01 · Foundations
What local SEO actually is
When someone searches “emergency plumber near me” or “best dentist in Buffalo,” Google doesn't just return ten blue links. It returns a map with a short list of nearby businesses — the local pack — and, increasingly, an AI-generated answer that names a few specific options. Local SEO is the work of becoming one of those named, mapped businesses.
Google weighs three broad things when it ranks a profile: relevance (how well your profile matches the search), distance (how close you are to the searcher), and prominence (how well-known and well-regarded you are). You can't move your building, but you have a lot of control over relevance and prominence — and that's where the rest of this guide focuses.
The most important thing to understand is that local rank is not a single number. You might be number one on your own block and invisible three neighborhoods over. That's why a single “average rank” lies to you, and why heatmap rank tracking is the only honest way to measure progress.