service-area businesses can hide the address but must still verify one.
How many reviews do I need?
There is no threshold. What matters is being competitive with the businesses currently ranking above you, and gaining reviews at a steady rate rather than in bursts.
