Search for almost any local service on Google and you'll see the same thing: a map with a handful of pins, followed by three business listings, each showing a name, star rating, address, phone number, and opening hours. That's the local pack, and it sits above all the regular organic search results.
The local pack matters because it's where people look first. Studies consistently show it captures somewhere between 40% and 60% of clicks on local search results pages. If your business isn't in it, you're losing a significant chunk of potential customers to whoever is.
Getting into the local pack requires a different approach to standard SEO. Here's how it works and what you need to do.
How Google decides who appears
Google uses three factors to determine which businesses appear in the local pack for any given search.
Relevance is how closely your business matches what someone searched for. If someone types "electrician Llandudno," Google looks for businesses it understands to be electricians in or near Llandudno. Your Google Business Profile, your website content, and the categories you've selected all feed into this.
Distance is exactly what it sounds like: how far your business is from the searcher, or from the location they specified in their search. Distance is a factor you can't directly control. If your business is in Llandudno and someone searches from Bangor, you may or may not appear depending on what else Google finds in between.
Prominence is the most complex factor. It's Google's assessment of how well-known and trusted your business is. This draws on your review volume and rating, how many times your business is mentioned around the web, how complete and active your Google Business Profile is, and whether your website has authority in your local area.
These three factors don't operate independently. A business that scores well across all three will consistently outrank one that only performs on one.
Your Google Business Profile
Your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is the single most important element of local pack performance. If you haven't claimed and verified your listing, that's the first thing to do. Go to business.google.com.
Once it's set up, completeness matters. Google favours profiles that are fully filled out because they give searchers better information. That means a thorough business description that naturally includes your services and location, accurate opening hours, a local phone number and address, your website URL, and photos.
Categories deserve particular attention. You get a primary category and can add secondary ones. Your primary category should be the most specific accurate description of what you do. "Electrician" is better than "Contractor." "Family solicitor" is better than "Legal services." Secondary categories let you cover other services you offer. Get these right and you'll appear for a wider range of relevant searches.
Posts work similarly to social media updates and appear on your profile. Publishing a post once or twice a week, about promotions, new services, recent projects, or useful information, signals to Google that your profile is active. It also gives potential customers more to look at when they find you.
The Q&A section is often ignored, but it's worth populating. You can add your own questions and answer them. Think about the questions you actually get asked before people book, things like parking, payment methods, service areas, or whether you offer free quotes. Answering these in the Q&A reduces friction and helps searchers.
NAP consistency
NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone number. Consistency of these details across the internet is a signal Google uses to verify that your business is legitimate and to confirm your location.
If your business name is listed as "Jones Plumbing Ltd" on your website but "Jones Plumbing" on a directory, and "J. Jones Plumbing Services" on another, Google has to make a judgement about whether these are all the same business. Inconsistencies create uncertainty, and uncertainty reduces trust.
Go through the major places your business appears online and make sure your NAP is identical on every one. That includes your website, Facebook, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Yell, Yelp, Thomson Local, Checkatrade, and any industry-specific directories. It also includes your Google Business Profile itself.
Use your registered business name consistently. Use the same phone number format. Use the same address format, including postcode.
Reviews: the part most businesses underestimate
Reviews are one of the most powerful local pack ranking signals, and they're one of the most visible signals to potential customers. A business with 80 reviews at 4.7 stars will almost always outperform a business with 12 reviews at 5 stars, all else being equal.
Three things matter with reviews.
Volume: the more genuine reviews you have, the stronger the signal. This is a slow build, which is why you should start asking for reviews now and never stop.
Recency: a profile with 200 reviews, the last of which was 18 months ago, looks dormant. Google prioritises profiles with recent activity. An ongoing stream of new reviews tells Google your business is active and current.
Response rate: responding to reviews, both positive and negative, is a ranking signal and a trust signal. It shows you're engaged with your customers and that you care about feedback. For negative reviews especially, a professional, measured response does more good than bad.
