12 Best Local SEO Tips for 2025 to Rank Higher On Google

 Are you looking to improve your business’s ranking in local search results? Local SEO is the key.

It doesn’t matter what product or service you offer; if you want to attract local customers, you need to do local search engine optimization.

According to Moz, 90% of purchases occur in physical stores, and 80% of US disposable income is spent within a 20-mile radius of home. So yes, optimizing your stores for local searches can take your business to the next level.

In this detailed guide, let’s talk about how you can get more out of it. But first, let’s start with the basics.

What is local SEO?

Local SEO is optimizing your business for relevant local searches.

To put it simply, local business SEO is a strategy that enables businesses to enhance their online presence, particularly for their local target audience.

Search engine optimization (SEO) that is tailored to location data is known as local SEO. Basically, local SEO enables search engine crawlers to give highly relevant results to users based on location data.

After all, what’s the use of finding a pizza shop in New York if you are staying in Delhi?

The competition is comparatively lower in local SEO as you only have to compete with fewer services, products, or other businesses. If you have a better product, you can easily attract more customers from search engines if your website is perfectly optimized for local SEO.

For instance, “Best Delhi Decorators” can bring you a lot of search visibility if your site is optimized correctly with relevant keywords focused on local SEO terms, such as Delhi event management, top Delhi decorators, and Decoration events in Delhi.

Why is local SEO important?

So why should you even care about local SEO optimization? If you’re curious to know the benefits of local business SEO, here are some of them.

• Whether you know it or not, nearly half of all Google searches are local queries. That means people are searching for products/services that are near them. That’s why “near me” searches are proliferating.
• 50% of mobile users who conduct local searches visit the store within one day.
• Greater local visibility means more traffic to your stores, more customers, and ultimately more sales.
• Generate highly qualified visitors, and your conversions will be much higher when you optimize for local searches.

Additionally, take a look at these interesting statistics about local SEO to understand its significance.

According to HubSpot marketing statistics, 82% of smartphone shoppers conduct searches using the phrase “near me.” 72% of consumers who conduct a local search visit a store within a 5-mile radius.

Enough said! Let’s now discuss some of the most valuable lists of local SEO tips that you can use to get top rankings on Google for your business. Let’s get started without much ado.

12 Best Ways to Rank In Local Search [2025 Guide]

1. Collect and Respond to Customer Reviews

Every new customer/buyer trusts a business that offers transparency. 

Having genuine customer reviews on your business services is the most critical thing for your local SEO. It indicates strong trust signals for both customers and Google, demonstrating that your business is trustworthy and reliable.

If you look at any ranking local business, you will notice a single thing in common: that they have more genuine and recent reviews than their competitors. Google loves such honest feedback from actual customers as a signal of popularity and quality. 

That means, your customer opinion matters! And it’s not just about collecting reviews; responding to them is also crucial. It helps you build credibility with your customers and also helps in ranking higher. 

All you have to do is collect positive reviews for your business and respond to them to show that you care. Google rewards this by boosting your visibility in local searches. 

How to do it:

Now, to gain the most reviews, here are a few tips that you can use;

1. Firstly, after a successful purchase, you can request a review of the product or the service provided. You can share a direct review link via email, WhatsApp, or SMS, so that your customers don’t have to look for the feedback link. 

For example, if you own a salon, you can send a “thank-you” message or “hope you liked our service” with a Google review link.

2. Next, responding to the reviews is also a significant factor. It can happen, such as when your customer doesn’t like the service provided and posts a criticism in a review. In such cases, you can reply to express your appreciation for the feedback. 

For instance, you can reply with “Sorry, we missed the mark. We would love to fix this,” or for good feedback, “Thank you for your feedback. We hope to see you again soon.”

3. Additionally, genuine customer photos are valuable in reviews. New customers always look for genuine visuals. You can also request customer photos or videos when posting a review. 

Let’s say you own a fancy restaurant. Your customers would love to share pictures of specific dishes or the ambiance of your restaurant. 

Therefore, be sure to consistently collect reviews for your business to enhance your local SEO.

