Complete Guide to Local SEO: How to Rank Locally

Another inquiry about your business came from interstate. Which is great, sure, but where are all the customers from Canberra? It’s like they’re not seeing your local business when they search online. And you know you should do something about that, but you’re not quite sure where to start … 

No worries – we’ve got you covered. This guide explains how local search works and what to do to rank in local results.

What is local SEO?

Local SEO brings in foot traffic by helping a local business appear in local search results on Google and Google Maps. It gives your online presence a boost. 

In a query with local intent – like ‘Thai restaurants near me’ – Google displays search results with three relevant local businesses and a map of their locations. This display has different names, like map pack, local pack, or snack pack. It appears at the top of the search engine results pages (SERP), below the paid ads and above organic ‘blue-link’ results. 

Appearing in the map pack tells local customers that you’re nearby, have what they need, and are trustworthy.

Why local SEO matters for Australian businesses 

Think of how often you pick up your phone to do a ‘near me’ search for anything from sparkies to spanakopita. You’re not alone. A lot of us are learning about local businesses online. 

Statistics on local SEO indicate a whopping 96% of consumers use a search engine to find out about local businesses. And most of us – around 73% – use our phones to do it. With ‘near me’ search results, 76% of us visit a business within a day. 

If your business isn’t showing up in local search results, then you’re missing the chance to drive a lot of foot traffic to your door. 

Which Australian businesses benefit most from local SEO?

If your business has a physical location and serves a particular geographic area, then you’ll benefit from local SEO. 

These types of Australian businesses depend especially on making connections with local customers:

• Cafes, restaurants, and pubs
• Service trades like plumbers and electricians
• Retail stores
• Event venues
• Entertainment like movies, arcades, and miniature golf
• Fitness centresers, gyms, and pools
• Medical and dental offices
• Professionals like lawyers, financial consultants, and real estate agents

How local SEO differs from regular SEO

While regular SEO works to improve your general ranking in search engine results, local SEO focuses on attracting more foot traffic by boosting your ranking in the map pack and search results for local queries. 

Local SEO has a different set of ranking factors and algorithms than regular SEO. The good news is that a lot of what you do for your regular SEO efforts will benefit local SEO too. The aim is to climb higher in both organic and local searches. 

Let’s look at how Google and other search engines respond to search queries to generate organic and local search results.

How local search rankings work

Google has a stored copy of websites that it has already searched and indexed, called the Google Index. Spiders, also known as bots, crawl the web all the time. They are software applications that run automated and often repetitive tasks on the internet. When spiders examine the content and links on each web page, they build and update the Google Index.  

AIn both organic and local searches, algorithms then sort and rank the websites based on hundreds of factors, assessing which websites provide the most useful results for specific search queries. For local searches, Google weighs three core factors – also called ‘signals’: proximity, relevance, and prominence.

Proximity

How close is your business to the searcher’s physical location? Google and other search engines determine your location by examining your business profile for details like your business name, address, and phone number – also known as NAP. Google ranks businesses higher that are located closer to the user, especially in ‘near me’ searches and those with implied local intent. 

Relevance

Do you have what a customer needs? Google looks at your business category, keywords, descriptions, and content to assess how closely your business matches a user’s search intent and query.  

Prominence

Are you trustworthy and reputable? Google analyses factors like customer reviews, backlinks, engagement rates, and local citations in online directories to evaluate your business’s authority and credibility. Highly regarded businesses tend to rank higher in search results.

Once local businesses are ranked, Google generates a map pack with the three top local businesses that best match the query on Google Ssearch or Google Maps. Traditional Organic ‘blue-link’ results follow. 

Now let’s look at what you can do to improve your local search rankings.

How to improve your local SEO 

If local SEO depends on communicating your proximity, relevance, and prominence to Google and other search engines, how do you do that in a way that improves your rankings in search engine results?

SEO experts from around the world ponder that question every year. Their responses to a detailed survey are collected in The Local Search Ranking Factors report, widely considered a top resource for understanding how to rank in Google’s local search results. 

Five of the top-ranking The top six ranking factors for the 2026 report are:

• Google Business Profile
• Reviews
• On-page signals
• Behavioral signals
• Links
• Citations

Our handy guide explains each factor and what you can do to maximise your digital footprint and improve your rankings in local search results.

Optimise your Google Business Profile

Your Google Business Pprofile is a free listing that people see when they search on Google or Google Maps for your business or the services you offer. This business profile is perhaps the single most important signal in local SEO. 

According to Google, local customers are 70 percent more likely to visit businesses with a complete business profile. They’re also 50 percent more likely to consider buying from them. 

How to optimise your Google Business Profile

• If you don’t already have a Google Business Profile, get one.
• Choose a specific category that best defines your business.
• Add your address if you have a physical location.
• If you travel to customers to deliver products or services, then set your geographic service area.
• List accurate trading hours, including holiday trading hours.
• Add your products or services.
• Add current photos and regular posts.
• Ask customers for reviews and customer feedback on your profile.

Get more Google reviews

And speaking of customer reviews – get more of them.

