Local SEO: what it is and how to do it in 2026.

Local SEO is how a business gets found by people searching for what it sells near where they are, or near where they need the work done. It is the part of SEO and AI search visibility that depends on place, and it runs as much on a business listing and its reviews as on a website.

Most guides to local SEO are written for shops and restaurants, and lean on surveys of what marketers believe ranks. This one keeps to what Google, Microsoft and the US Federal Trade Commission say in their own rules and documentation, each read on the original page in October 2026. It also covers the case most guides skip: businesses that travel to their customers, and B2B firms whose buyers search with a place in mind.

What is local SEO?

Local SEO, short for local search engine optimization, is the practice of improving how a business appears in search results that depend on where the searcher is. Google shows those results whenever it reads a search as local, whether or not a place was typed. Google’s own example is someone searching “Italian restaurant” on their phone: they find places near them, on Google Maps and in Search, without naming a town.

Those results look different from the rest of the page. A short list of businesses beside a map, often called the local pack or map pack, appears with the ordinary results, and each business in it comes from a Google Business Profile rather than from a web page. That is why local SEO starts with the profile, where ordinary SEO starts with the website.

Local SEO vs SEO

The two overlap, because the same website feeds both, and most local businesses need both. The difference is where you appear and what you work on.

Where local results show up

A local search can put a business in front of a buyer in five places, and the work behind each is slightly different.

The AI row is new, and it runs on the same profile. Google’s guide to optimizing for its generative AI features, last updated in July 2026, says AI responses can include information about local businesses, and that Business Profiles can help a business be visible both in AI responses and in other search results.

How Google ranks local results

Google publishes the factors itself. Its Business Profile help page Tips to improve your local ranking on Google says local results “are mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity”.

• Relevance is “how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for”. Google’s advice for it is complete and detailed business information.
• Distance is how far each business is from the person searching. If they do not share where they are, Google uses what it knows about their location.
• Prominence is the heading Google explains the third factor under: “how well-known a business is”. Google says it draws on information such as how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have, and that more reviews and positive ratings can help.

Two more lines on the same page matter as much as the factors. “There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google”, and Google keeps the details of the algorithm confidential. A guaranteed place in the map results is not something anyone can honestly sell.

Distance is the factor you cannot change, and it is why two people in different parts of the same city can see different businesses for the same search. Local SEO is the work on the other two: being the clearest match for what was searched, and being the best known.

Who needs local SEO, B2B firms included

Type “local seo for” into Google and, when we checked in October 2026, the suggestions were contractors, electricians, dentists, lawyers, doctors and roofers. Those are the businesses local SEO is usually written for. Google’s rules decide who can take part, and they are both wider than shops and narrower than many B2B companies assume.

Google recognizes three kinds of business for a profile:

• Storefront. Customers come to you, at an address with permanent signage, during stated hours.
• Service-area business. In Google’s words, “a business that visits or delivers to customers directly but doesn’t serve customers at their business address”, such as a cleaning service or a plumber. It hides its address and lists the areas it serves instead.
• Hybrid. It serves customers at its address and also visits or delivers to them.

Then comes the line that rules some firms out. Google is blunt: “Only businesses that make face-to-face contact with customers are eligible for a Business Profile.” A business that works online only, with no location customers can visit and no visits to customers in person, is not eligible, and Google points it to advertising instead.

Plenty of B2B companies pass that test, and their buyers search with a place in mind: IT support firms and managed service providers that send engineers on site, accountants and law firms that meet clients at their offices, commercial cleaners and contractors, and suppliers that deliver or service equipment. A facilities manager searching for “commercial cleaning”, or an office manager searching for “IT support” from the office, is making exactly the kind of search the map results answer.

It does not fit software, or services sold and delivered entirely online. Those firms win search through ordinary SEO and AI answers instead.

For a B2B firm that qualifies, decide where you want to win before anything else. Local SEO in a town where none of your best customers sit is wasted effort, which makes it the same question as choosing the accounts and regions worth winning.

How to do local SEO

Here is the work in the order we would do it. The profile and the reviews come first, because Google’s own advice on local ranking is mostly about them. The website, the listings and the links carry the ordinary results, and give Google more to judge relevance and prominence by.

Find the searches that bring customers

Start with how customers describe what you do, not how you describe it. Local searches often carry no place name at all, because Google fills in the location, so the service words matter more than the town.

• Google’s autocomplete. Type your service and read the suggestions, then try it with your town and with “near me”. It is free, and it shows the phrasing people really use.
• Search Console. In the Performance report, filter queries for your town names and for “near me” to see which local searches already show your site. It only covers searches you appear for, so it shows where to build, not the whole market.
• Your own calls and enquiries. The words customers use on the phone are the words they type.

For search volumes you need a keyword tool, or a keyword data API that a coding agent such as Claude Code can query for you. Give each main service a target of its own, and resist pasting a list of towns into a page. Google’s spam policy gives “Blocks of text that list cities and regions that a web page is trying to rank for” as an example of keyword stuffing.

