The three things Google actually looks at
Google has said it publicly: local rankings come down to relevance, distance, and prominence. That sounds simple, but most businesses only focus on one of those and ignore the other two.
Relevance means your business matches what someone searched for. If someone types "emergency drain cleaning" and your Google Business Profile just says "plumbing contractor," you are less relevant than the company whose profile, website, and reviews all specifically mention emergency drain cleaning. Distance is straightforward, how close are you to the searcher. You cannot control that, which is why prominence matters so much. Prominence is Google's way of measuring how well-known and trusted your business is across the entire internet.
Your Google Business Profile is the foundation
About 42% of local searches result in a click on the Map Pack, according to BrightLocal's 2024 Local Consumer Survey. That makes your Google Business Profile the single most important asset in local SEO.
Fill out every field, and not just the name, address, and phone number. Add your service categories (pick the most specific primary category available), write a description that includes the services you actually provide, upload real photos of your team and work, and post updates at least twice a month. Google tracks how complete and active your profile is, and businesses that treat their GBP like a living page outperform those who set it up once and forgot about it.
Reviews are a ranking factor, not just a trust signal
Google confirmed in their own documentation that reviews influence local ranking. The quantity, velocity, and diversity of your reviews all matter. But the part most businesses miss is responding to reviews. Every response is indexed content that gives Google more context about your business. When someone writes "great geyser installation" and you reply mentioning the specific service and suburb, you are adding keyword-rich content to your profile without it feeling forced.
Ask for reviews consistently. The easiest system is a follow-up text or email within 24 hours of completing a job, with a direct link to your Google review page. Businesses that automate this process see 3-5x more reviews than those relying on customers to remember on their own.
Citations still matter, but not the way you think
A citation is any mention of your business name, address, and phone number on another website. Five years ago, SEOs would submit to hundreds of directories. Today, what matters is accuracy across the major platforms. Yelp, BBB, your industry associations, Apple Maps, Bing Places, and the big data aggregators like Data Axle and Foursquare. If your address is slightly different on Yelp than it is on Google, that inconsistency creates doubt in Google's system. Clean up the top 20-30 citations and you have covered 90% of the value.
Your website feeds the Map Pack
Many business owners think local SEO is just about Google Business Profile. It is not. Google uses your website to verify and expand on what it knows about your business. Individual service pages, location pages if you serve multiple areas, and a clear NAP (name, address, phone) in your site footer all contribute to your local rankings. A study from Whitespark's Local Search Ranking Factors found that on-page signals account for roughly 36% of Map Pack ranking factors. Your website is doing more heavy lifting than you realize.
The one thing that separates businesses that rank from those that do not
Consistency. The businesses that dominate local search are not doing anything exotic. They are posting to their GBP regularly, collecting reviews every week, keeping their citations accurate, and publishing useful content on their website. Most of their competitors did some of this once and then stopped. Local SEO rewards the businesses that show up month after month, because Google interprets sustained activity as a signal that the business is legitimate, active, and worth recommending.