Online reviews and customer feedback are a key factor in improving your ranking in local search results because they address the prominence factor. Reviews indicate to Google that your business is popular, credible, and trusted. 

The sweet spot for your business in customer reviews is the 4 to 5 range. Surveys indicate that 78% of people won’t consider a business with a rating lower than 4 stars.   

Interestingly,  the sweet spot is said to be 4.7 stars  – 5 stars can raise suspicion that your reviews are fake, while 4.7 seems more authentic!

Tips for increasing your customer reviews

• Ask customers for reviews on your Google Business Profile. In Google Business Manager, you can generate and share a link.
• Make it easy for customers to leave reviews on other platforms by using QR codes.
• Show you’re trustworthy and engaged by responding to every review, whether it’s positive or negative. 

And here are two definite don’ts:

• Never offer money for reviews. It’s just a sleazy look, plus it violates Google’s terms. 
• Never ask for good reviews or prohibit bad reviews. That’s also against Google’s terms.

Improve on-page signals

Google and other search engines look at on-page signals like a website’s structure, content, and performance to assess relevance and user experience. On-page signals are a key factor in traditional search results and regular organic searches. The good news is that it’s a factor in local SEO as well. 

How to improve on-page signals

• Improve your site’s technical performance. It has to load quickly and run flawlessly, particularly on phones and tablets. 
• Use schema markup, which is like a translation tool. It’s code that helps search engines understand your web pages and how to put them into categories. 
• Use proper headings for HTML tagging (H1, H2).
• Optimise your images by naming files with useful keywords and writing alt text that briefly and accurately describes the image’s content for screen readers and search engines.
• List on your website your business name, address, and phone number as NAP signals.
• Add information that searchers may care about, such as service area, opening emergency hours, or certifications.
• Include content that indicates Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust (E-E-A-T)
• Explain clearly any relevant context and relationships between ideas, people, places, and organisations so that search engines can understand your content.   
• Use internal links when they’re relevant to a customer’s search intent.

Increase behavioural signals

Behavioural signals indicate how people interact with a website. Google looks at dwell time, or how long users spend on a page, and scroll depth, which is how far users scroll down a page. Both indicate how well the page matches with user intent. Click-through rates (CTR) from search results shows your website’s relevance to local keywords and search queries. 

What you can do to increase engagement 

• Create pages with local content that matches what customers actually need. Local content could include services specific to that area, insights about that market, or local customer reviews. 
• Write down all the ways local customers might search for you. How are the search queries worded? Customers may search by what you do – like ‘cardiologist’ or ‘accountant’ – or the services you provide – like ‘echocardiogram’ or ‘prepare taxes’.
• Do keyword research to identify local keywords and search terms that you may have missed. 
• Use local keywords that refer to city names, suburb names, neighbourhoods, and local landmarks.
• Assign keywords to different pages on your website. Your home page likely does not include all the possibilities. For each service you provide, include all the keywords for that service on a page. 
• Use those local keywords to create relevant URLs, meta titles, and descriptions. 

Get local citations

A local citation is any online mention of your business that includes your NAP. If you see the term ‘NAP citation’, it means that your website is mentioned as well. 

The most important thing to remember about local citations is that they must all match. Your business name, address, and phone number must be consistent in each online directory citation. If it’s not, then search engines won’t know which citation is correct. It’s important to get the details right – 62% of consumers report they would avoid using a business if they found incorrect information online. 

Google assesses local citations in online directories to verify your details. If your NAP is consistent across citations, then Google considers your business trustworthy. 

How you can increase local citations

• Keep your citations consistent. Use the same business name, address, and phone number everywhere.
• Increase your listings in online directories. Google Business Profile is one of the best, and it’s free. Also consider other directories like:
  • Yellow Pages Australia
  • True Local
  • Pure Local
  • Localsearch
  • Hotfrog Australia
  • Yelp Australia
  • hipages (focuses on trades and home services)
  • ABN Lookup (Australian Business Register)
• Get local citations in popular local online directories and news sources. Here are’s two for a start: The Canberran and Canberra Daily.
• Do regular audits of your local citations to spot inconsistencies. 

Free tools for local SEO

These free tools from Google can help you with your local SEO efforts:

• Google Business Manager manages your Google Business Profile. 
• Google Search Console monitors your website’s search performance.
• Google Keyword Planner can help you learn about search volume ranges in your local area.

How can I tell if local SEO is successful?

The answer comes down to continuous tracking. Local analytics tools can track how often your local business appears in search engine results, whether your ranking has changed, and how your business performs over time. Metrics like on CTR and engagement reveal whether local customers are engaging with your website. And of course, you’ll want to keep an eye on customer reviews, backlinks, and local citations. 

Local SEO is an ongoing process rather than a one-time effort. Monitoring local SEO can be a complicated and time-consuming process. It may be better done by people who specialise in SEO. 

Find out how local SEO works for you

If you have questions this guide hasn’t answered, or you’d like to explore with us how local SEO could improve local search results for your Australian business – get in touch.