There’s a strange theatre that plays out every time a business decides to “do SEO properly.” They claim their Google Business Profile, fill in the categories, upload a few photos and wait. A month later, they’re still invisible while a competitor with fewer reviews and a worse website sits comfortably in the local three-pack.
The assumption is always the same: Google’s algorithm must be broken, or someone’s gaming the system. Neither is true. What’s actually happening is that most businesses optimise for the wrong signals entirely. They treat Google Business Profile like a form to complete, not a system to understand.
Local ranking isn’t about ticking boxes. It’s about understanding how Google decides which businesses deserve visibility when someone nearby searches for what you do. And the factors that matter most aren’t the ones plastered across every SEO checklist. This is about proximity, relevance and prominence, but not in the way most people think.
Table of Contents:
- Why Most Local SEO Advice Feels Useless
- The Ranking Factors That Actually Matter (And the Ones That Don’t)
- On-Site SEO and Google Business Profile Are Not Separate Systems
- The Tactical Levers Most Businesses Ignore
- What Separates the Businesses That Rank from Those That Don’t
- What Other Brands Can Learn
- Conclusion
- FAQs
Why Most Local SEO Advice Feels Useless
Walk into any brand’s marketing team meeting and ask them what drives local rankings. You’ll hear the same list: complete your profile, get more reviews, add photos, post regularly. All true yet, all surface-level.
The problem isn’t that this advice is wrong. It’s that it assumes all businesses start from the same position, which they don’t. A cafe in Sindhu Bhavan and a plumber in Vastrapur are playing completely different games, even if they’re both optimising the same profile fields.
Google’s local algorithm weighs three core pillars: relevance (how well you match the search), distance (how close you are to the searcher) and prominence (how well-known or authoritative your business appears). But the weight of each pillar shifts depending on the query, the category and the competitive density of the area.
If you’re a locksmith, proximity dominates. If you’re a solicitor, prominence matters more. If you’re a niche service provider, relevance becomes the differentiator. Most businesses optimise everything equally and wonder why nothing moves.
The smarter approach is to understand which pillar you’re weakest in and which one your category rewards most, then build from there.
The Ranking Factors That Actually Matter (And the Ones That Don’t)
Proximity Isn’t Just About Being Close
Google doesn’t rank you based on a static radius. It ranks you based on where the searcher is, what they’re searching for and how saturated that area is with similar businesses.
If someone in Prahladnagar searches for “SEO agency”, Google has hundreds of options within a mile. Proximity becomes a filter, not a ranking factor. But if someone in a smaller town searches the same thing, proximity can be the deciding variable.
This is why businesses in dense urban centres obsess over prominence and reviews, while businesses in less competitive areas can rank with weaker profiles simply by existing in the right postcode. The algorithm adapts to supply and demand.
What this means in practice: if you’re in a crowded market, proximity won’t save you. You need to out-signal competitors on relevance and prominence. If you’re in a quieter area, you can rank with a decent profile and consistent citation presence, but you’re vulnerable the moment a stronger competitor moves in.
Category Selection Is a Strategic Decision, Not a Description
Most businesses choose their primary category based on what they are. They should select it based on what people search for.
Google’s category taxonomy is messy. Some categories trigger map pack results for nearly every query. Others barely surface at all. The difference between selecting “Marketing Agency” and “Internet Marketing Service” can mean the gap between ranking and irrelevance, even though both describe the same business.
An amateur digital marketing agency that selects “Advertising Agency” as its primary category will struggle to rank for terms like “SEO services” or “PPC management,” because Google interprets that category as offline-first. Meanwhile, an agency using “Marketing Consultant” as primary and “SEO Agency” as secondary can rank for a broader range of queries without diluting focus.
The trick is to research which categories your competitors use, i.e “Keywords”. Especially those ranking above you, and test whether a category swap improves visibility. This isn’t about gaming the system. It’s about speaking Google’s language instead of your own.
Reviews Drive Prominence, But Only If They’re Consistent
Every business knows reviews matter. What they don’t realise is that Google weighs review velocity and keyword relevance far more than volume.
A business with 200 reviews from three years ago will lose to a business with 40 reviews from the past six months. Recency signals ongoing customer satisfaction and active operations. Volume without velocity suggests dormancy.
But the real edge comes from review content. Google scans review text for keywords and contextual relevance. If your reviews mention “Best SEO agency in Ahmedabad” or “delivered results quickly,” those phrases strengthen your relevance signals for related searches. Generic reviews like “great service” do almost nothing.
This is why businesses that actively prompt specific feedback, ideally tied to the services they want to rank for, outperform those who simply ask customers to “leave a review.” It’s not manipulation. It’s helping Google understand what you’re actually good at.