2. Post regular updates and offers on Google Business Profile

To stand out in local searches, you need to post regular updates and offers on your Google Business Profile. 

This is a crucial fact that most businesses overlook. Your GMP needs fresh updates, such as the latest offers, new photos, and posts, to improve search visibility. 

When you post regular updates and photos, your potential customers and Google will notice that this business is safe, transparent, and ready to serve.

This will also help in keeping your customers engaged and interested in choosing you over your competitors. 

Remember, the more active your profile is, the more Google will push it toward the top of “near me” searches. 

How to do it:

It is way simpler to implement this. Here are a few practical tips to make your Google Business Profile stand out.

1. Share your weekly offers and discounts. Make sure you post about your best deals on your profile. This will give customers a reason to return to your business and visit the store. 
2. When you launch a new product or a service, simply post about it on your profile. You can use photos or write a brief description to provide more details about it.
3. Share your most recent pictures of your service, staff, happy customers, products, or the ambience. These factors attract more views and clicks. 
4. Finally, add a Call-to-Action to your posts. Adding “Call now” or “Offer available only for today” encourages your customers to take action. 

3. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly

First things first: mobile searches are on the rise.

Did you know that over 60% of mobile searchers are more likely to contact a local business if they have a mobile-responsive site? To optimize for local SEO, ensure your site is mobile-friendly first.

If your site is not mobile-friendly, you are losing a significant amount of money. So make sure to ask your designer to create a mobile-friendly design for your site.

There’s a simple and free tool to check whether your site is mobile-responsive or not.

You can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to easily figure it out. Just enter your site’s URL, click on Test URL, and you’re done!

Here’s what it looks like;

As you can see above, if your site is mobile-friendly, you’re all set. If not, consider using a mobile-optimized design (we recommend checking out Divi themes or GeneratePress) or installing a WordPress plugin like WP Touch.

4. NAP is critical

NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone Number.

NAP is crucial for any business aiming to rank well in local search results.

Here’s an example of what NAP SEO looks like;

As you can see above, the NAP information is listed on Google My Business (GMB).

Since Google considers the NAP data when displaying relevant results for geo-targeted searches. Ensure that your NAP information is consistent across all relevant platforms, including your eCommerce store, website, app, and other appropriate channels.

Ensure that your NAP information is up-to-date and consistent to achieve optimal performance in local organic search results.

Where to use NAP information?

You should include NAP information on your website, social media profiles, local business listing pages, Google My Business, and wherever necessary.

Also, make sure to create a business page. Once you set up your website for local SEO, you need to first create a business page for your website. Include every single information that describes your business.

The key tip here is to optimize your business page for search engines. So use a variety of keywords that define and attract your potential customers. That way, you are not only creating a user-friendly business page that increases your brand awareness, but you are also attracting organic visitors.

5. Get listed on GMB

Google My Business (GMB) is probably the #1 business profile listing site, which helps you reach and engage with local customers across Google Search and Maps.

Here’s what a Google My Business listing looks like;

As you can see above, you can get a GMB listing for both desktop and mobile users, which can immensely help you get more customers if you’re on a Google My Business listing.

To get started with your listing, you need to sign in to Google My Business (by signing in to your Google Account or creating a new one). Then, click Next.

Now, you can simply sign up with your business email domain and enter the name of your business.

You may also be asked to position a marker on the location of your business branch on a map. Finally, make sure to verify your account (read more details here). Once you are verified, you can edit your business information, respond to reviews, and add photos.

6. Find better keywords to rank for

You need to conduct keyword research to find low-competitive yet highly profitable keyword phrases to rank for.

You need to create a list of your target keywords. Keyword research is a no-brainer. Before dominating the local search results, you need to first define your target audience. Ensure you generate keyword ideas that have genuine potential for your business to rank higher in search engine results.

Using locally based keywords is the key to starting to dominate your local results and being found by your local customers.

Before conducting keyword research, ask yourself these questions.

