People ask me some version of the same question a lot: how do I get my business to show up when someone searches for it? They're usually hoping for a trick. A plugin, a setting, something clever. The honest answer is less exciting than that. Local SEO is mostly a handful of boring, unglamorous tasks that most business owners never quite get around to.
Here's what actually moves the needle, roughly in the order I'd tackle it.
Claim your Google Business Profile and fill out every field. Not the three fields you feel like doing. Hours, category, service area, photos, and a real description written in plain language about what you do and where. An incomplete profile tells Google your business might not be a real, active place. That's the opposite of what you want it thinking.
Keep your name, address, and phone number identical everywhere. Your website, your Google profile, Yelp, Facebook, any directory that lists you. If your business is "Jane's Salon" on your website and "Jane's Salon LLC" on Yelp, that's a small thing on its own, but it adds up across enough listings. It's the kind of mismatch that makes Google less confident you're one consistent business instead of several sloppy ones.
Write real content that mentions where you are. Not "serving the greater metropolitan area" stuffed into a sentence five times. Talk about your neighborhood, your city, the areas you drive to for a job, the way you'd describe it to a customer on the phone. Google reads this the same way a person does: does this business sound rooted somewhere, or could it be anywhere?
Ask for reviews, and answer the ones you get. Happy customers rarely leave one unless you ask. So ask, right after the good haircut or the finished fence or the delivered cake. And when a review comes in, reply to it, good or bad. A business that visibly responds looks more alive than one with five reviews sitting untouched since 2019.
Then there's the part that's about your website itself, not just your listings: does it load fast, does it work on a phone without pinching and zooming, and can someone find your phone number in under five seconds? That last one sounds obvious until you look at how many small business sites bury their contact info behind a menu, a form, and a "learn more" button. A website's whole job is letting people get quick info and reach you. Everything past that is decoration. (This part happens to be the one thing Cantrip cares about getting right by default, so I'll spare you the pitch.)
None of this is a hack. It's an afternoon of unglamorous cleanup, then staying consistent about it after. The businesses that win local search usually aren't doing anything clever. They're just the ones who filled out the form.