Guide

Local SEO: getting found by customers in your city

10 August 2026 · 5 min read

For a shop, a practice or a tradesperson, the search that matters is not “accountant” but “accountant near me”. It plays out on the map, not in the blue links — and it can be worked on with free tools before any advertising budget.

Your business profile comes before your website

When someone searches for a service nearby, business profiles take the top of the screen, with the map, opening hours, phone number and reviews. Many businesses pay for a website without having claimed their profile, even though that is what receives the calls.

A useful profile is a complete one: the right business category, the exact address, opening hours actually kept, a phone number that rings, recent photos of the interior and the frontage. Half-filled profiles rank behind complete ones.

Reviews, without buying them

Reviews weigh on rankings and even more on the decision. They cannot be bought: fake reviews get detected, and a penalised profile costs far more than having no reviews.

What works is simpler: ask at the right moment, just after a service, with a direct link that saves the customer from searching. And reply — to all of them, including criticism. A measured reply to a negative review often convinces more than ten glowing ones.

Consistent information

Your name, address and phone number must be identical everywhere: business profile, website, directories, social media. Three different versions of the same address send a signal of disorder, and it costs you visibility.

What your website should contain

• One page per city where you actually operate, with content specific to each. Duplicating the same page and changing the city name fools nobody and does not work.
• Your contact details as text, not just in an image, and clickable from a phone.
• Loading speed: on a mobile network, a slow site loses its visitor before it is read.
• A map and directions if you receive the public.

How long before seeing an effect?

SEO does not buy a position, it builds one. The first movements are generally seen within a few weeks on less competitive local searches, longer on competitive queries. We prefer to say it clearly: anyone who guarantees first place by a given date is selling a promise they do not control.

Advertising and SEO are not opposites

Advertising gives immediate visibility and stops the day you stop paying. SEO takes time and keeps producing afterwards. At launch, the two complement each other: advertising keeps the business going while SEO takes hold.