Local SEO: getting found in your own neighborhood

01People searching “near me” are already choosing whom to buy from

It is eight o’clock on a Friday evening. A couple has just arrived in a city they don’t know, they are hungry and they have a phone in their hand. They type “restaurant open now” and look at the screen. At that moment they are not looking for information, and they are not comparing prices for next week: they are deciding where to walk in ten minutes from now. Three names, a map, a few stars. One of those three will have two more customers tonight.

This is what makes local SEO different from everything else in search engine optimization. It is not about being read: it is about being chosen, in a few seconds, by someone who already has a wallet in their pocket and shoes on their feet. It applies to the restaurant, but also to the plumber who covers three towns, the dental practice, the hair salon, the hardware store, the B&B, the spare-parts shop.

Think about it for a moment: the last time you searched for a business in your area, how many listings did you look at before deciding? Probably two or three, and almost always the ones at the top. That is why the place where you appear matters so much.

What the local results page looks like

When a search has a local intent, explicit (“dentist Mestre”) or implicit (“pizzeria”, searched from a phone), Google shows a box at the top with a map and a small group of business listings, often three: this is the so-called local pack. Below it come the classic results, that is, the websites. The same listings also appear inside Google Maps, where the search is entirely local.

The website remains essential, as we will see, but the first contact often happens on the listing, not on the website. That is why local SEO works on three levels at once: the business profile on Google, the consistency of your details across the web, and the website itself.

02Relevance, distance, prominence: the three stated factors

Unlike many other things about Google, here there is no need to guess: in the official Business Profile help, Google explains that local results are based mainly on three factors, combined with one another. The rest of the algorithm’s details remain confidential, and Google also states that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.

An interesting consequence: among the elements of prominence, Google also mentions the number of websites that link to your business. A good website, one worth mentioning and linking to, is therefore not an alternative to the listing: it strengthens it.

03The business profile: the business card that works on its own

The Google Business Profile is free and manages how your business appears in Search and on Maps. It is meant for businesses with a physical location open to the public or that serve customers at their location; it is not suitable for online-only businesses. You create it with a Google account, claim the business (or add it, if it doesn’t exist yet) and verify it: only after verification can you safely edit the details and reply to reviews.

One practical piece of advice before anything else: create the profile with an account registered to the business, not with the personal account of an employee or of the young man who “built your website”. The day that person is gone, access to your shop window on the map must not disappear with them. It is the same principle that applies to the domain, and I cover it in the chapter on who really owns your website.

The rules for filling it in, field by field

Google publishes guidelines for representing your business. They are few and very clear, and breaking them can lead to the suspension of the profile:

• The name is the real one, consistent with your signage, website and documents. Adding keywords, slogans, cities or services to the name (“Trattoria Da Mario – fresh fish Venice center”) is not allowed.
• The address is the actual physical location, accurate. PO boxes in remote locations are not accepted. Businesses that work at customers’ premises without a location open to the public hide the address and specify the service area.
• The hours are the hours you are open to the public, with special hours for holidays and closures: finding closed a shop that Google says is open is the fastest way to earn a negative review.
• The categories are few and specific: the primary one describes the core business, not every service. They are not a place for keywords.
• The phone number leads directly to the business, ideally a local number rather than a call center; premium-rate numbers are not accepted.
• The website must represent the business; the guidelines ask you not to enter addresses that lead to pages that don’t belong to it, social media profiles included.

What makes a profile come alive

04Name, address, phone: written the same way everywhere

In local SEO there is an acronym that keeps coming back: NAP, for Name, Address, Phone. It refers to the three details that identify a local business. The good practice, shared by people who work on local ranking, is easy to state and hard work to carry out: write them exactly the same way in every place where you appear.

Why does it matter? Google doesn’t list it among the official factors under this name, but just think about how prominence works: information about the business gathered across the web, from directories, articles and links. If one place says “Via Roma 12”, another “V. Roma 12/A” and a third shows an old phone number, the search engine has to guess whether it is the same business. And the customer, who may call the old number, doesn’t guess at all.

How to clean up, in practice

1. Decide the official form and write it down in a document: exact name, address with the same spelling (street or avenue, number, unit), phone number in the same format.
2. Search for your business name on Google and on Maps, also with variants and with the old address or the old number: note every place where you appear.
3. First fix what you control: website, profile, social media profiles, email signatures, documents.
4. Then the directories and industry portals where the business is listed: almost all of them have a procedure to claim and edit the listing.
5. Every time something changes (a move, a new number), start again from step 2. Old listings don’t delete themselves.

05The website: where the listing takes those who want to know more

From the listing, some people call or ask for directions. Others, often the ones who have to spend more or choose more carefully (the professional firm, the restaurant for an important dinner, the contractor for work at home), open the website. And that is where they decide.

What a local business website needs

• Name, address and phone visible on every page, usually in the footer, written as on the listing. On phones, the number should be tappable.
• A “Find us” or “Contact” page with address, hours, how to get there, parking, and a link that opens directions in the maps app.
• Service pages, one per important service, written in your customers’ words: they are the ones that answer the most specific searches.
• Speed on phones: people searching on the go have little patience and often a poor connection. I explain the measurements that matter in the chapter on Core Web Vitals.
• If you work with customers who speak several languages, tourists or foreign communities, real pages in those languages, not the browser’s automatic translation: I go into this in the chapter on the multilingual website.

