What types of local business does Google recognise?

Google acknowledges the following business types: Bricks and mortar locations - this includes shops and restaurants, Service Area Businesses - such as plumbers, caterers or photographers, Home-based businesses - this could be a daycare centre, or a psychotherapist with a home office, Multi-department business - this could be anything from a hospital to a car dealership, Multi-practitioner business - like a solicitors, beauty therapists, or a dental practice, Hybrid businesses - this could be a restaurant that also delivers to people’s homes, Multi-brand business - such as a car dealership with multiple franchises under one roof, Mobile businesses - like coffee vans, or street food vendors, Co-located and co-branded business - a good example of these are when Post Offices are located in premises such as Co-Ops, or WHSmith, Solo practitioner businesses - like one solitary solicitor operating in more than one area of law and Kiosks and cash machines

Can you set up my Google Business Profile for me?

Yes we can. Working together using your details we can help set up your Google Business Profile. However it may be easier for us to walk you through the steps of setting up your profile to make sure all details are correct.

I have a physical premises but I also sell online - can I still do local SEO?

Yes! Both local SEO and regular SEO will benefit you greatly.

I’ve heard replying to reviews is good practice - does it help local SEO?

Yes, it does - one of our top local SEO tips is to reply promptly to all your Google reviews, regardless of whether they’re positive or not so positive.

I share a business location with several other businesses - will local SEO still work?

Yes! It’s common for businesses to share locations, such as shared office spaces; rest assured, local SEO can still work for you based on your address.

What is the most important ranking factor in local SEO?

As with all forms of SEO there is no singular silver bullet and it’s important to cover all bases in local SEO. However we would say that without a Google Business Profile, you’re on to a loser. It’s essential if you want to be found locally in the map pack.

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If you sell goods or provide services to customers within a certain area, local SEO is something you need to consider. It’s key to helping your customers find you! Whether you want the phone to be ringing off the hook, or you’d love to see more customers in your business premises, the power of local SEO is not to be ignored.

What is local SEO?

Local SEO are the activities that make you visible in local searches; that’s people in your area looking for the products or services that you offer. Local SEO benefits businesses that have a physical location, such as a shop, bakery or restaurant, as well as those that provide a service to local customers, such as plumbers, mobile beauty therapists, and photographers.

As we know, search engines such as Google were born out of a need to organise and access all the rapidly expanding information on the web – but what if you only need search results that apply to where you live? This is where local search engine optimisation came in, providing searchers with results relevant to their area, but also information such as opening times, address, and even reviews.

Why is local SEO important?

Being found by users is obviously the name of the SEO game, but that traffic isn’t much good to you if those users can’t become customers because they’re not in your area. Local SEO helps you be found by the people looking for exactly what you do in the area you do it in.

With 75% of consumers in the UK, US, France, and Germany using Google to look for business information, and with “where to buy” + “near me” keyword searches having grown by 200% in recent years, local search optimisation is not to be sniffed at.

Who is local SEO for?

If your business depends on customers finding you on Google Maps, local SEO is essential. Local SEO attracts nearby customers who are actively searching for services or places, such as restaurants, shops, or services. Local competition can be heavy, but focusing on catching local searches through optimised Google Business Profiles, consistent NAP (name, age, and phone) info, and quality reviews, businesses can start to attract local customers. This results in increased enquiries and foot traffic.

What matters for local SEO?

Search relevance

Search engine results pages will always be curated with relevance in mind; Google is looking for results that closely match a search query in order to rank it highly for that term. It’s within your power to tell Google all about your business via your website and your Business Profile (more on that later), so that it can gain a great understanding of your relevance against search terms.

Distance

This is all about how close you are to your searching customer and depends on the type of business you provide. A physical brick and mortar store will have different distance criteria when compared to a service area business. Distance is defined by Google as “how far each potential search result is from the location term used in a search. If a user doesn’t specify a location in their search, we’ll calculate distance based on what we do know about their location.”

Prominence

This is all about how well-known Google judges your business to be; how prominent it is amongst your local competition. It’s one of the most complex ranking categories in local search, and there is offline reputation to consider too.

Who we help rank locally with local SEO

At 427 Marketing, we work with a range of local industries across Sussex and beyond, from nationwide hotel chains to local asbestos removal.

