Local SEO is the work that gets a business found when someone nearby searches for what it does. I do that work for contractors, home service companies, healthcare practices, multi-location businesses and franchise brands. I am based in Seekonk, Massachusetts, on the Rhode Island border. I meet in person with businesses in my local area and work with businesses across the United States and Canada.
How Google decides who shows up locally
Google says local results are based mainly on three things. I plan every project around them.
Relevance: how well your Business Profile matches what the person searched for. Complete, accurate information is what Google has to match against.
Distance: how far your business is from the searcher, or from the place named in the search. You cannot change this one.
Prominence: how well known the business is. Google says this draws on information from across the web, including links to your business and the number of reviews you have.
Google also states there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. What can be done is to make the profile and the website complete, accurate and useful, and to earn real reviews and mentions over time.
Storefront, service-area or hybrid: set up the right one
Google treats these three kinds of business differently, and a profile set up as the wrong kind is the most common problem I find.
Storefront: customers come to you. A shop, a restaurant, a clinic. The profile shows your real address, and Google expects permanent signage and staff present during the hours you list. P.O. boxes and remote mailboxes are not accepted as addresses.
Service-area business: you go to the customer and do not serve anyone at your own address. A plumber, a lighting installer, a tree company run from home. Google says to remove the address from the profile and enter service areas instead: up to 20, by city or postal code. You cannot set a radius. The whole area should stay within about two hours of driving from your base.
Hybrid: you do both. Google's own example is an auto repair shop with a garage and roadside service. A hybrid can show its address and set a service area, as long as the location is staffed and able to receive customers during its stated hours.
The website follows the same split. A storefront needs a strong location page with directions, parking and hours. A service-area business needs service pages and town pages. A hybrid needs both.
A Google Business Profile, field by field
For most local businesses the profile is seen before the website is. I go through every field against Google's guidelines.
Business name: your real-world name, as it appears on signs, vehicles and paperwork. No added keywords, town names or taglines. Google's guidelines prohibit them.
Primary category: the one that finishes the sentence "this business is a...". It should be as specific as Google's list allows.
Additional categories: Google allows up to nine more and asks you to use as few as possible. I add one only when it is true of the whole business.
Address or service area: set by the business type above.
Hours: regular customer-facing hours, plus special hours for holidays. Seasonal businesses set normal hours in season and can be marked temporarily closed out of season.
Phone: Google asks for a local number that reaches the location, not a central call center. A profile can carry a primary number and up to two more.
Website link: the page that represents that location. For a single location that is usually the home page.
Description: up to 750 characters. I write it as a plain statement of what you do, where and for whom.
Opening date: the month and year you opened.
Attributes: the factual checkboxes Google offers for your category. Only the ones that are true.
Services: each service listed under the right category with a plain description. Custom services are added where Google's list falls short.
Photos and video: logo, cover photo and real photos of your work, crew, vehicles and building. Google asks for JPG or PNG files between 10 KB and 5 MB, in focus and well lit, without heavy filters. Videos can run up to 30 seconds.
Posts: updates, offers and events. Google archives posts after six months unless they carry a date range.
Social profile links: added where you have active accounts.
Customer questions: the way Google handles questions on a profile has changed over time. I put the answers customers ask for most into your services, your description and your website, where they stay under your control.
Edits are reviewed by Google before they show. A profile also has to be verified, and Google chooses the method. That step is completed by the business, and I help with it.
What a strong service page contains
The profile gets you seen. The website has to answer the next question. One real page per service does more than a single "Services" list, because a specific search needs a specific page. Each service page I write covers:
What the service is, in the words customers use for it.
What is included and what is not.
How the job runs, step by step, from first call to finished work.
Who it is for, and the signs that someone needs it.
Where you provide it, with links to your town or service area pages.
The questions customers ask before they call, answered in a sentence or two each.
Proof: photos of your own work and reviews from real customers.
License, insurance and certifications, where they apply to your trade.
One clear next step: call, text or request a quote.
Around those pages I handle the technical parts:
Titles and descriptions: a unique, descriptive title on every page. Google's guidance is direct: no repeated boilerplate and no keyword stuffing.
NAP consistency: name, address and phone written the same way on the site, the profile and every listing.
LocalBusiness structured data: markup that states your name, address, phone, hours and URL in a form search engines read directly. Google recommends the most specific business type available, and is clear that markup does not guarantee any special display.
Internal links: Google says every page you care about should be linked from at least one other page. Service pages link to town pages and back.
Town and service area pages: where you cover many towns, location pages built from a content database give each town a useful page of its own.
None of this requires a new website. I work in Wix Studio, WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, Weebly or whatever platform you already use, including an older system left by a previous agency. That is how I handled Tree Medics, redesigned and optimized in place. I recommend a rebuild only when the current site is the thing holding you back.
Reviews, inside Google's policies
Reviews are part of prominence, and they are what a customer reads before calling. Google encourages asking for them and gives every profile a review link and QR code. I set up a simple way to ask every customer after the job, by text, email or a printed card, so asking becomes routine.
What Google prohibits, and what I will not do:
Discounts, gifts, free services or payment in exchange for posting, changing or removing a review.
Asking only happy customers and steering unhappy ones elsewhere. Google calls this selectively soliciting positive reviews.
Discouraging or prohibiting negative reviews.
Reviews from owners, current or former staff, or anyone else with a conflict of interest.
Reviews posted from multiple accounts at one person's request.
Negative reviews are handled the same way. Google removes reviews that break its content policies, and it says plainly not to report a review only because you disagree with it. I flag the ones that do break policy and help you write a calm, factual reply to the rest. Google itself notes that a mix of positive and negative feedback often reads as more trustworthy.
