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Local SEO: win the searches happening around you

Last reviewed and updated

Local search rewards consistency and proof of presence more than volume of content. This guide runs the six jobs in order — local keywords, listing accuracy, location pages, reviews, local links, then per-city tracking.

Each step links to the free tools that do the measuring, so you can check your own site as you read.

1Find the searches people actually make nearby

Local intent is phrased differently: service plus city, service plus neighbourhood, and bare "near me" queries. Start from the service words your customers use, then expand into the geographic modifiers that carry real volume.

Long-tail local phrases are usually winnable within weeks because national competitors never target the city name explicitly.

Tools for this step

These checks need a data provider connected. For a live measurement right now, run the SEO dashboard audit against the same URL.

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2Get the business listing and NAP consistent

Name, address and phone must match character-for-character everywhere they appear: your site footer, business profile, directories and social pages. Inconsistent details are the most common reason a legitimate business ranks below thinner competitors.

Pick one primary category, add the secondary ones honestly, and keep opening hours current — stale hours quietly suppress visibility.

Tools for this step

Meta Tag GeneratorGenerate title, description, robots, canonical and viewport tags with live length guidance.Live
URL Slug GeneratorConvert headlines into clean, lowercase, hyphenated URL slugs.Live
Word CounterCount words, characters, sentences and paragraphs, estimate reading time and see the keyword frequency of any passage.Live

Tools marked Live open a working workspace that runs entirely in your browser — start with Meta Tag Generator and URL Slug Generator.

3Build one real page per location or service area

Every location deserves a page with a unique address, embedded directions, staff or photos from that site, and copy about that area specifically. Duplicating one template across twenty cities produces twenty pages that all fail.

Add LocalBusiness structured data with the address, geo coordinates and hours so the details are machine-readable.

Tools for this step

Keyword Density CheckerMeasure one, two and three word phrase density in pasted copy and spot over-optimisation.Live
HTML Viewer & SanitizerPreview HTML with scripts, event handlers and unsafe URLs stripped, and inspect the cleaned markup.Live
Canonical Tag GeneratorEmit a normalised canonical link element and catch common self-reference mistakes.API

Tools marked Live open a working workspace that runs entirely in your browser — start with Keyword Density Checker and HTML Viewer & Sanitizer.

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4Earn and answer reviews continuously

Review volume, recency and replies all feed local visibility, and they are the strongest conversion lever on the page. Ask at the moment the job is finished, never in bulk after a quiet month.

Answer every review, including the negative ones, in plain language. Prospects read the replies more carefully than the ratings.

Tools for this step

Text SummarizerExtractive summariser that scores sentences by keyword weight and position, then returns the strongest ones verbatim.Live

Tools marked Live open a working workspace that runs entirely in your browser — start with Text Summarizer.

6Track rankings and technical health per city

Local results vary by the searcher's position, so track each city term separately rather than assuming one national position. Record the result over time and watch the direction, not a single check.

Keep the site fast and mobile-clean: local searches skew heavily to phones, often on weak connections.

Tools for this step

These checks need a data provider connected. For a live measurement right now, run the SEO dashboard audit against the same URL.

Go deeper

  • SEO dashboard — Live rank checks, backlink verification and page scores.

Related tools

The checks a local site needs most often.

Word CounterCount words, characters, sentences and paragraphs, estimate reading time and see the keyword frequency of any passage.Live

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Keep going

SEO guideHow local work fits the wider workflow.On-page SEO guideTags, headings and internal links.SEO auditRun the full six-pass audit on your site.Domain reportSite metrics, backlinks and competitors.