The local SEO checklist for service businesses
What actually moves the map pack: Google Business Profile, service pages, reviews and the location signals most sites get wrong.
Local search rewards businesses that look unambiguously real and unambiguously nearby. Most of the work is unglamorous and repeatable.
Get the Google Business Profile right
Complete every field, choose the most specific primary category, add real photos, list your service areas honestly and keep hours accurate. An abandoned profile ranks like an abandoned business.
Build a page per service, per area
One page listing twelve services in twelve suburbs ranks for none of them. Create genuinely useful pages for the combinations that matter commercially, with local detail a competitor could not copy.
Make reviews part of the job
Ask every satisfied customer, at the moment the work is finished, with a link that takes two taps. Reply to all of them — a steady stream matters more than a one-off burst.
Fix the technical basics
Consistent name, address and phone number across directories. LocalBusiness structured data. Fast mobile pages. An internal linking structure that connects service pages to location pages.
Local rankings compound. Six months of consistent profile, page and review work beats any single clever tactic.
See how we approach SEO and local search
