Local SEO: the fundamentals
Google Business Profile, NAP consistency, customer reviews, local pages: the essential foundation of local SEO, before even thinking about GEO.
Local SEO covers the practices that let a business appear in search results and on maps for geolocated queries. It's an essential foundation before working on local GEO, since generative AIs rely heavily on the same structured data and review ecosystem as traditional search engines.
What local SEO covers
Local SEO aims to appear in results tied to a specific geographic area: a search like "plumber in Lyon" or "italian restaurant near me" triggers specific results (the local pack, maps) distinct from standard organic results. It primarily concerns businesses with a physical presence or a defined service area: shops, tradespeople, healthcare professionals, restaurants, agencies.
Local SEO rests on three main pillars: the business listing (Google Business Profile above all), the consistency of business information across the web, and customer reviews. These three pillars also form the base that local GEO builds on, covered in the dedicated lesson on getting recommended by AI near you.
Google Business Profile: the foundation of everything
The Google Business Profile listing (formerly Google My Business) is the reference point for any business with a local presence. It centralizes the information shown on Google Maps and in the local pack of search results, and serves as a source for many other services that sync their local data.
The elements to prioritize:
- The primary and secondary categories, chosen precisely rather than by default.
- Hours, kept up to date including for holidays and one-off exceptions.
- Photos, regularly refreshed, showing the premises, the team, or the products.
- The business description, written without keyword stuffing but covering the terms your customers actually use.
- Q&A and posts, often neglected but still visible and consulted.
An incomplete or poorly maintained listing isn't just a missed opportunity: it can also get filled with incorrect information from other sources, which can be hard to correct afterward.
NAP consistency (name, address, phone)
NAP stands for "Name, Address, Phone". The principle is simple: these three pieces of information must be identical, down to the character, across every platform where your business appears — website, Google listing, directories, social media, press. An address written differently from one place to another ("Street" vs. "St." for example), or an old phone number still showing on a directory, blurs the signal sent to engines and can slow down recognition of your business as a reliable, unique entity.
A periodic audit of NAP mentions is recommended, especially after a move or a phone number change: outdated details tend to linger for a long time on third-party sources if not actively corrected.
Reviews: the most visible signal
Customer reviews, along with the business listing, are the most decisive signal in local SEO. Their number, average rating, and recency directly influence ranking in the local pack. Responding to reviews — both positive and negative — is also factored in and shows active management of your online reputation.
This signal extends well beyond traditional local SEO: it's also one of the off-site signals that matter for visibility in generative AI answers, which rely on the same review platforms to assess a business's reputation.
Local pages: when and how to create them
For a business operating across several geographic areas (multiple branches, multiple cities served), creating a dedicated page per area can make sense — provided each page includes content genuinely specific to that location (address, local team, local market specifics, reviews from customers in that area) rather than a mere duplicate of generic text with the city name swapped.
A local page without differentiating content adds little value and can even hurt, by giving the impression of a site built purely to multiply indexed pages. Conversely, a page that genuinely answers the questions of a customer in that area (precise service area, turnaround times, dedicated team) has real value, for visitors and engines alike.
The link between local SEO and local GEO
Generative AIs answering local questions ("what's the best X near me?") rely heavily on the same sources as local SEO: business listings, reviews, information consistency, and increasingly on partnerships between AI platforms and mapping or review services. A business absent or poorly filled in on these basic sources starts at a disadvantage that's hard to overcome, regardless of the quality of its web content.
That's why local SEO isn't a step to skip before working on local GEO: it's the foundation any AI recommendation is built on. The levers specific to local GEO — how AIs handle proximity queries, what actually influences the recommendation — are covered in the next lesson on local GEO. Local link building, through partnerships and community press, also completes this foundation — a topic explored further in the lesson on link building for a small business.