Local SEO Explained: How to Rank on Google Maps

When someone searches for a plumber in their town, or a solicitor near them, Google shows a map with three businesses listed beneath it. Those three businesses — the local pack — receive the majority of clicks from that search. The businesses below the map, in the standard results, receive far less. Being in the map pack for the searches your customers are making is worth more than almost any other digital investment a local service business can make.

Google decides which businesses to show in the local pack based on three things: relevance, distance, and prominence. Relevance means whether Google believes your business offers what the searcher is looking for. Distance means how close the business is to the searcher. Prominence means how well-known and credible the business appears based on signals from across the internet.

Of the three, prominence is where most local businesses have the most room to improve.

Most businesses treat local SEO as a marketing problem. It is not. It is an information consistency problem. Google does not rank the best business. It ranks the business it can most confidently verify.

Prominence is determined through what we describe as the Prominence Stack — a layered structure of signals that Google evaluates in sequence. At the base is your Google Business Profile completeness. Above that is NAP consistency: your name, address, and phone number matching exactly across every directory and your website. Above that is review volume and recency — in local service markets, businesses with fewer than fifteen Google reviews are consistently outranked by competitors with thirty or more, even when their underlying service quality is higher. Review volume is a threshold signal, not a marginal one. At the top is website authority — pages that clearly signal what you do and where. Each layer depends on the one beneath it. Businesses that skip the base and try to build at the top get inconsistent results.

The practical work of local SEO starts with the Google Business Profile. Claiming and verifying it if you have not already. Completing every section accurately. Ensuring the name, address, and phone number on the profile match exactly what is on your website. Even minor inconsistencies — like abbreviating Street to St — affect how Google reads the two together. Selecting the right primary and secondary business categories. Adding photos that reflect the business accurately.

From there, the work moves to the website. Pages that specifically describe the services offered in specific locations. A contact page with the full business address. Content that answers the questions local customers are searching. Internal links that help Google understand the relationship between the service, the location, and the business. None of this is complicated. It is simply the work that most businesses have not done.