Restaurants – we focus on Google Maps visibility, reviews, menus, and ‘near me’ searches.
Vineyards – we have experience helping vineyards thrive in local tourism. We help vineyards rank for ‘wine tours’, ‘tastings’, and other similar terms.
Dentists and healthcare clinics – we understand that healthcare searches are trust-driven, with reviews, location signals, and strong map visibility being critical.
Law firms – legal services are highly competitive in local search. Our team helps firms rank for location-based legal queries.
Hospitality – from hotels and B&Bs to guesthouses, it all relies on local SEO for discovery. We optimise for location-based accommodation searches.
IT – we understand the challenges that IT companies face in local search, and we can help increase enquiries and build trust through local terms.
Psychotherapists – we help therapists (both individual and clinic-based) get found by people needing support in their area.
Car dealerships – local car dealerships benefit from ranking for location-based searches around sales, servicing, and part exchanges. We help car dealerships around the UK increase footfall and sales through local SEO.

We work with a huge range of businesses needing help catching local customers. For more information on the types of business we help, take a look here. Alternatively, contact us for more information on how we can help you. We have the expertise to help any business with their local SEO.

Local SEO vs conventional SEO

The core difference between local SEO and conventional SEO is the audience and search intent. Traditional SEO centres around increasing visibility in search results for national or international terms, with the main goal to rank broadly.

Local SEO narrows the focus down to a region, usually a city or town, and aims to capture customers who are actively searching for services within a specific location. For example, it’s easier to catch customers searching for ‘composite bonding in Manchester’ compared to ‘composite bonding’ as a general, more competitive term.

Although local SEO is generally easier, things start to become more complicated when a business has multiple locations they want to rank locally for, as this requires:

Dedicated location landing pages
Careful management of Google Business Profiles
Strong local citation consistency
Avoidance of duplicate content issues
A strategic internal linking structure

This is where our expertise comes in

Local SEO is also much more suited to brands that have physical locations, offer services in certain locations, or rely on foot traffic. Online businesses such as e-commerce brands typically need to focus on broader SEO strategies and will benefit more from general SEO.

Local SEO onboarding

At 427 Marketing, we ensure an easy, transparent onboarding process that helps you feel confident in our expertise.

Initial consultation

We’ll have an initial chat about what you do, what your goals are, and how we can help.

Local SEO audit

We review your website, Google Business Profile, citations, reviews, and technical setup.

Local Strategy development

We work together to build a location-focused roadmap tailored to your market and audience. This may include verifying profiles, improving Google Business Profiles, Google Maps strategy, review management, content, and more.

Implementation

We implement the strategy, carrying out on-page optimisation, map optimisation, citation work, content improvement, and technical fixes to help your business make its mark locally.

Ongoing local optimisation and reporting

We provide monthly reports detailing ranking changes, traffic, map visibility improvements, and any work carried out throughout the month to help reach your goals. This ensures you always know what’s happening and why.

The 427 Local SEO team

Chris Simmons – Local SEO Manager & Onpage SEO Specialist

Our Local SEO Manager & Onpage SEO Specialist, Chris, eats, sleeps, and breathes SEO, and has developed his knowledge of local search from content creation to CSS and HTML. He’s one for always keeping up to date with SEO news, keeping the whole team in the loop. After working in a range of industries, Chris’s skillset is unmatched, adapting his work practices and expertise to the needs of our B2B and B2C clients across multiple sectors in both service areas based and ecommerce environments.

Increased visibility in search results

By investing in local SEO specialists for your business, you’re increasing the chance of being found by nearby customers who are seeking what you do – that’s the crux of all local marketing, so it makes sense to take it seriously.

Higher quality traffic

It’s all well and good sending people to your website, but if they’re not geographically close, it’s a waste of time. Local SEO attracts users within your service area who are ready to part with their money; it drives those ‘qualified’ leads.

Improved Business Profile performance

A solid local SEO strategy enhances your presence on Google Maps, boosting your chance of appearing in the local 3-pack (the top 3 local listings shown on the map). This improves that all-important trust, and drives click-throughs.

shop front showing opening times on the glass

Our local SEO services

As an SEO agency that covers the full spectrum of SEO activities, local SEO is a feather in our cap that can help make you a popular choice in your area. Here are some of the local search engine optimisation services we undertake for clients from all industries:

Google Business Profile Optimisation

As you may have gathered, your Google Business Profile (GBP for short) is an integral part of your local SEO strategy, so it’s important to get it right. We know exactly how to make the most of a Google Business Profile, how to thoroughly fill one out, and keep it updated.

Local content

There is nothing our content team likes better than to get stuck into some local research, crafting content based upon it that makes your site an authority on relevant local topics. If there’s one thing Google’s fond of, it’s an authoritative site.

Location pages and geo pages

Individual pages that focus on the areas that you serve can help you be found by local customers – we can create them, and we can write the content. We work with you to ensure every page is as helpful to your users as possible.

Local competitor audits

Think you know who you’re up against? If not, we’ll find out for you, and regardless of whether you’re familiar with your competitors or not, we can also measure your local SEO success against theirs, working hard to make you top dog.

