Local SEO: how to rank your business on Google Maps

Someone types "plumber near me" or "hairdresser in Gràcia" and Google shows them a map with a few businesses, their stars, their opening hours and a button to call. Local SEO is the work of getting your business in among them, and of making it show up high on the list when someone in your area searches Google Maps for what you sell.

It rests on three things that depend on you more than on your website: the profile Google holds on your business, your customers' reviews and having the same contact details everywhere. That is why it matters so much to anyone who lives off customers from their neighbourhood or town, a dental clinic, a garage, an accountancy firm, a restaurant or a shop with a counter. That customer decides fast, phone in hand. If your business isn't on that map the search still happens, and the call goes to someone else.

A good part of the work can be done by the owner, without touching the website and without knowing anything about SEO.

How to create or claim your Google Business Profile

Before you create anything, look your business up on Google Maps by name. It is quite common for a profile to exist already, and in that case you don't create another one, you claim it. Two profiles for the same business confuse anyone looking for you.

If there isn't one, go to business.google.com/add with a Google account that belongs to the company, not to an employee, and fill in the details it asks for, with the address carefully checked. That creates the profile but leaves it unverified, and until you verify it you can't edit it or reply to customers from it.

If the profile already exists, open it in Maps and tap the option to claim it, the one asking whether you own this business. If someone else manages it, a previous agency for instance, Google lets you request access and the current owner has 3 days to respond. If they don't reply, it may let you claim it yourself, although that option doesn't always appear.

Verification is the step where most people get stuck. Google decides which methods to offer you based on the business and the area, and you can't change them. They can be phone or text, email, a live video call, a recorded video or a postcard with a code. If you get the video, you record it on your phone from the profile, in one take and unedited, showing where the business is, the sign with the same name as the profile and something that proves you run it, such as the till or the branded van. If you get the postcard, don't change the name, address or category until you've entered the code, because it stops working.

How to optimise your profile to rank higher on Google Maps

Google orders the map using three criteria it explains in its own help pages: relevance (whether your profile matches what was searched for), distance and prominence, which is how well known your business is. Distance is out of your hands, the other two are worked on mainly from the profile.

Your real name and primary category, without keyword stuffing

The name on the profile has to be the one on your sign, your invoices and your website. The temptation is to put "Pérez Dental Clinic, emergency dentist in Valencia", because you see it often on Maps. Google's guidelines don't allow unnecessary information in the name, any user, competitors included, can suggest a correction, and Google warns that it may suspend the profile for it.

Google asks you to choose the most specific category that represents your main activity. We treat it as the most important field on the profile, because it is what tells Google what you are. Pick the most precise one for whatever brings in most of the business's revenue, "Dentist" rather than "Health services", and add the ones that cover the rest as secondary categories. To decide, look at which category the top Maps results have for your main service.

What customers check on your profile before they call

A half-finished profile converts worse, because the customer is left not knowing whether you open on Saturdays or whether you cover their village. Go over your opening hours, holiday hours included, which spares you the one-star review from whoever found the shutters down. If you work at customers' homes, set your service area by town or postcode (it allows up to 20 areas) and, if you don't serve customers at your address, remove it from the profile, which is what the rules ask of businesses that travel to the customer.

Under services and products, describe what you sell in your customers' words. A plumber who lists "unblocking drains", "water heater replacement" and "leak repairs" describes what they do better than one who only puts "plumbing", and that is exactly what Google calls relevance. In the description (up to 750 characters) say what you do, since when and in which area.

Photos are the most neglected part. Upload the front of the premises as it looks from the street, the inside, the team and real jobs, and add a new one every month. A profile with old photos sends the same message as a dusty shop window.

Google reviews: why they matter and how to get them

Reviews count twice. Google counts them towards prominence (its help pages mention the number of reviews and positive ratings). And customers read them before they call, comparing your rating with the business next door. That customer also cares about the date, because a profile with good but old reviews and nothing for months looks like a business that has closed.

How to ask for reviews without offering anything in return

From the profile, under "Read reviews" and then "Get more reviews", Google gives you a link and a QR code (the QR code downloads from a computer) that take people straight to leaving a review. Send it by WhatsApp or email right after the job, while the customer still remembers you, with an ordinary sentence. In a business with a counter, the QR code at the till or printed on the receipt works well.