• What keywords are your target customers searching?
• Are they ready to buy if they have enough solutions?
• Or are they just doing research for your keywords?
• Is your target audience ready to pay a high amount?
• What keywords are my competitors ranking for?

When it comes to keyword research, there’s ONLY one SEO tool that really comes in handy, and the tool is Semrush (read our in-depth review of Semrush).

Semrush is the same tool that we’ve been using for more than 4 years now, and we’re delighted with its results.

You can easily find a ton of profitable yet low-competitive long-tail keywords with Semrush. Here’s what it looks like;

As you can see above, you can find keywords along with other keyword metrics like search volume, trend, keyword difficulty, competition, and so on.

So what are you waiting for? Use the following link to grab their 14-day trial for free.

Click here to get a 14-day free Semrush Pro account (worth $129.95)

7. Get listed on local review sites

Apart from getting listed on GMB, you also need your business to get listed on other local review sites if you want to get more visibility for your local business.

It will also help you with user reviews, as they will not only increase awareness of the services or products you offer but also provide more local visibility, which enables you to gain more trust from users.

Here are a few top local review sites that you can try:

• Yelp
• Google Places
• Judy’s Book
• Angie’s List
• Yahoo! local
• Bing
• MerchantCircle
• Citysearch
• Foursquare

Ensure that you encourage your store visitors and users to leave 5-star and positive reviews for your services and products across these review sites.

Encourage your existing subscribers and readers to leave positive reviews about your products. This definitely helps your local SEO results to get more visibility. Additionally, it serves as social proof, attracting even more customers.

8. Keep an eye on your competitors

It doesn’t matter what niche you are in; if you want to take your local SEO strategy to the next level, you need to spy on your competitors’ strategies.

Why? There are so many benefits of competitor research, including;

• Gives you a ton of profitable topic ideas to write about
• Gives you ideas on what pages (products and services) are performing well in your niche
• You can find a ton of other monetization strategies that you never thought of

Enough said! How can you spy on your competitors then?

Use competitor research tools like Semrush.

Once you get access to Semrush, focus on finding the following things;

• Perform deep organic research, which helps you find your competitors’ top-performing pages (including income-generating pages)
• Analyse your competitor traffic stats (find out if your competitors are getting traffic from search, social, referral, or paid, so you can also think about using those traffic sources)
• Find their Organic Search Positions (Semrush helps you with that!)
• Keep an eye on their SERP competition strength (to see what keywords their rankings are improving or declining)

Finally, make sure to do some PLA research (Product Listing Ads) using Semrush, as it reveals your competitor’s ads information, including all the keywords, titles, CPC, cost, and paid traffic they are using to generate more sales to their sites.

Bonus Read: Stay competitive in your local market by understanding the Future of SEO and adapting to new strategies.

9. Optimize your site layout

Your website is definitely the centre of your online marketing success. Your website should be easily accessible to both search engine crawlers and your website users.

One of the key local business SEO strategies is to create a web-friendly design. Here are some quick tips to help you optimize your site properly in 2025.

• Use a responsive theme that is faster.
• Move to a better web host (as your site speed mostly depends on your hosting, and we highly recommend you try WPX Hosting)
• Improve your page loading times (install a caching plugin, use a CDN, optimize images, optimize your site’s CSS, HTML, and JavaScript code)
• Enable AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) to provide better performance for mobile users.
• Create a mobile app (in case you want to take your online business to the next level)

Promoting hosting affiliate programs? Find the best hosting solutions to support your efforts in our best web hosting post.

Here are some of the basic yet essential questions to consider when optimizing your site’s layout.

Is your site user-friendly? Your readers should be able to easily navigate your business pages, contact pages, product pages, and other relevant sections. Make sure to use social media sites to easily find you and use the search box to browse your categories and products.

Is your site search engine-friendly? If your site is not optimized for search engines, it’s almost impossible for you to rank higher for your product keywords.

Therefore, it’s essential to ensure that your home page and internal pages are properly optimized with relevant keywords. Additionally, focus on optimizing your site’s loading time to achieve better local SEO results.

