Local SEO for businesses

A large share of all searches has local intent. Someone is looking for a hairdresser, plumber, physiotherapist or restaurant, and actually wants to go there or have someone come over. For businesses with a physical location or a fixed service area, local SEO is often the fastest route to new customers. You're not competing with the whole country, but with a handful of businesses in your own region.

The three pillars of local SEO

• Your Google Business Profile. This decides whether you appear in the map pack of three businesses at the top of the search results.
• Your website. Clear pages per service and location, with your address and contact details.
• Trust. Reviews, mentions on other local sites and consistent details.

Making your website locally strong

• Mention your town or region in the SEO title and H1: "Physiotherapy in Zwolle-Zuid".
• Work in several towns? Create a page per town with genuinely unique content, such as projects, travel time or a local reference. Not the same text ten times with a different town name.
• Put your name, address and phone number on every page, for example in the footer, exactly as they appear in your Business Profile.
• Add a map and directions to your contact page.

How it works in Obelisk

In Obelisk you add your business details to the footer once, and they then appear on every page automatically. Through structured data you can add your own JSON-LD per page, such as the LocalBusiness type with your address, opening hours and phone number. For example, ask the assistant: "Add LocalBusiness structured data to the contact page with our address and opening hours." Working with many locations or towns? Manage them as records, and Obelisk automatically creates a page for each through dynamic pages.

A concrete example

A painting company from Apeldoorn didn't show up anywhere for "painter Apeldoorn". Its homepage was titled "Home" and the address was only on the contact page. After the changes, the homepage is titled "Painting company in Apeldoorn and surroundings", the address is in the footer, LocalBusiness markup has been added and the Business Profile is fully filled in with project photos. Within a few months, the company appears in the map pack at the top of the search results.

Reviews

Actively ask satisfied customers for a review on your Google Business Profile, and respond to every review, including critical ones. The number and recency of reviews count in local results, and they convince new customers.

Common mistakes

Different spellings of your address or phone number on your site and in online directories, town pages with identical text, and a Business Profile that's never updated after it was created. With local SEO, consistency is half the battle.