Pages for every city: when yes and when no

Businesses that serve several towns are tempted to create a page for each one, identical to the others except for the city name. Google has a name for this practice, doorway pages, and lists it among the violations of its spam policies. The policies cite precisely the example of multiple pages targeting regions or cities that all lead to the same place. A page per area only makes sense if it really contains something different: a location in that town, work carried out there, specific conditions or response times.

Structured data: telling Google who you are, in its own language

Besides the text people read, a website can contain structured data: a few lines in a standard format called JSON-LD that describe the business so that search engines don’t have to guess. For a local business you use the LocalBusiness type, or better its most specific subtype (restaurant, medical practice, a particular kind of store), as Google’s documentation recommends.

Google points out that structured data makes a page eligible for richer results, but does not guarantee they will be shown. It is a tidy foundation, not a trick.

And the website, mind you, matters even when customers arrive from social media: a social media page replaces neither the listing nor the website, as I explain in the chapter on website or social media.

06Reviews: ask for them well, always reply

Google states it clearly in its help pages: the number and rating of reviews contribute to local ranking, and more reviews and positive ratings can improve it. But reviews matter even more for another reason: they are the first thing read by someone who has to choose between three nearby listings.

Asking is allowed, buying is not

Google’s policies on user-generated content allow you to ask customers to leave a review, as long as it reflects a genuine experience. They prohibit instead:

• offering incentives in exchange for a review or for removing a negative one: payments, discounts, free products or services;
• discouraging negative reviews or selectively soliciting them only from happy customers;
• content written with a conflict of interest, for example by employees, relatives or competitors.

In Italy there is also the law: since 2023 the Codice del consumo, the Italian Consumer Code (article 23, letters bb-ter and bb-quater, introduced when the European directive known as “Omnibus” was transposed), considers it always misleading to publish or commission fake reviews, including through third parties. The Italian Competition Authority (Autorità garante della concorrenza e del mercato) has already fined people who sold reviews.

The right moment to ask

The request works when it comes at the moment of satisfaction: when the job is handed over, when the bill is paid after a successful evening, when the altered garment is picked up. A card with a QR code that opens the review page directly, a message the next day with the link, a sentence said in person: “if you were happy with us, a review helps us a lot”. To everyone, not only to those who smiled the most.

How to reply

The advice in Google’s help pages on replies is in line with common sense, and it is worth putting it in black and white:

• a polite, professional tone, even when the review is unfair;
• short replies: a wall of text looks like a defensive brief;
• no promotions in replies: the person who wrote is already a customer;
• never the customer’s personal data, never personal attacks, not even on other channels;
• on negative reviews: admit real mistakes, without taking the blame for what doesn’t depend on you, explain, apologize if needed, sign and reply quickly.

07The real neighborhood matters as much as the digital one

Prominence, Google reminds us, also includes how well known a business is offline. An article in the local newspaper, taking part in a trade fair, working with a neighborhood association, being registered with the chamber of commerce and on industry portals: these are all occasions where the business name appears, often with a link to the website.

And then there is the reverse path, from the street to the phone: people who walk past the shop window and remember it, people who find a flyer in their mailbox. How to design a flyer that really brings people to the website and the listing, and how to choose the location of a physical shop, I explain in the chapter on opening a physical shop.

08Measuring: what to check every month

Local SEO is not done once: it is looked after. To understand whether the work pays off, a few numbers checked regularly are enough:

• from the Business Profile, the interactions: how many people called, asked for directions, opened the website from the listing, and which searches they found you with;
• from Google Search Console, the searches that bring people to the website and the most viewed pages;
• the number and rating of reviews month by month, and how many have been answered;
• the simplest question of all, asked in person: “how did you find us?”. Noted down for a few weeks, it tells you more than many charts.

A small technical trick: the website link entered in the listing can contain a tracking parameter (for example ?utm_source=google&utm_medium=scheda), so that your analytics tools can tell visits from the listing apart from those from classic search. If you use analytics tools, remember the consent rules I explain in the chapter on GDPR and cookies.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Google Business Profile Help, “Tips to improve your local ranking on Google”: relevance, distance, prominence, reviews.
2. Google Business Profile Help, “Guidelines for representing your business on Google”: name, address, service area, hours, categories, phone, website.
3. Google Business Profile Help, “Get started with Google Business Profile”: who it is for, creation and verification.
4. Google Business Profile Help, “Tips to get more reviews”: how to ask for them and how to reply.
5. Google policies on user-generated content, “Fake engagement”: incentives, selective reviews, conflict of interest.
6. Google Search Central, “Local business (LocalBusiness) structured data”: required and recommended properties.
7. Google Search Central, “Spam policies for Google web search”: doorway pages.
8. Italian Consumer Code, Codice del consumo (Legislative Decree 206/2005) on Normattiva (in Italian): article 23, letters bb-ter and bb-quater on reviews.

Chapter updated October 2026. The rules cited come from Google’s official documentation and from the text of the Italian Consumer Code; Google updates its help pages often, so it is worth checking them again before making major changes to your listing. Names, addresses and numbers used in the examples are made up.