Local ranking comes down to three things Google weighs: relevance (does the business match the search), distance (how close you are to the searcher) and prominence (how established you look). You cannot change distance, so local SEO is the work of maximising the other two.
Prominence is built with citations — consistent mentions of your name, address and phone across directories — plus reviews and links from local sources. Inconsistent NAP is the single most common leak: a different phone format on one listing quietly erodes the trust that ranking depends on.
On your own site, the job is location pages that are genuinely different from each other, LocalBusiness structured data, embedded NAP as text (not an image), and a link to your Google Business Profile. The map pack is often worth more traffic than the organic listing below it.
Local SEO guides
The three things local ranking really depends on — proximity, prominence and relevance — and how to move each one without wasting budget.
Not all citations are equal. Using real authority data from our index, here are the directories worth your time — and how to keep NAP consistent across them.
Frequently asked questions
What is NAP consistency?
Name, Address and Phone kept identical everywhere you are listed. When they match, search engines are confident it is one real business; when they differ, that confidence — and your ranking — drops.
How many citations do I need?
Quality beats quantity. The core set (Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Maps, Facebook) plus the directories that matter in your industry and city will outperform a hundred low-quality listings.
Do reviews affect local ranking?
Yes — volume, recency and rating all feed prominence, and review text gives Google topical context. A steady trickle of genuine reviews beats a burst of solicited ones.