On-Site SEO and Google Business Profile Are Not Separate Systems
Here’s where most local strategies fall apart: businesses treat their Google Business Profile as a standalone asset, disconnected from their website. Google doesn’t.
Your GMB profile and your website share ranking signals. If your website has strong local SEO, location pages, schema markup, consistent NAP data, and locally relevant content, it reinforces your GMB authority. If your website is a mess, your GMB profile has to work twice as hard.
Google cross-references the business name, address and phone number on your GMB profile with the data on your website and across the web. Inconsistencies create friction. If your website says “London” but your GMB profile says “Greater London,” Google has to decide which is correct. That hesitation costs you rankings.
The Tactical Levers Most Businesses Ignore
Posts and Q&A Are Underrated Relevance Signals
Google Posts feel like busywork. Most businesses either ignore them or automate generic updates that no one reads. But Google treats posts as fresh content signals, and fresh content signals activity.
Posting once a week with service-specific updates, offers, or keyword-rich descriptions keeps your profile active in Google’s index. It’s not about engagement. It’s about signalling that your business is operational and relevant to current search behaviour.
Similarly, the Q&A section is a goldmine for keyword insertion that most businesses leave empty. Competitors can ask questions on your profile. You can answer them. If no one’s asking anything, you can seed your own questions and answers with natural, service-related language.
It’s not glamorous, but it works. Businesses that treat these features as relevant opportunities rather than engagement theatre consistently outrank those that don’t.
Photos Aren’t Just for Customers, They’re for Algorithms
Google explicitly states that businesses with more photos receive more clicks and engagement. What they don’t emphasise is that photos also contribute to relevance and prominence scoring.
Photos tagged with location data, categorised correctly and updated regularly signal operational legitimacy. Google’s image recognition can identify business type, service context and even product categories from uploaded images.
A restaurant that uploads fresh food photos weekly signals active operations. A law firm that uploads team photos, office interiors and event images signals stability and prominence. Both are stronger ranking signals than a static gallery from 2019.
Quantity matters, but so does variety and recency. Businesses that treat their photo library as a living content asset rather than a one-time upload consistently rank better in competitive categories.
What Separates the Businesses That Rank from Those That Don’t
The difference between page one and page three in local search isn’t effort. It’s understanding which signals your category and location prioritise, then building systems to strengthen them continuously.
Most businesses optimise once and assume the job is done. But local ranking is a relative game. Your visibility depends not just on your profile strength but on how you compare to everyone else nearby. If competitors improve faster than you, you slide backwards even if you’re doing everything “right.”
The businesses that dominate local search treat GMB optimisation as an ongoing operational task, not a project. They respond to reviews within 24 hours. They refresh photos monthly. They monitor competitors’ categories and adjust their own. They ask customers for keyword-rich feedback. They publish posts tied to service-specific queries.
None of this is revolutionary. It’s just deliberate, consistent and strategically aligned with how the algorithm actually evaluates local businesses.
What Other Brands Can Learn
Local SEO is one of the few areas where small businesses can compete with larger ones if they understand the system better. A solo consultant can outrank a national chain in local search if they optimise for the right signals and maintain consistency.
But that advantage disappears the moment larger players start treating local SEO with the same rigour they apply to paid search or content marketing. The window for easy wins is closing as more businesses realise that GMB isn’t just a directory listing, it’s a performance channel.
The businesses that will win local search in the next few years are the ones that stop treating it as a checklist and start treating it as a system that rewards strategic, sustained attention.
Conclusion
Local ranking isn’t broken. It’s just misunderstood. Google’s algorithm is doing exactly what it’s designed to do: surface businesses that are relevant, prominent and close to the searcher. The problem is that most businesses optimise for visibility without understanding what visibility actually requires.
Proximity only matters if you’re in a low-competition area. Reviews only help if they’re recent and specific. Categories only work if they align with how people search, not how you describe yourself. And none of it works unless your website, citations and GMB profile tell the same story.
The businesses that rank consistently are the ones that treat local SEO as a strategic discipline, not a one-time setup. They understand that every ranking factor is a signal, and the businesses that send the clearest, most consistent signals are the ones Google rewards.
If you’re still waiting for results after claiming your profile and uploading a few photos, you’re playing a different game than the businesses above you. They’re not lucky. They’re aligned, often with the help of an experienced SEO agency that understands which signals actually move rankings and how to turn local visibility into real business growth.
FAQs
The founder and partner of Flora Fountain, Shefali leads the Content and Technology divisions. A one-time engineer who started her career writing front-end code, she took a detour sometime during her 9 years in New York, studied journalism and started writing prose, poetry and sometimes jokes. She now has 15...