Local Search

Local SEO

Business Owner Marketing Manager Office Manager

Local SEO is the work of making a business visible for searches carried out by people nearby who intend to buy soon. It combines the Google Business Profile, location-specific pages on the website, reviews and consistent business data across the web.

It differs from general SEO mainly in what decides the result. National SEO is won largely on content and links; local results add proximity and profile signals that a website cannot influence directly.

Formula
Profile signals + On-site local relevance + Citation consistency + Reviews
Where It Lives
  • Google Business ProfileControls map pack eligibility
  • Google Search ConsoleQuery and page-level performance
  • Google AnalyticsWhat local traffic does after it lands
What Drives It
  • Map pack position
  • Service and location page quality
  • Review signal
  • Citation consistency
  • Mobile page speed
Causal Analysis: Local rankings vary by the searcher’s position, so a single rank number is close to meaningless. Movement has to be read across a grid of points in the service area before it means anything.
Benchmark

Meaningful movement on competitive local terms generally appears between 60 and 90 days; profile-level corrections can show inside a month.

Common Mistake
Publishing a near-identical page for every town in the service area. Google treats them as duplicates, they rank for none of the towns, and the effort would have produced more on one substantial page for the main location.

How different roles think about this metric

Each function reads Local SEO through a different lens and takes different actions when it changes.

Business Owner
For a business whose customers are within driving distance this is normally the highest-return channel, and the one where a small budget still competes.
Office Manager
Most of the profile and review work sits here and needs no marketing background.
Marketing Manager
Report on a grid of positions across the service area; a single rank number for a local term is close to meaningless.

Common Questions About Local SEO

Click any question to expand the answer.

How much does local SEO cost?
askotter runs it from $99/mo self-managed, or $600/mo with our team on it. Local agencies typically quote several times that; the gap is mostly account management rather than work.
Can I do this myself?
The profile work, yes, and it is worth doing. The parts that reliably need help are the technical fixes on the site and the ongoing content and review process.

Related Metrics

Metrics that are commonly analyzed alongside Local SEO.

Map Pack | Map Pack GBP | Google Business Profile NAP | NAP Consistency Local Citation | Local Citation SAB | Service Area Business

Role guides that include this metric

See how each role uses Local SEO in context with the full set of metrics they own.

Business Owner Guide → Marketing Manager Guide → Office Manager Guide →
free, one business day

Want to know what is holding your Local SEO back?

Give us your website and we will send back the specific pages hurting your Local SEO, in the order worth fixing. You will have it within one business day, free, with no obligation.

No newsletter. We reply once, from a person.

the shift

The shops down the street already run on AI.
The data proves it pays.

Auto shops, dental offices, cafés and salons. The local businesses winning right now compete on AI and data. askotter puts those same tools on your side, priced for a business your size.

0% of small businesses already use AI-enabled tools U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 2024
0% projected annual growth of the AI market through 2030 Grand View Research
0× more likely to win customers when decisions are data-driven McKinsey Global Institute
$0T AI's projected boost to the global economy by 2030 PwC
Get a free audit See pricing

The same tools the shops down the street use, from $99/mo.