Local business citations and NAPs audits

You need your business name, address and phone number in all the relevant places, so you can literally be found everywhere! We can help with this too.

Location-based keyword research

You can’t work blind with keywords, and that’s as relevant in local SEO as it is in regular SEO. We can accurately find the geographical search terms your potential customers are using, so that we can weave them naturally into your content.

Online reviews

We’ll take a look at where your reviews currently are, and how you’re managing them, advising you on how best to approach them going forward so that they positively impact your SEO efforts.

Local search schema

Schema speaks a search engine’s language, and sits behind your web pages to tell the search engine exactly what they need to know. If you’re appealing to the local community, there’s local search schema (also known as Local Business schema) for that – and we can handle it for you.

What are the local SEO ranking factors?

Google Business Profile

Formerly known as ‘Google My Business’, Google Business Profile is a kind of shop window in the SERPs, giving searcher’s the vital at-a-glance information that they’ll be looking for. Remember telephone directories? Google My Business is the modern digital equivalent.

Optimising your Google Business Profile is key to the success of your local SEO strategy, and it involves keeping it detailed and up to date, managing your reviews, and uploading images.

NAP citations

A NAP citation refers to the essential information about your business: its Name, Address, and Phone number – hence NAP. These usually appear on business directories, and on social media platforms.

Reviews

Many consumers won’t even think of becoming a customer of a business unless the testimony of happy people who have gone before are visible to view online. Reminding customers to leave a review about their experience, and responding promptly when they do, marks you out as a trusted and active business to Google.

According to Global Newswire, 95% of users read online reviews before making a purchase. Of these, 58% say they would pay more for goods which have positive reviews.

Links

Just as they are with regular SEO, backlinks can be valuable for local SEO strategies too. Pursuing backlinks by creating genuinely helpful, useful content for your users can help your local SEO

On-page local SEO

What you put on your web pages has bearing on your local SEO. These can be optimised, through the content, meta descriptions and images, to appeal to local search intent.

Areas we cover

Although we are a Sussex-based local SEO agency with a large number of clients in the South of England, such as Sussex, Kent, London, and Surrey, we provide our local SEO services to clients across the entire UK as well as internationally. We have clients all over the world, including in the UAE and the USA, proving we can help you rank locally, wherever you are.

If you want to boost your local rankings, we can help. Contact us today for a casual chat about your goals and exactly how we can help you reach them.

Who are 427?

We’re a multi talented bunch here at 427 Marketing, which means we’re proud to offer our services as a local SEO agency. With years in the industry, we’ve watched local SEO change and evolve, and we continue to keep our finger on the pulse as we hurtle into the future; it’s why our clients can rely on us to keep up with local SEO trends.

It would be our pleasure to make your business visible on the search engine results pages of your local community, putting you in front of the people who need you most.

Could you use help with your local business SEO? We’re a local SEO company you can trust; give us a call to get the ball rolling.

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Frequently asked questions

Ever searched for, say, Italian restaurants in the town you live near, and found that a map pops up on Google showing pinned locations and the top 3 options relevant to your search?

This is what we’re talking about when we refer to the map pack. Any business looking to make the most of local search traffic should want to appear on maps for relevant searches. Google can determine a searcher’s current location, but the map pack can also be triggered by ‘near me’ or ‘near [location]’ search terms.

Google acknowledges the following business types:

Bricks and mortar locations – this includes shops and restaurants
Service Area Businesses – such as plumbers, caterers or photographers
Home based businesses – this could be a daycare centre, or a psychotherapist with a home office
Multi department business – this could be anything from a hospital to a car dealership

Multi practitioner business – like a solicitors, beauty therapists, or a dental practice
Hybrid businesses – this could be a restaurant that also delivers to people’s homes
Multi brand business – such as a car dealership with multiple franchises under one roof
Mobile businesses – like coffee vans, or street food vendors

Co-located and co-branded business – a good example of these are when Post Offices are located in premises such as Co-Op, or WHSmith
Solo practitioner businesses – like one solitary solicitor operating in more than one area of law
Multi brand business – such as a car dealership with multiple franchises under one roof
Kiosks and cash machines

‍This depends. If you have several different locations you operate from then yes by all means have a GBP for each location. However if you operate from a single location but service a wider area, use the service area selection tool within your Google Business Profile to select which areas you provide your services for.

‍As with regular SEO, there is no set-in-stone time frame for local SEO to start working, and it’s highly unlikely you’ll see instant results. However, with the right care and attention, you local SEO efforts could begin to pay off after around 3 months, with even more encouraging results happening from the 6 month mark onwards.

SEO Case Study

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