What you can't do is set out in Google's content policies. You don't offer a discount, a gift or a free product in exchange for a review, even if you ask for an "honest" one. Nor can you ask only the customers you think will be happy, or publish reviews with a conflict of interest, such as those from employees or relatives. Google removes this kind of review and can restrict the profile, for example by blocking new reviews for a while or showing a notice that fake reviews have been removed.

Consistency is worth more than a campaign. If asking for the review is part of wrapping up every job, they arrive gradually and look natural, whereas a flood of reviews in a few days after years with none makes the customer reading them suspicious.

How to reply to every review, negative ones included

For a good review it is enough to say thanks, using the customer's name and some reference to the job, along the lines of "thanks, Marta, we're glad the water heater was sorted the same day". That shows a person has read it.

The negative one is the one a hesitant customer reads. Reply quickly (we give ourselves one or two days as a limit) and without arguing in public, acknowledge whatever is true, explain what you can in one sentence and offer to continue the conversation by phone or email. Whoever reads it isn't trying to work out who was right, they want to see how you treat someone when something goes wrong.

If the review is fake, from someone who was never a customer, or breaks the rules because it is abusive or spam, you can report it from "Read reviews" on the profile itself. Google only removes it if it breaches its policies, and in that case a short, polite reply is still your best protection.

The same details on your website, your profile and directories

In the trade this is called NAP, for name, address and phone number, and each mention of the business on another website is called a citation. The widespread view in the industry is that when they match, Google trusts the business more, but Google doesn't publish how it uses those mentions. We work on it for a simpler reason, when one site says "C/ Mayor 12" with an old phone number and another says "Calle Mayor, 12, bajo" with a different number, the customer can end up ringing a phone nobody answers.

Choose one exact way of writing the name, address and phone number, and use it the same way in the footer and contact page of your website, on your Google profile, on Apple Maps through Apple Business (formerly Apple Business Connect), on Bing Places, on Facebook and Instagram and on Páginas Amarillas. Then add the directories for your sector, such as Doctoralia for clinics, TheFork or TripAdvisor for restaurants, or the directory of your professional body or your local traders' association.

Also search Google for the business name and the old phone number, if it changed, to find old listings and directories that were never updated. If you find a duplicate profile on Google Maps, flag it with "Suggest an edit" and the "Duplicate of another place" option, rather than leaving it live.

How much local SEO costs and how long it takes

Creating and using a Google Business Profile is free, as is an Apple Maps listing. The cost of local SEO is almost entirely time, yours or that of whoever does it for you.

Done by the owner, the set-up (creating or claiming the profile, verifying it, filling in the fields and checking the main directories) takes, by our estimate, somewhere in the region of one to three days of work spread out, depending on how messy the starting data is. After that, maintenance comes down to a couple of hours a week. They go on reviews, photos and checking that nobody has changed the details on your profile, because any user can suggest edits and, if you don't respond to the notification within 4 days, Google may publish them when they match other public information.

If you outsource it, prices in Spain vary a lot depending on the number of premises, the competition in the area and whether the service includes work on the website. As our own guide, and not as a price list, a local SEO service for a business with a single location usually sits in a range of about €150 to €600 a month. Tracking tools such as Local Falcon or BrightLocal have plans starting at around 25 and 41 dollars a month respectively, according to their pricing pages in October 2026. For a single business we don't recommend them.

There is no official figure for timescales. What we see is that changes to the profile show up sooner, and that reviews and citations work by accumulation, so in an area with a lot of competition clear results usually take months.

What you can do yourself and when a professional is worth it

Claiming and verifying the profile, choosing the category, filling in the fields, uploading photos and, above all, asking for and replying to reviews are tasks nobody does better than the person who knows the business and talks to customers every day. A single-location business in an area with little competition can stop there.

Having a professional handle it pays off in fairly specific situations:

• You have several premises and need to manage several profiles, with the details consistent between them and with the website.
• You compete in a hotly contested sector in a big city, such as dentists, lawyers or locksmiths in Madrid or Barcelona, where a well-built profile isn't enough and you have to work on the website, the area pages and local links.
• The profile is suspended, verification won't go through or there are duplicates and third-party details you can't get removed.
• You aren't going to find those hours every week.

Before you hire anyone, ask them to show you how they will measure results, for example with the calls and direction requests that appear in the profile's own performance data. And be wary of anyone who promises the top spot on the map within a fixed time, because the distance between the customer and your premises is a criterion nobody can change.

If you'd rather have someone take care of the profile, the reviews and the directories while you run the business, at Sem Seo Agency we handle local SEO on Google Maps for small businesses that live off customers in their area.