Local SEO: how to show up on Google when people search in your city

When someone searches for "physiotherapist in Getafe" or "accountant near me", Google decides in less than a second who to show first. Local SEO is the work of being in that first snapshot, and of being well placed within it.

Showing up in local Google means being in two places at once

When you search for a business by area, Google shows you two different things on the same screen. At the top, a block with a map and three highlighted listings, known as "the local pack". Below it, the usual results, the plain old links. They're two shop windows with different rules, and it's worth working on them separately.

The first feeds off your Google Business Profile, the one that used to be called Google My Business. The second feeds off your website. Many small businesses look after one and forget the other, and so they only show up halfway: they appear on the map but their website doesn't hold up to comparison, or they have a decent website and an abandoned profile nobody has touched in years.

The map comes down to proximity, and this needs saying plainly

Google ranks the map pack on three criteria: relevance (how well you match what they're searching for), distance (how close you are to the person searching) and prominence (how well known and well regarded you are). Distance carries a lot of weight. A listing ranks near its address, not across the whole country.

Put into practice: if your premises are in Getafe, you'll show up strongly when people search from Getafe and the surrounding area, and very little when someone searches for the same thing from central Madrid or from Barcelona. However polished the listing is, you're not going to take over the map of a city where you have no physical presence. Knowing this upfront saves disappointment and promises nobody can keep. If you want to get to grips with this side of things, we have a guide dedicated to appearing on Google Maps and another on how to get your Google Business Profile ready to compete in your area.

"Service + city": what people about to buy type in

The searches that sell the most aren't the generic ones, but the ones with a city or a neighbourhood attached: "dentist in Getafe", "renovations in Alcorcón", "employment lawyer in Madrid". Someone who types like that already knows what they want and is close to deciding; all that's left is choosing who to call. Working on local SEO is, at heart, placing you right where that intent gets typed, with one page per service and per area written for people and organised for Google, not a homepage that tries to serve for everything and stands out at nothing.

What you want to win further afield is won in organic

To reach beyond your radius, or to win customers in a big city where you have no office, the work moves to the website. There, distance isn't what rules: content, domain authority and page speed are. A consultancy in Getafe can rank for "consulting for small businesses in Madrid" if it has a serious page dedicated to it, even if its office is thirty kilometres away.

That's why a business that takes it seriously works both sides at once: the listing for the nearby map and the website for everything else. If your ambition is a whole city, see how we aim web design in Madrid at "service + city" searches.

The numbers that explain it

You don't have to take it on faith. Three measured figures to put local SEO in its place:

How local SEO is done, step by step

Local SEO has no magic button. It's a sum of details done well and kept up over time. This is the order we follow:

• A complete Google Business Profile: real name, correct category, opening hours, phone, your own photos (not stock) and an honest description of what you do.
• Well-chosen categories: the primary category is the one that carries the most weight for the map; add the secondary ones you genuinely offer, without padding the list with things you don't do.
• Genuine reviews: ask happy customers for them and reply to every one, good and bad. They're a sign of trust for whoever reads them and of prominence for Google.
• Consistent NAP: name, address and phone written the same way on the website, on the profile and in directories. A different detail in each place adds noise for Google.
• Local content on the website: pages that talk about your service and your area, not a single generic homepage that serves for any city.
• A fast, clear website on mobile: if the page is slow or hard to follow, the click is lost even if you came up first.

If your business lives off the neighbourhood, start with the profile and with a web design in Getafe built to capture nearby; the rest is built on top. And not every business needs the same thing: a dentist who lives off their neighbourhood and a shop that wants to sell across the whole country are playing different games, so spending the budget on the wrong side is throwing money away. The first thing is to measure how people find you today, which searches you appear in, which you don't, and who's eating your spot. From there you decide what to move first. You can see everything we work on in our services and, if you like, we'll do you a web audit of how you're showing up in your area right now.