Citations and listings
A citation is a mention of your business name, address and phone on another site: Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, Yelp, trade directories, your chamber of commerce. I audit what already exists, fix the wrong and duplicate listings first, then add the ones that fit your trade and area. Accuracy matters more than volume. I do not buy bulk listing packages or links.
Multi-location businesses and franchise brands
More locations mean more rules. I have built 30,000+ location pages, worked with 50+ lighting companies, and built the Christmas Decor franchise website. The local SEO rules I work to:
One profile per location. Google does not allow more than one profile for the same location. Each real location gets its own.
The same name everywhere. Google requires all locations in a country to share one name, with narrow exceptions. No town names bolted on.
One shared category. All locations share the one category that best represents the business.
A local phone number and a location page for each. Each profile links to the page for that location, not to the brand home page.
Departments and practitioners. Google allows separate profiles for public-facing departments and for individual practitioners such as doctors or agents, under specific conditions. I check those before anything is created.
Location pages on the website. Each has its own address or service area, hours, phone, staff, photos, reviews and LocalBusiness markup. Organization markup goes on the home page, which is where Google recommends it.
Brand rules. Name, logo, core service descriptions and legal text are fixed by the brand. Hours, staff, photos, service area and local detail belong to the location.
For a franchise, each franchisee's territory is mapped first so two locations are never set up to compete for the same town. The pages themselves are covered under programmatic SEO.
How local SEO connects to AEO and GEO
People now get local answers from AI features as well as from the map. Google's own guidance is that there are no additional requirements and no special optimizations needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. The best practices for SEO still apply, and a page has to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet before it can be used as a supporting link.
So local SEO is the foundation. Clear service pages, direct answers to common questions, and the same facts on your profile, your site and your listings give any system the same answer wherever it looks. Answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization build on that base. They do not replace it.
Tracking what the work does
Google Search Console: clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position, by search query and by page. Google counts traffic from its AI features in the same report.
Business Profile performance: searches, views, calls, direction requests and website clicks from the profile. These count interactions with the profile, not booked jobs, so I read them as trends.
Call tracking, with care: a tracking number can show which channel made the phone ring. It also puts a second phone number into the world, which works against consistency. Where one is used, your real number stays on your listings.
How the work runs
This is the order of the work. It is not a promise of results or of dates. How fast things move depends on your trade, your area and where you are starting from.
Audit: the profile against Google's guidelines, the website, existing listings and reviews. Baseline numbers recorded from Search Console and the profile.
Keyword research: across your services and your towns, checked against the work you want more of.
Profile corrections: business type, name, categories, service areas, hours, services, description, photos.
Website: titles and descriptions, service pages written or rebuilt, structured data, internal links.
Listings: wrong and duplicate citations fixed, missing ones added.
Reviews: the request process set up and replies started.
Town or location pages: where the service area calls for them.
Measure and adjust: compare against the baseline and decide what to work on next.
Rush timelines for seasonal businesses
Some deadlines are real: a lighting company that needs its profile and pages in order before the holiday season, a landscaper ahead of spring, a restaurant or practice with an opening date. Expedited timelines are available for those. I spent a year working inside a lighting company on sales, scheduling and service calls, so I know what the season does to a calendar. Tell me the date at the start and I will tell you what can be done by then and what cannot.
What I need from you
Manager access to your Google Business Profile, or the details to claim it.
Access to edit your website, and to Google Search Console if it exists.
Your exact business name, address, phone and hours as you want them shown everywhere.
A full list of your services, and the towns you serve and want more work in.
Real photos: jobs, crew, vehicles, building. Phone photos are fine.
License, insurance and certification details.
Logins for any listings you already control.
One person who can answer questions about how the work is done.
A way to reach customers after a job, so reviews can be requested.
Honest limits
Proximity: distance is one of Google's three factors. A business usually shows most strongly near its base, and no amount of work moves the base.
Competition: an established competitor with years of real reviews and mentions has earned prominence. That gap closes with time and steady work, not with a trick.
Time: Google reviews edits, verifies profiles and crawls pages on its own schedule.
Control: Google decides what it shows. Structured data, sitemaps and profile fields are inputs, not switches.
No guarantees: I do not promise rankings, and Google says no one can pay for them.
Questions to ask any local SEO provider
Will my business name on Google stay exactly as it is on my sign?
How will you ask for reviews, and does it follow Google's policy?
Will every town page have its own content, or only a changed town name?
Where do you get citations, and do you fix the wrong ones first?
What will you need from me, and who does the work?
Who this is for
Local SEO fits a business that serves customers in a defined area and can take more calls: contractors, home service companies, lighting installers, healthcare practices, restaurants, real estate and professional practices, multi-location businesses and franchise brands. It is a poor fit for a business with no real presence in the area it wants to rank in.
Work to look at
The work is scaled to the business. The method is the same for a regional company covering a handful of towns and a statewide practice that needs hundreds of pages. The page count follows the business, not the other way around.
Tree Medics: a focused regional build. A Southern Maine tree health company needed a redesign on its existing platform, eight service pages and one service area page covering the 16 towns it works in.
Curb Infusion: a statewide program for one trade. A Massachusetts lighting contractor needed local SEO across 100+ towns and cities.
Greater Boston Psychiatric Services: a statewide program for a practice. A Medway, Massachusetts telehealth practice needed a full site, all of its content and 300+ location pages.
I have served 150+ businesses since 2019, and before that I spent years running food service and hospitality operations. I know what a missed call costs. If you are near Seekonk, I can meet in person. Wherever you are, ask for a free proposal, or call or text 508-244-0403. I reply within 24 hours.