You want to show up on Google when someone in your area searches for what you do. That's local SEO — making sure Google knows who you are, where you are, and what you offer, so it puts you in front of the right people. The good news is that most of your competitors aren't doing it properly. Here are 10 things you can fix this week that'll make a real difference.
Your Google Business Profile (GBP) is the free listing that puts you on Google Maps and in the map pack — that box of three businesses that shows up at the top of local search results. It gets roughly 42% of all the clicks on the page. If you're not in it, nearly half your potential customers are going to someone else.
How to fix it:
Google ranks complete profiles higher than half-done ones. We helped a painter in Hampton complete his profile — within three weeks he was in the map pack for "painter Bayside" where he'd been invisible before. For a full walkthrough, see our Google Business Profile Setup Guide.
NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone number. It sounds boring, but inconsistent NAP is one of the most common reasons local businesses don't rank well. Google checks your details across every directory, website, and social profile it can find. If they don't match, it loses confidence in your listing.
If your website says "123 Beach Road" but Yellow Pages says "123 Beach Rd" and Hipages says "123 Beach Road, Suite 2," that's three different versions. Google doesn't know which one to trust, so it pushes you down.
How to fix it:
This is tedious, but it pays off. Set aside 30 minutes, work through each listing one by one, and it's done.
If you cover multiple suburbs, your website should have a separate page for each one. A single "Services" page that says "we service all of Melbourne" doesn't give Google enough to work with.
Location pages let you rank for "plumber in Brighton" and "plumber in Sandringham" separately. Each page targets a different area, which means more chances to show up in local searches.
How to fix it:
We built location pages for an electrician across six Bayside suburbs. Within two months, he was ranking on page one for three of them. The key was real, unique content on each page.
Reviews are the second biggest ranking factor for local search after your Google Business Profile. The number of reviews, your average rating, and whether you respond all affect where you show up in the map pack.
76% of people who search for something nearby on their phone visit a business within 24 hours (Google/Ipsos). Reviews are the cheapest marketing you can do, and most businesses leave them on the table.
How to fix it:
For review reply templates and a full system, check out our Google Review Reply Templates guide.
Schema markup is a bit of code you add to your website that tells Google exactly what kind of business you are, where you're located, and what you do. It doesn't change how your website looks — it only changes how Google reads it behind the scenes.
When you have schema, Google can show extra details in your search listing — your star rating, opening hours, and address right there in the results. That makes your listing stand out, and businesses with schema get more clicks because their listing looks more complete and trustworthy.
How to fix it:
If you're not comfortable with code, this is a 10-minute job for any web developer. Just ask them to add "LocalBusiness schema in JSON-LD format" and they'll know what to do.
Your title tag is the blue clickable text that shows up in Google search results. It's one of the strongest on-page signals Google uses to decide what your page is about. If your homepage title is just "Home" or your business name with no mention of what you do or where, you're leaving easy rankings on the table.
How to fix it:
You can check your current title tags by looking at the tab text in your browser when you visit each page. If it just says "Home" or your business name, it needs updating.
More than 60% of Google searches happen on mobile, and for local searches it's even higher. Someone searching "emergency plumber near me" at 10pm is on their phone, not their laptop. If your site is slow or hard to use on a phone, you're losing them before they even see what you offer.
53% of mobile visitors leave a site that takes longer than 3 seconds to load (Google/SOASTA Research). We regularly audit local business sites that take 6-8 seconds on mobile. Those sites are losing people before anyone reads a word.
How to fix it:
We audited a plumber's site last month that took 7.2 seconds to load on mobile. The problem was three uncompressed hero images totalling 8MB. Twenty minutes with Squoosh brought it down to 2.4 seconds.
Online directories still carry weight for local SEO in Australia, especially the ones Google already trusts. They reinforce your NAP consistency, give you backlinks, and some of them drive leads directly.
Here are the ones that matter:
Set a timer for 20 minutes per directory. Get them set up with your correct NAP, a description, and photos. Once they're done, check them once or twice a year to make sure nothing's drifted.
Your website needs content that uses the words real people type into Google when looking for local services. That doesn't mean cramming suburb names into every sentence. It means writing genuinely useful stuff that naturally mentions where you work and what you do.
Google matches search queries to page content. If your site never mentions "roof restoration Cheltenham," you won't show up when someone searches for it. Simple as that.
Ideas for content that works:
Even one solid blog post per month that's genuinely helpful and mentions your service area will start building your local authority over time.
You can't improve what you don't measure. If you're not tracking where you rank for your key search terms, you're flying blind. You won't know which changes are working and which ones aren't.
How to track it:
Don't obsess over daily movements — rankings fluctuate naturally. Look at the trend over weeks and months. If you're consistently doing the work, you'll see consistent improvement.
Most businesses start seeing movement in 4-8 weeks after making these changes. In a low-competition suburb for a specific trade, you might hit page one within a month. In competitive areas like inner Melbourne, expect 3-6 months. The important thing is consistency — local SEO isn't a one-off job. Google rewards businesses that keep their information current, keep collecting reviews, and keep publishing relevant content.
Your Google Business Profile can rank on its own in the map pack without a website. But you're limiting yourself. A website lets you build location pages for every suburb you serve, publish content that ranks in regular search results, add schema markup, and capture leads through forms. Think of your GBP as your shopfront window and your website as the full shop. You want both.
Most of this checklist you can do yourself. Claiming your GBP, fixing your NAP, getting listed in directories, asking for reviews, writing content — all doable without technical skills. The schema markup and some speed optimisations might need a web developer, but those are small, affordable jobs. Where a professional helps most is building a proper strategy, creating location pages at scale, and tracking progress over time.
Book a free call. We'll run through this checklist on your business and tell you exactly what's holding you back — and what to fix first.
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