Set up and complete your Google Business Profile

The profile is free, and it is what appears in the map results. Create or claim it, then verify it: Google says verification tells it that “you’re authorized to represent the business, so it’s more likely to show up in search results”. Then fill in every field that applies.

• Name. Your real-world name, “as used consistently on your storefront, website, stationery, and as known to customers”. No taglines, service words or locations: Google says unnecessary information in the name “could result in the suspension of your Business Profile”.
• Address or service area. Show the address if customers come to you. If they do not, hide it and set service areas instead: up to 20, by city, postal code or another area, never a radius, and within about two hours’ drive of where you are based.
• Categories. Google asks for “the fewest number of categories it takes to describe your overall core business”, chosen to complete the sentence “This business IS a”, not “this business HAS a”.
• Hours. Your regular customer-facing hours, plus special hours for holidays. Google says businesses that operate only by appointment should not list hours, which covers many B2B firms.
• Phone and website. A number under your direct control, local rather than a call center where possible, and a website that represents that location.
• Description, services and photos. What you do, for whom and since when. Google allows no links of any kind in the description, and no promotions or prices. Add real photos and videos of the work.

Keep to one profile per business, or one per location where each location has its own service area and its own staff. Google says more than one “can cause problems with how your information displays on Google Maps and Search”.

Which setup fits depends on how you serve customers, and Google asks something different of each:

Earn reviews the way Google and the FTC allow

Reviews feed the prominence factor directly: Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking. They are also public, so every buyer who finds you can read them.

• Ask every customer, not only the happy ones. Google’s tips are to send customers a review link or a QR code. Its policy forbids businesses to “selectively solicit positive reviews from customers”, so the ask goes to everyone.
• Reply to reviews, the bad ones included. Google says a mix of positive and negative feedback “often feels more trustworthy”, and asks for replies that are short, polite and specific.
• Offer nothing in return. Google: “Offering incentives, like free or discounted goods or services, in exchange for customers to post reviews, change reviews, or remove negative reviews is considered fake & misleading content and is strictly prohibited.” That covers honest reviews too.
• Keep insiders out. Google removes reviews based on a conflict of interest, current or former employment included, and does not allow a business to give staff a number of reviews to collect.

The law sets a floor under the platform’s rules. The Federal Trade Commission’s final rule on fake reviews and testimonials, announced in August 2024, bans fake reviews, AI-generated ones included, and buying them; incentives conditioned on a review expressing a particular sentiment, positive or negative; insider reviews that do not disclose the connection; and threats or intimidation used to remove a negative review. It lets the FTC seek civil penalties against knowing violators.

Note where the two differ. The FTC’s rule targets incentives tied to what a review says; Google bans incentives for any review on Maps, honest or not. Follow the stricter one.

Keep your name, address and phone identical everywhere

Google reads more than your profile. Its guidelines ask you to represent the business “as it’s consistently represented and recognized in the real world across signage, stationery, and other branding”, and say Google decides how to show your address using your information and information from other sources. If your website, your listings and your profile disagree, you are leaving Google to pick one.

The name, address and phone number, often shortened to NAP, should match word for word in each of these places:

• Your website: the footer, the contact page and any structured data.
• The other maps: Bing Places for Business, where Microsoft lets you list a business free, and Apple Business, which puts a business on Apple Maps.
• The directories your buyers use: trade and industry associations, your chamber of commerce, manufacturers’ dealer and installer lists, and the main business directories in your country.
• Your social profiles, your LinkedIn company page included.

These listings are often called citations. What matters is that they agree. After a move, a new phone number or a change of name, update them all at once, starting with the profile and the website.

Build pages for services, and for places only where you have something to say

Your website carries the ordinary results and backs up the profile. Give each main service a page of its own that says what it is, who it is for, where you provide it and how to get in touch. If you have several locations, link each profile to the page for that location, since Google asks for a website that represents the individual location.

Location pages are where local SEO most often goes wrong. A real office or branch deserves a page with its address, its people, its hours and the work done from it. A town you only serve does not: name it on your service or contact page and in the profile’s service areas. Google’s spam policy calls the alternative doorway abuse, and two of its examples describe the templated town page exactly:

• “Having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page”
• “Creating substantially similar pages that are closer to search results than a clearly defined, browseable hierarchy”

We ran this check on our own site. When pages for the towns around Boston came up, Google’s autocomplete offered nothing for searches such as “b2b marketing agency” or “demand generation agency” paired with any of them, so the site has none.

Add LocalBusiness structured data

Structured data tells Google, in a fixed format, what the page already says: name, address, phone and hours. Google’s documentation asks for the most specific LocalBusiness type possible, and its own example marks one business as an electrician, a plumber and a locksmith at once. The name and the address are the required properties.

