Search for "dentist near me" or "electrician in Amsterdam" and above the regular results you'll almost always see the same thing: a map and three businesses. That local pack is the most valuable real estate in local search — and in my work as an SEO consultant, a large share of all questions boil down to how to get in there.
The good news: Google doesn't hide the basic principles. In its official help on local ranking, Google names three factors: relevance, distance and prominence. The bad news: most businesses only ever work on one of them — and then wonder why they're stuck in eighth place. Let's go through all three.
Pillar 1: Relevance — does Google understand what you offer?
Relevance means: how well does your profile match the specific search? Google reads your Business Profile for this — and most profiles I audit are only half filled in.
- Choose your primary category as precisely as possible ("Physiotherapist", not "Health") and add every fitting secondary category.
- Enter your services and products individually — these are exactly the terms Google matches against searches.
- Write a business description that mentions your services and your location naturally, instead of stacking keywords.
- Keep opening hours, phone number and address identical everywhere — on Google, your website and in directories.
Pillar 2: Distance — the factor you barely control
You can't optimise the distance between the searcher and your location — but you can work with it honestly. If your service area is bigger than your address, your website needs pages that reflect it: real, substantive pages for the towns and regions you serve. We practise this on our own site — for example with dedicated area pages, like the ones behind our references from businesses across Germany and the Netherlands. What matters is that such pages offer genuine local content instead of swapping out a city name.
Pillar 3: Prominence — and why reviews weigh so heavily here
Prominence is the broadest factor: Google evaluates how well-known your business is online and offline. And this is where the lever you control most directly lives: reviews. Count, average rating, recency and your replies explicitly feed into local ranking according to Google.
In practice this means: a profile with 80 recent, answered reviews regularly beats profiles with a better website but 12 stale reviews in competitive cities. I've written up seven field-tested ways to get more reviews — and the fastest starting point is a review QR code at your counter, which our free tool generates as a print-ready PDF in a minute.
Beyond reviews, prominence includes mentions and links: entries in relevant industry directories, local press coverage, partner websites. Quality clearly beats quantity here.
Your website: the foundation under all three pillars
Google itself says website signals feed into local ranking. A fast website that works flawlessly on mobile, with clear service pages, supports your profile's relevance; local content supports distance and prominence. If your current website doesn't deliver that, it's usually the area with the biggest catch-up potential — which is exactly what our SEO services for local businesses are built for.
And one look ahead: more and more customers no longer ask Google but ChatGPT & Co. for "a good tax adviser nearby". Those answers, too, are fed by your profile, your reviews and your website — how to show up there is what we cover under GEO, visibility in AI search.
My takeaway
Local SEO isn't a trick, it's diligent work on three fields: a complete profile (relevance), honest local content (distance) and a steady stream of reviews and mentions (prominence). Start with what you can control today — your profile and your reviews — and get support for the rest if you want it: in a free consultation I'll look at where your business stands and which lever moves the most for you.