Local SEO Services: What Actually Moves Local Rankings
Before anything else: we do not sell local SEO services, retainers or contracts. We provide a free website audit and a free deep audit (three free when you create a free account and one free each month after that, then £9.99 for another, or Pro at £14.99 a month for 15). This page exists so you can brief a provider properly, or work out that you do not need one.
What Google says decides local ranking
Google publishes this rather than leaving it to speculation. Its guidance on improving local ranking names three factors:
- Relevance — “how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for.” Complete, detailed business information is what improves it.
- Distance — “how far each business is from the customer who’s searching.”
- Prominence — “how well-known a business is.” Google ties this directly to links and to reviews: “More reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking.”
Two things follow, and both are worth knowing before you buy anything.
Distance is not purchasable. No amount of monthly spend moves your premises closer to the person searching. A provider promising to win “near me” searches across a whole city is promising something the ranking model does not offer.
Neither is a ranking position. Google states it flatly: “There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.” Any guarantee of position one is therefore either a misunderstanding or a lie.
That leaves relevance and prominence — a real but much narrower surface than a typical local SEO package implies.
What the work actually consists of
Mapped honestly onto the factors it moves:
| The work | What it moves | Ongoing or one-off? |
|---|---|---|
| Completing your Business Profile — categories, services, hours, service areas, photos | Relevance | Mostly one-off, then occasional upkeep |
| Fixing name, address and phone mismatches across site and directories | Relevance | One-off, unless details change |
| Collecting reviews and replying to them | Prominence | Genuinely ongoing |
| Local links — press, trade bodies, sponsorships, suppliers | Prominence | Genuinely ongoing |
| Location pages that answer real questions about areas you serve | Relevance | One-off per area |
Notice how much of that column is one-off. Profile completion and NAP fixes are the two highest-yield jobs in local SEO and both are finite work. Reviews and links are the parts that genuinely need someone doing them every month — which is the honest case for a retainer, and the only one.
The thresholds we actually use
Our audit runs sixteen checks against a Google Business Profile. These are the bars it applies, and why — published so you can hold your own profile to them without paying anyone, and check any provider’s claims against a stated standard:
Reviews
- No reviews at all — flagged as a high-severity problem. Review count and rating are among the heaviest local ranking factors, and they are what an AI assistant quotes when asked whether you are any good.
- Fewer than ten reviews — flagged. Below roughly ten, your average rating carries little weight, and a competitor with more will be preferred.
- Rating below 4.0, once you have at least five reviews — flagged. Below 4.0 measurably suppresses click-through, and models summarising your business will surface the number.
- Most recent review older than 180 days — flagged. Velocity is a signal in its own right; a profile that stopped collecting reviews reads as a business that stopped trading.
Listing completeness
- No opening hours published — flagged. “Are they open now” is one of the most common local queries, and a profile without hours cannot answer it.
- Primary category — recorded and shown alongside every other category on the listing, because the primary one does most of the work and is the field most often left on a Google-guessed default.
- Operational status — this is the only check in the local set we rate critical. If Google lists you as closed or moved and that is wrong, it suppresses the business everywhere Google surfaces it, and no other local work will outrun it.
Consistency between profile and website
- Phone mismatch — we take the phone number from your Business Profile and check whether it appears anywhere on your website, including inside your
LocalBusinessorOrganizationstructured data. If it does not, that is flagged. - Postcode mismatch — same check against your address. The postcode is the most reliable part of a UK address to match on, so that is what we compare.
Inconsistent details weaken local ranking and, increasingly, give an AI assistant two different answers to the same question about you.
These particular checks need live Google Business Profile data, which is a paid source, so they run on the deep audit rather than the quick essential scan. The free scan is upfront about that: it lists what it did not check, and you can launch the free deep audit right from the report.
Check it yourself first, in ten minutes
Every one of these is free and tells you more than a sales call will:
- Search “[your service] [your town]” in a private window, on mobile data rather than office wifi. Your own logged-in results are personalised and flatter you.
- Count your reviews against two direct competitors. If they are above ten and you are below, you have found the gap.
- Check the date of your newest review. More than six months is the line we use.
- Open your Business Profile and check the primary category. Not the list — the primary one.
- Search your own phone number and postcode on your own website. If they do not both appear, you have a NAP mismatch, and it costs nothing to fix.
Those five results are a better brief than most agencies will produce in a first meeting.
What to ask a provider
The useful question is not “what will you do” but “what did you find, and which of the three factors does fixing it move?”
- Which specific fields on my profile are incomplete or wrong?
- Is my primary category correct, and what would you change it to?
- How will you get reviews — and what exactly will you ask customers to do? Google’s review policies prohibit offering incentives “in exchange for posting any review”, and prohibit anyone who would “discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews”. If the answer involves screening customers before asking, the risk lands on your profile, not on theirs.
- Which local sites will you approach for links, by name?
- What here is one-off work, and what genuinely needs doing every month?
That last one is the question a good provider will answer honestly and a poor one will avoid, because a truthful answer shrinks the retainer.
What it costs
Local SEO is normally sold as a single-channel retainer rather than full-service work. The most transparent UK analysis available, Whito’s study of UK agency retainers, puts single-channel retainers at £1,250–£3,500 a month — though it discloses no sample size, so treat it as a documented estimate. Globally, the Ahrefs survey of 439 SEO providers found the most common retainer of any kind is $501–$1,000 a month, well below the averages agencies tend to quote.
Ask for local work to be priced separately rather than folded into a wider package. If a provider will not itemise it, you cannot tell whether you are paying for the finite jobs above or the ongoing ones.
Where to go next
If you are not yet sure the problem is local at all, why your business does not appear on Google separates the three different problems people describe with the same words. For the profile itself, Google Business Profile optimisation is the field-by-field version. And if you are weighing a provider more broadly, what SEO services cost and how to choose covers the pricing data and the questions in more depth.
Frequently asked questions
What decides local search ranking?
Google names three factors: relevance (how well your profile matches the search), distance (how far you are from the searcher), and prominence (how well known you are, which it links directly to review volume and links). Google also states plainly that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.
How many Google reviews do I need?
Our audit treats zero reviews as a serious problem and fewer than ten as a real one, because below roughly ten reviews the average rating carries little statistical weight against a competitor who has more. A rating under 4.0 once you have at least five reviews is also flagged, since it measurably suppresses click-through.
Do old reviews still count?
Partly. Review velocity is a signal in its own right, so we flag a profile whose most recent review is more than 180 days old. A profile that stopped collecting reviews reads like a business that stopped trading — to Google and to the AI assistants now summarising these profiles.
How much do local SEO services cost?
Local SEO is usually sold as a single-channel retainer. The most transparent UK analysis puts single-channel retainers at £1,250 to £3,500 a month, and the largest global survey of SEO providers found the most common retainer of any kind is $501 to $1,000. Ask for local work to be priced separately rather than bundled.
What is NAP consistency and does it matter?
Name, address and phone number matching across your website, your Business Profile and directories. It matters because inconsistent records give Google — and an AI assistant — two different answers to the same question. Our audit checks whether the phone number and postcode on your Business Profile actually appear on your website.