Is your site mobile-friendly? Increasingly, users are relying on tablets, smartphones, and other devices to browse and purchase items online. So optimizing your site for mobile (as we earlier discussed) is a no-brainer.

10. Create local content

To rank #1 on Google for local search results, you need to cater to your audience with local content. There are several types of local content you can create, which are explained below.

FAQ pages: You can rank for featured snippets (also known as zero position) if you’re creating useful FAQ pages on your site. According to BrightLocal, 58% of customers have used voice search to find local business information in the last 12 months. FAQ pages help you easily rank for voice searches.

Create city-specific pages: If you want to target specific local cities in your region, create dedicated landing pages for each city. Offer exclusive discounts and deals on your products and services to attract more customers.

Cover local events: There may be events limited only to your local region, which can be seasonal, regional, or promotional. By covering local events and targeting the right keyword phrases, you can attract highly targeted visitors from organic search results.

Create videos explaining your services: YouTube is the second-largest search engine. If you create videos that describe the products and services you offer, the chances are you will get rewarding results in search results for various keywords you are targeting.

Simply get a tripod and start shooting your own videos, explaining your business to improve your local SEO rankings. Ensure that you use your primary keywords in the video’s meta description, title, and tags to improve your rankings for those keywords. Additionally, start link building for your videos to increase their visibility.

11. Acquire relevant backlinks

If you’re running an online store or website, link building is crucial for driving more organic traffic. Search engines like Google place a great deal of importance on backlinks.

One of the best local SEO tips you can’t ignore is building links for your business-oriented websites. Without incoming links, your website won’t survive to get more organic traffic.

Make sure to get links from

• your competitors (perform competitor analysis using tools like Semrush to find your competitors’ backlink sources)
• your local business groups
• local business directories
• your local newspaper websites
• your peers who have sites
• your partners, vendors, etc

When it comes to link building, we highly recommend trying guest posting on relevant sites within your industry. As guest posting is the best way to build highly relevant and high-quality links, regardless of your niche.

Additionally, utilize blog commenting sites, such as Quora, to answer questions related to your niche. Although they are nofollow links, they do attract quality traffic and help you balance your backlink profile nicely.

Although link building takes time, it is worth the investment of your time and money. Be sure to also use press releases to build credibility around your business, as they help boost your branding awareness and overall local SEO strategy.

Note: Go through this detailed post on “the Beginner’s Guide to Link Building in Google’s Panda and Penguin Era” to build ethical backlinks around your sites.

12. Don’t forget on-page SEO

On-page SEO is the process of optimizing your individual pages for specific keywords. If done correctly, on-page SEO can bring you a significant number of visitors from search engines. Just keep in mind to use LSI keywords instead of keyword stuffing.

LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords are those keywords that are semantically related to your primary keyword. For example, “Apple” is an LSI keyword for products such as iPad, MacBook, iPhone, etc.

That being said, here are some practical on-page SEO tips that are easier to implement to boost your local SEO.

• Utilize your primary keyword, H1, and title tags, as they are crucial elements for on-page optimization.
• Use short and properly optimized URLs
• Include images and use alt tags with your target keywords (make sure to optimize their sizes before uploading for faster page loading times)
• Always link to other relevant internal pages on your site, as it helps with deep crawling and more link juice to other pages on your site
• Use proper optimization plugins like Rank Math or WordPress SEO by Yoast, as they help you quickly optimize your posts for your primary keywords

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Final Thoughts on Top Local SEO Tips 2025

The ability to rank in local search results really depends on prominence, distance, relevance, link signals, etc. Always ensure that you focus on obtaining positive reviews from your customers and properly optimizing your website for local SEO to achieve the best results.

If you want to really dominate your local search results, focus on defining your key audience first. Then, build brand awareness and start using potential keywords to dominate your local business search rankings. Though there are many local SEO strategies, you need to figure out which keywords give you more weight and then start using them on your business websites.

Do you have any more questions about local search engine optimization? Let us know in the comments.

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FAQs | Best Local SEO Techniques

Here are some of the most important questions to consider when optimizing for local search engine rankings.