Local SEO is how a business that serves a town or a county shows up when people nearby search for what it does, both in the map results and in the ordinary results underneath. For a small business with a local customer base it’s usually the best return available from SEO, because you’re competing with a handful of nearby firms rather than the whole country.
This is the checklist I work through on client profiles and on my own. The Future Faced listing sits at 5.0 from 23 Google reviews, and most of what follows is what got it there. It’s ordered by impact, so if you only have an afternoon, start at the top.
Most of the businesses I do this for are in Southampton and across Hampshire, but the checklist works the same anywhere in the UK.
Does a small business need local SEO?
If your customers come from a particular area, yes. That covers trades, clinics, salons, solicitors, accountants, shops and most service businesses with a postcode on the van. If you sell online to the whole country and nobody ever visits you or checks where you’re based, local SEO matters much less, and ordinary SEO is the better use of your time.
The local SEO checklist
1. Claim and verify your Google Business Profile
Your Google Business Profile is the listing that appears on Maps and in the box beside search results, and nothing else on this list works properly without it. If you haven’t claimed yours, search your business name, find the “Own this business?” link, and follow the verification steps. Google may ask for a video of your premises or a postcard to your address.
2. Choose the right primary category
Your primary category is one of the biggest single levers you have, because it tells Google which searches you’re relevant for. Pick the most specific category that describes your main service: “Electrician” rather than “Contractor”, “Web designer” rather than “Marketing agency”. Add secondary categories for the other things you genuinely do, and no more than that.
3. Fill in everything
Complete every field Google offers: services, description, opening hours, service area, attributes and photos. A half-empty profile tells Google, and the person reading it, that nobody is paying attention. Write the description for a customer, not a search engine.
4. Hide your address if customers don’t come to you
If you travel to customers rather than them coming to you, set your profile up as a service-area business and hide the street address. Showing a home address you don’t trade from breaks Google’s guidelines and is a common reason profiles get suspended.
5. Make your name, address and phone number identical everywhere
Your business name, address and phone number should read exactly the same on your website, your Google profile and every directory. “Unit 3, Mill Lane” in one place and “3 Mill Ln” in another looks like two businesses to a machine. Keep one master version in a document and copy and paste from it, never retype it.
6. List the business on the core directories
Get listed on the main UK directories, then stop. Yell, FreeIndex, Hotfrog, Bing Places and Apple Business Connect, plus a couple of local ones for your town, cover most of the value. Most of these links are nofollow and won’t move rankings directly. Their job is to confirm your details are real and consistent. Beyond fifteen or so, extra directories add almost nothing.
7. Ask for reviews steadily
A steady trickle of reviews beats a burst of twenty in one week. The section below covers how.
8. Reply to every review
Reply to good reviews briefly and to bad reviews calmly. People reading your profile pay more attention to how you handle a complaint than to the complaint itself.
9. Give each location a real page on your website
If you serve several towns, each one deserves a page with content specific to that town: jobs you’ve done there, how you work there, who you’ve worked with. A page that’s the same as the others with the town name swapped in does more harm than good.
10. Add LocalBusiness schema to your website
Schema is code that states your business name, address, phone number, hours and service area in a format search engines and AI assistants read reliably. Most SEO plugins can add it for you. It’s the website’s half of the consistency job in step 5.
11. Link your Google profile to the right page
Point your profile’s website link at the page that best matches it. For a single-location business that’s usually the homepage. For a business with several profiles, point each one at its location page.
How do I rank higher on Google Maps?
Google says local results are based on three things: relevance, distance and prominence. Distance you can’t change, because it’s how far the person searching is from you. The other two you can.
- Relevance is how well your profile and website match the search. Categories, services and the words on your location pages all feed it.
- Prominence is how well known and trusted the business is. Reviews, links from other websites, directory listings and press coverage all feed it.
If a competitor down the road outranks you, compare the two profiles honestly. It usually comes down to categories, review count or how complete the profile is.
How do I get more Google reviews?
The way to get more Google reviews is to ask every customer, at the moment the job is done, with a direct link that takes them straight to the review box. Most happy customers will leave one if you make it easy, and almost none will go looking for your profile on their own.
What helps:
- Ask in person first, then follow up the same day with the link
- Use the share link from your Business Profile (“Ask for reviews”), so it’s one tap
- Build it into the process, for example a line in the final invoice email, so it doesn’t depend on remembering
What to avoid:
- Offering anything in return. Discounts or prize draws for reviews break Google’s rules
- Only asking the customers you think are happy. Filtering who you ask is also against Google’s policy
- Fake reviews of any kind. Since April 2025, buying or writing fake reviews has been illegal in the UK under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, on top of being against Google’s rules
How many Google reviews do you need? Enough to compare well with the businesses you’re up against. Search your main service and town, look at the review counts on the top three, and use that as your target.
How do I remove fake Google reviews?
You can’t delete a review yourself, but you can report it, and Google will remove it if it breaks their policies. Find the review in your Business Profile, choose “Report review” and pick the reason. Google’s Reviews Management Tool lets you check the status of a report and appeal if it’s turned down.
Google will generally remove reviews that are fake, left by a competitor or ex-employee, off-topic, abusive, or spam. It won’t remove a genuine negative review just because you disagree with it. While you wait, reply publicly and calmly. A measured reply to an unfair review often does more for you than the review does against you.
Why has my Google Business Profile been suspended?
Most suspensions come from a mismatch between the profile and Google’s guidelines rather than anything you did on purpose. The common causes:
- A virtual office, PO box or co-working address used as the business location
- Keywords added to the business name, such as “Smith Electrical | Electrician Southampton”
- A service-area business showing a street address customers can’t visit
- Duplicate profiles for the same business
- Lots of edits at once, which can trigger a re-verification
To get it back, fix the cause first, then submit a reinstatement request through your profile with evidence: a utility bill, photos of signage, or your company registration.
What is NAP consistency, and why does it matter for AI search?
NAP consistency means your business name, address and phone number appear exactly the same everywhere online, and it now matters for AI assistants as well as Google. When someone asks ChatGPT or Google’s AI for a recommendation, the assistant checks what it finds about your business across several sources. If those sources disagree, it’s more likely to leave you out or hedge.
This isn’t theoretical. In my own Search Console data I can see searches for my studio that were clearly issued by AI assistants on someone’s behalf, with a location attached to the query. They are checking, and consistent details are what they’re checking.
Can I do local SEO myself?
Yes. Everything on this list can be done by the business owner, and this checklist is the order I’d do it in. The cost is time: an afternoon or two to set up, then an hour or so a month to keep the reviews coming and the profile current.
Paying someone makes sense when that time is the constraint, or when you’ve done the basics and competitors are still ahead. The Future Faced Local SEO starter is £400 a month and covers your Google Business Profile, reviews, citations and map visibility. If the website itself needs work too, full SEO in Southampton starts from £700 a month.
If your business isn’t appearing on Google at all, start with why isn’t my website showing on Google? instead. That’s a different problem, and usually a quicker one to fix.
