Local SEO London

The basics

What is local SEO?

Local SEO is search engine optimisation aimed at searches with local intent: searches that include a place name, the words "near me", or a type of business that Google knows people want close by. For these searches Google does not show the same results to everyone. It shows results near the searcher.

Ordinary SEO is mostly about your website. Local SEO adds a second asset that is just as important: your Google Business Profile, the free listing that appears on Google Maps and in the panel at the side of the search results. The two support each other, and a good local SEO service works on both.

How Google decides who appears in the map results

Google has said publicly that local results are based mainly on three things.

Relevance

How well your profile matches what the person searched for. The categories you choose, the services you list, your description and the content of your website all tell Google what you do. A profile with the wrong main category, or with half its fields empty, is missing searches every day.

Distance

How far your business is from the searcher, or from the place named in the search. You cannot move your premises, but you can make sure Google knows exactly where you are and which areas you serve.

Prominence

How well known and well regarded your business is. Google measures this through the number and quality of your reviews, links and mentions on other websites, and how well your own website ranks. This is where steady local SEO work pays off.

Our local SEO services

Google Business Profile optimisation

We claim or create your profile and complete every part of it: the correct main and additional categories, a description written around your services, your service list with prices where suitable, opening hours, service areas, attributes and a strong set of photos. We then keep it active with regular posts and updates, because Google favours profiles that are looked after.

Citation building and clean-up

A citation is a mention of your business name, address and phone number on another website, such as Yell, Yelp, Bing Places, Apple Maps or a trade directory. Google checks these against your profile. If they disagree, because of an old address or a different phone number, your ranking suffers. We find and correct the errors and add the listings you are missing.

Review strategy

Reviews influence both where you rank and whether a searcher chooses you. We set up a short link and a message you can send by WhatsApp or text after each job, so asking becomes a habit. We also help you reply to reviews, including the occasional poor one. We never write, buy or trade reviews. Fake reviews break Google's rules and UK consumer law, and they put the whole profile at risk.

Local landing pages

To rank for a service in an area, your website needs a page about that service in that area. We write area pages with real local detail, such as the neighbourhoods and postcodes you cover and the kind of work you do there, so they are useful to a customer and not thin copies of each other.

On-page and technical local SEO

Titles and headings that include your service and location, your business details in the footer of every page, an embedded map, local business schema, fast mobile pages and click-to-call buttons.

Local link building

Links from other local organisations carry weight: suppliers, trade bodies, business associations, local news sites, charities and events you support. We look for the genuine opportunities in your area.

Local SEO for businesses that travel to customers

Plumbers, cleaners, mobile mechanics and many other trades have no shopfront. Google calls these service-area businesses. You can hide your address on your profile and list the areas you cover instead.

Service-area businesses can rank well, but distance still counts, and Google measures it from your registered base. The way to reach further is through your website: a strong page for each area you want work from, backed by reviews that mention those places. We set this up as part of the service.

Local SEO for businesses with several locations

Each branch needs its own Google Business Profile, its own page on the website with its own address, phone number, opening hours and map, and its own reviews. We keep the details consistent across all of them and report on each location separately.

Common local SEO mistakes we fix

• The wrong main category on the Google Business Profile
• Keywords added to the business name, which risks suspension
• Different phone numbers or addresses on different directories
• Duplicate profiles for the same business
• No photos, or only stock photos
• Reviews left unanswered
• One website page trying to cover every service and every area
• A website that is slow or hard to use on a phone

London

Why local SEO is different in London

Local SEO in a small town is fairly simple, because there may be only a handful of competitors. London is another matter. A single borough can hold more businesses of your type than an entire county elsewhere, and a customer in Stratford will be shown different results from a customer in Brixton for the very same search.

That has three consequences for how we work.

Neighbourhoods matter more than the city. Hardly anyone ranks for "plumber London" in the map results, because Google shows each searcher the plumbers near them. The realistic and valuable targets are neighbourhood and borough searches, such as "plumber East Ham" or "plumber Newham". We choose targets you can actually win.

Postcodes are search terms. Londoners search by postcode district, such as E6, SW11 or N16, as often as by place name. We include the postcodes you serve in your profile's service areas and in your website pages.

Reviews carry extra weight. When ten similar businesses are within a mile, the searcher picks by star rating and number of reviews. A steady stream of genuine reviews is often the single biggest difference between the business in first place and the business in tenth.

Local SEO beyond Google

Google is by far the largest source of local searches, but it is not the only one, and the others are quick to set up.

Apple Maps is the default map on every iPhone, and Siri uses it to answer "near me" questions. We create your listing through Apple Business Connect.

Bing Places feeds Microsoft's search engine, which is also used by some AI assistants.

Directories such as Yell and Yelp rank in Google in their own right, so a complete listing there gives you a second route to the first page.

AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Gemini are increasingly asked to recommend local businesses. They draw on the same sources: your website, your profiles, directories and reviews. Consistent, detailed information in all of those places makes it more likely that you are the business they name. Our AI search visibility audit, at £179, shows what these tools currently say about you.

What you need to do, and what we do

Local SEO works best as a partnership, and your part is small. We need you to verify the Google Business Profile, because Google sends the verification to the owner. We need you to ask your customers for reviews, using the link we give you. And we need real photos of your premises, team and work from time to time.

We do the rest: the profile, the categories, the services, the posts, the directory listings, the website pages, the schema, the monitoring and the monthly report.