Mark up only what the page shows, and keep it identical to the profile. It is not a shortcut, either. Google’s documentation on AI features says “There’s also no special schema.org structured data that you need to add” to appear in them, and lists making sure structured data matches the visible text, and that Business Profile information is up to date, among the basics.

Earn local links and mentions

Links count in local results as well as ordinary ones: Google says prominence draws on how many websites link to your business. The links that help are the ones a real local business earns.

• Memberships: trade associations and your chamber of commerce.
• Press: local and trade press covering work you did in the area.
• Events your buyers attend, as a sponsor or a speaker.
• Partners: dealer and installer lists from the manufacturers you are authorized by, and case studies on customers’ own sites.

Do not buy them or swap them. Google’s spam policy counts “Exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links”, exchanging goods or services for links, and excessive link exchanges as link spam.

Keep the profile current

Your profile is not only yours to edit. Google says its community suggested 80 million updates to business hours, contact information and more in 2025 alone. Look at the profile every month, set special hours before holidays, and answer new reviews. Since April 2026 Google has been rolling out email alerts that let verified, active owners review important edits to their profiles before they go live.

Local SEO and AI answers

AI search does not replace local SEO; it reads from it. Google’s guide to optimizing for generative AI features names Business Profiles as one way to be visible in AI responses, and its documentation on AI features lists checking that Business Profile information is up to date among the basics, with no special markup needed.

AI Mode also acts on local results. In July 2025 Google began rolling out, to all Search users in the US, a feature that calls local businesses for pricing and availability on the searcher’s behalf, offered as “Have AI check pricing” on searches such as “pet groomers near me”. Google says businesses “are always in control via their Business Profile settings”, so check that setting, and brief whoever answers your phone.

Other AI assistants build their answers from what they find across the web, which is one more reason to keep your details identical everywhere. Whether a local business should also work on being cited in AI answers, the local SEO vs GEO question, comes down to whether your buyers ask AI tools about your category, and it is separate work, since being cited in an AI answer and ranking in Google are different jobs.

What gets a Business Profile suspended

Google’s guidelines open with the condition. To make sure your profile “won’t be suspended”, you must avoid prohibited content and behavior, reflect your business accurately and follow its product guidelines. The mistakes the guidelines spell out:

• Extra words in the name: taglines, store codes, service or product words, location details, phone numbers or website addresses.
• An address you do not work from. A virtual office, meaning a rented mailing address you do not operate from, is not eligible. An office in a co-working space counts only with clear signage, customers received there and your own staff present during business hours. P.O. boxes are not acceptable.
• Showing an address customers cannot visit. A service-area business should hide it.
• More than one profile for the same location, in one account or several.
• No face-to-face contact at all. An online-only business is not eligible.
• Phone numbers or links that redirect to landing pages or numbers other than the business’s own.
• Categories used as keywords, or categories that belong to another business nearby.
• Paid, rewarded, cherry-picked or insider reviews, and reviews posted on a competitor’s profile to damage it.

Google also says it may work with law enforcement when a violation is unlawful. And it is not short of enforcement capacity.

Fake profiles are counted too. Google removed or blocked more than 12 million in 2024, and removed over 13 million in 2025, when it also restricted posting on more than 782,000 accounts. In April 2026 it began rolling out protection against scams that demand payment to remove fake one-star reviews: when a profile gets a sudden spike in spam reviews, Google says it removes the fake content, pauses new reviews, alerts the owner and shows a notice explaining the pause.

How to measure local SEO with free tools

Positions in the map results change with the searcher’s location, so a search from your own desk tells you little. Measure what the profile and the site produce instead.

Business Profile performance. For verified profiles, Google shows owners and managers “the number of views, clicks, and other customer interactions” with the profile on Search and Maps, for any date range you choose. The download, a spreadsheet, is the easy way to compare locations.

A tagged website link. Add campaign parameters to the website address on your profile, so your analytics can tell profile visits from the rest of search. Google Analytics says to always use utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign. For example:

https://www.example.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=business-profile

That keeps the visits in organic search, where they belong, while the campaign name sets them apart.

Search Console. Filter the Performance report by queries containing your towns or “near me”, and by your service and location pages, to see how the website side is doing.

Calls, enquiries and pipeline. Count calls and enquiries by source, then follow them into the CRM to see which became customers. That is where local SEO pays or does not, and it depends on connecting calls and form fills to pipeline in the CRM.

Where to start, in order

First, check that you qualify. If customers never meet you face to face, at your address or theirs, put the effort into ordinary SEO and AI answers instead.

Then claim, verify and complete the profile: your real name, the setup that matches how you serve customers, the fewest accurate categories, and every field filled in.

Then start the review habit. Ask every recent customer through your review link, reply to every review, and offer nothing for one.

Then make your details identical everywhere, starting with your website, Bing Places and Apple Business.

Then tag the profile’s website link and note where you stand, so next quarter has something to compare against.

Then keep going on pages and links. They are the slow part, so start them early and keep them steady.