For a business that works in a specific city or district, local SEO is often more important than regular SEO. If someone in Kyiv searches ‘dentist near me’ or ‘cafe in Podil’, they’ll choose from companies that show up in Google Maps, with photos, reviews and opening hours. The classic top 10 of search plays a secondary role — most users decide right from the Maps card.
Local SEO is a separate discipline with its own ranking rules. Google’s algorithm considers not only the quality of the site but also how complete the Google Business Profile is, the number and rating of reviews, the distance to the user, the relevance of categories, and profile activity. Simply ‘doing SEO’ on the site isn’t enough — it takes focused work with the whole local signal package.
Google Business Profile — the foundation of everything
This is a free tool from Google that many businesses treat as a ‘formality’: created it, wrote the name, added a phone number — and forgot. In reality GBP has dozens of parameters, each affecting visibility in Maps.
- Primary and additional categories. One wrong choice and the profile won’t show for 80% of relevant queries.
- Services. Each service is a separate card with a description and price. This affects rankings for specific queries.
- Photos. Not ‘a couple of stock images’ but 30+ original photos of the business: outside, inside, the team, the process, the results.
- Opening hours. Including holidays and special hours. Google penalizes profiles with out-of-date hours.
- Q&A section. We fill in typical questions in advance, rather than waiting for a random user to ask.
- Regular posts. Promotions, news, new services — at least once a week. Fresh content affects rankings.
Reviews: quantity, quality, responses
Reviews are the second most important ranking factor in local search. Google considers not only the average rating but also the number, the regularity of new ones, the presence of keywords in the text, and the owner’s responses.
We build a system for collecting reviews from real clients: automatic reminders after a visit, QR codes on receipts, a request at checkout. We don’t ‘buy reviews’ — that violates Google’s rules and gets the profile blocked. We handle negatives: fast, constructive responses to criticism, appealing fake reviews, analyzing complaint patterns.
NAP consistency
If your business is listed differently on the site, in GBP, on Facebook and in industry directories, Google can’t tell whether it’s the same business. The name, address and phone (NAP) must be identical everywhere, down to the punctuation. We go through every place the business is mentioned and bring the listings to a single format.
Local landing pages on the site
If you work in several cities, each needs its own page. Not ‘replace Kyiv with Lviv’ in the same text, but real localization: local address, local cases, office photos, local specifics of the offer, directions, parking. Such pages rank dozens of times better than a ‘smeared’ list of cities in the footer.
Citations and local links
Citations are mentions of your business in local directories (2GIS, Foursquare, niche aggregators). Each such mention is confirmation for Google that the business is real and operates at the stated location. Local links are links from local sites: city portals, local bloggers, media, partner organizations. One local link is often worth more than ten general ones.
What we don’t do
We don’t buy reviews. We don’t create fake profiles to inflate metrics. We don’t register made-up addresses ‘near the metro’ to expand the display area. Google detects all of this, and the profile gets blocked for such actions — and recovering a blocked GBP is nearly impossible.
Local SEO is a long game with concrete business metrics: calls from GBP, directions, site visits, leads. We always tie the work to these metrics, not just to a ‘spot in Maps’.
