What Google actually cares about

Google has one job: to give searchers the most relevant, credible result for what they searched for. When someone types "plumber in Leeds", Google wants to show them the most relevant, credible plumber in Leeds.

To do that, Google cares about three things:

  1. That your business exists online and can be found (indexability)
  2. That it matches what someone searched for (relevance)
  3. That other signals confirm you're credible (prominence)

Everything in local SEO traces back to one of these three. The practical steps below address all three in order of impact.

Step 1: Set up your Google Business Profile

This is the single most impactful thing most local businesses can do. It's free and takes about 30 minutes to set up properly.

Your Google Business Profile (GBP) is what puts your business on Google Maps and in the Local Pack — the map result with three businesses that appears at the top of local searches. Without a GBP, you cannot appear there regardless of how good your website is.

Go to business.google.com, sign in with a Google account, and follow the setup process. Choose a specific primary category ("Plumber", not "Contractor"). Set your service area to the towns you cover. Add your phone number and website URL. Verify by postcard — it arrives in 5-7 days.

Once verified, complete every section: services, hours, business description, and at least 10 photos of real work.

Full step-by-step instructions: How to Set Up a Google Business Profile.

Step 2: Get your website indexed

When you launch a new website, Google doesn't automatically know it exists. You need to tell it. The fastest way is to submit your URL to Google Search Console.

Go to search.google.com/search-console, sign in with your Google account, and add your website as a property. Verify ownership (Google will guide you through this — usually adding a small piece of code to your site). Then go to "URL Inspection", paste your homepage URL, and click "Request Indexing".

Google will typically crawl and index your site within a few days of this. Search Console also gives you ongoing visibility into how your site is performing — how many people find it, which search terms trigger it, and any technical issues Google has found.

Step 3: Make sure your website mentions what you do and where

This sounds obvious but many websites fail it. Google reads your pages to understand what your business does and where it operates. If your homepage says "welcome to our website" and your about page talks about your values, Google learns very little about what service you provide or where.

Your homepage title tag (the text that appears in the browser tab and in search results) should include your main service and location: "Electrician in Sheffield | [Your Business Name]". Your H1 heading should say what you do. Your copy should mention specific towns, services and postcodes.

Each service needs its own page. "Plumber Sheffield" is a page that can rank. "Services" is a page that ranks for almost nothing.

The quickest content check: Read your homepage out loud. Does it say what you do and where within the first three sentences? If not, it needs rewriting before any other SEO work will have much effect.

Step 4: Get 10+ Google reviews

Reviews are one of the strongest signals Google uses for Local Pack rankings. A business with 15 genuine reviews at 4.8 stars consistently outranks a competitor with 3 reviews, even if the competitor's website is technically better.

After every job, ask the customer to leave a review. Send them your direct review link by WhatsApp — it takes them straight to the review form without them having to search for your business. Aim for your first 10 reviews within 30 days of getting your GBP verified.

Full guide: How to Get Google Reviews.

Step 5: Build service and location pages

Once the basics are in place, expand your website's content to target more specific searches. Create individual pages for each service you offer. If you cover multiple towns, create a page per town.

A plumber in Sheffield might build pages for: Emergency Plumber Sheffield, Boiler Installation Sheffield, Bathroom Fitting Sheffield, Drain Unblocking Sheffield, Plumber Rotherham, Plumber Barnsley. Each page can rank for its specific search term independently.

These pages don't need to be long. 300-500 words of genuinely useful content, a clear heading with service and location, your phone number, and a contact form is enough to start ranking.

Step 6: Get consistent NAP across all online mentions

NAP — Name, Address, Phone number — needs to be identical everywhere your business appears online. Your website, GBP, Yell, Facebook, Companies House, any directories. If your phone number on Yell is an old number, or your address is formatted differently on different sites, Google sees conflicting information and your local rankings suffer.

Search your business name on Google and visit each result. Check the NAP shown. Fix anything that doesn't match your current details exactly.

What not to start with

A few things that get talked about in SEO but produce very little return at the early stage of building local visibility:

Link building: acquiring backlinks from other websites is a major factor in national, competitive SEO. For local business visibility, it matters much less than the steps above. Don't pay for a link-building service when your GBP isn't even fully completed.

Technical SEO audits: tools like Screaming Frog and Ahrefs produce long lists of technical issues. Most of them don't matter for a small local business site. Fix the obvious things (site speed, mobile responsiveness) but don't spend weeks on technical minutiae when you could be collecting reviews.

Keyword density: the idea that mentioning your keyword a specific number of times per page improves rankings is outdated. Write naturally, mention your service and location where it makes sense, and stop there.