The mechanics of getting reviews are straightforward. Ask customers at the moment they're most satisfied. Make it easy by giving them a direct link. You can get a shortlink to your review form from your Google Business Profile dashboard. Some businesses add this link to their email signature, their invoices, or a follow-up message after a job is completed.
I worked with a North Wales heating engineer who had a fully complete GBP but only six reviews. A competitor nearby had 47 reviews at 4.6 stars and consistently outranked him. We set up a simple text message sequence asking for reviews after each job. Within three months he had 29 new reviews. Within five months, he was in the local pack for his main search terms and the competitor was third. The reviews did most of the work.
Never buy reviews or offer incentives in exchange for them. Google is good at spotting patterns, and a sudden spike of 5-star reviews from accounts with no history will either be filtered out or actively hurt your profile.
Local citation building
Citations are mentions of your business name, address, and phone number on other websites. They don't need to be links. A listing on Yell that just shows your NAP counts as a citation.
Building citations on reputable local and industry directories strengthens your prominence signal. The key directories for UK businesses include Yell, Yelp, Thomson Local, Bing Places, Apple Maps, and any trade-specific directories relevant to your industry. Electricians should be on Checkatrade and TrustATrader. Solicitors should be on the Law Society directory. Accountants on the ICAEW register. And so on.
The approach is methodical: identify where your competitors are listed, get yourself listed in the same places, and make sure your NAP is consistent everywhere. There are tools like BrightLocal and Whitespark that can audit your citation profile and find gaps.
The role of your website
Your website feeds into your local pack performance in a few ways. A well-optimised website with clear service pages, location references, and good authority supports your Google Business Profile rather than operating separately from it.
Make sure your website shows your address and phone number prominently, ideally in the header or footer on every page. Include your location naturally in your page content. A solicitor's website serving Conwy County should reference the specific towns and areas they cover. A tradesperson should have dedicated pages for each major service area if those searches are valuable.
Your website's domain authority also feeds into prominence. The more reputable websites that link to yours, the more Google trusts your business overall. Local SEO for small businesses covers this in more depth, including how local link building works in practice.
The one local pack factor most guides get wrong
Most local SEO advice focuses on Google Business Profile completeness as the main lever. It matters, but what's underappreciated is how much Google's algorithm rewards the speed of your business's digital footprint. A profile that gets new photos, posts, and reviews every week signals an active business. A profile filled in once and abandoned two years ago, even if it's complete, starts to lose ground to profiles that are actively updated. Google is essentially asking: is this business still operating? Regular activity is how you answer yes, without saying a word.
How proximity works in practice
Proximity to the searcher is the one factor you can't directly optimise. If someone is searching from a location 30 miles from your office, the map algorithm will favour businesses that are closer to them.
That said, proximity isn't the only factor. A business with a strong profile, many reviews, and high prominence can outrank geographically closer businesses with thin profiles.
If you want to appear in local packs for searches in nearby towns or areas, the honest answer is that it's difficult if your registered address is in a different location. Some businesses set up virtual offices or secondary locations, but this is a grey area and not something I'd generally recommend. Stronger reviews, stronger content, and stronger authority will take you further.
Where to start
If your business isn't appearing in the local pack at all, start here.
Claim and fully complete your Google Business Profile if you haven't already. Add every detail, set your categories accurately, upload photos, and verify the listing. Then set up a process for asking customers for reviews. Even two or three new reviews a month will accumulate into a meaningful advantage over a year.
Fix your NAP consistency. Check every major directory and make sure your details match your GBP exactly.
Publish posts on your GBP regularly. Once a week is enough. It takes ten minutes and it keeps the profile active.
From there, citation building and link building are the longer-term work that will compound your prominence over time.
If your business is missing from the local pack and you'd like help working out why, get in touch. I work with North Wales businesses on SEO and local search visibility, and I can usually identify the main blockers in a fairly short audit.
For broader context on why your business might not be appearing in Google at all, my website isn't showing up on Google covers the most common causes across both organic and local search.
