When you need a physical therapist, a dry cleaner, or a bike shop near your home, you probably don't start by looking for brands. You open Google, search for what you need, and compare the options available in your area.
For local businesses, Being there at just the right moment can make the difference between winning a customer or having them choose the competition instead. And we're not just talking about showing up on Google Maps. Your website, reviews, advertising, and even mentions in local media are also part of that online presence.
In fact, according to the BrightLocal's study on local search behavior, 84 % of consumers searched for a local business online in the past three months. In addition, three out of four used more than one channel during their most recent local search.
That's where the local marketing: a strategy that aims to increase a business's visibility among people in its area and, above all, to turn that visibility into visits, calls, leads, or sales.
What Is Local Marketing and Why Does It Matter?
Local marketing encompasses the actions we take to raise the profile of a business within a specific location, whether it's a city, a province, or a more specific area.
This is especially important for businesses with a physical location, such as stores, clinics, or restaurants, but also for companies that provide services in specific areas or even e-commerce businesses that combine online sales with physical locations.
And here's something important: Local marketing isn't just about working on local SEO.
Google Business Profile and website search engine optimization are essential, but reviews, geotargeted advertising, social media, or mentions in local media They can also influence how a user discovers and evaluates a business.
That's why a good local strategy shouldn't treat these channels in isolation. The idea is that when someone searches for information about your company, they'll find a consistent and comprehensive online presence that helps them make a decision.
How to Develop a Local Marketing Strategy
Optimize Your Google Business Profile
The Google Business Profile, formerly known as Google My Business, is one of the first things you should check.
It's free and allows a business to appear on Google Maps and in Google's local search results, which include information such as your address, phone number, hours of operation, photos, services, and reviews.
Of course, it's not enough to just create the record and then forget about it.
It is advisable to keep complete and up-to-date information, choose the correct business category, check the hours (especially on holidays), upload your own photos, and clearly explain what products or services you offer.
Google explains that its local search results are based primarily on three factors: relevance, distance, and popularity. There's not much we can do about the distance, but we can work to ensure that Google correctly understands what the business offers and strengthen its presence and authority.
It's also worth paying attention to the description. It's not about filling it with keywords and city names, but rather about explain in a natural way what the company does, what it offers, and where it provides its services.
We've worked on this, for example, with a client from the the pet industry, which combines e-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores. In this case, optimizing the Business Profile was another part of the local strategy: we reviewed the business information, description, and products so that the listing would better reflect what users would actually find in the store.
Work on your website's local SEO as well
Having a well-optimized listing helps, but Your website also needs to make it clear where you're located and where you provide your services.
This is where searches that combine a service with a location come into play: “physical therapist in Santander,” “attendance tracking in Barcelona,” or “SEO agency in Burgos,” for example.
Depending on the business, it may make sense to create specific pages for those locations where there is actually an opportunity. That said, A local landing page needs to provide its own useful content. Creating dozens of virtually identical pages by changing only the name of the city is not a strategy.
We've tested this in a project from the biometric access and time and attendance sector. We created a landing page specifically for the province where the business operates, and it ended up ranking higher for the main search term combined with the location than for the generic term, which is much more competitive.
In addition, the project's visibility increased by 10 % according to Sistrix and began to climb in the rankings for other related searches.
It's a good example of why it doesn't always make sense to start by trying to compete for the most difficult keyword. A search with lower volume but a very clear local intent can be much more valuable to the business.
It's the same approach we take on our SEO agency in Burgos: Address a specific need related to a location where we actually provide the service.
Get reviews—and, above all, manage them
Before calling, making a reservation, or visiting a business, it's normal to want to know what kind of experience other people have had.
Reviews serve precisely that purpose. According to the BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey, 97% of consumers check reviews of local businesses.
They are also among the signals that Google uses in its local search results. That's why, if you have satisfied customers, it makes sense to make it easy for them to leave a review.
One option is to do this through email campaigns targeted at customers who have made a purchase or visited the store. Using the pet industry customer we mentioned earlier as an example, A targeted campaign for customers in the area led to a 13 % increase in the number of reviews in about a month and a half.
That doesn't mean sending messages all the time.
You have to be selective about who you ask for a review, avoid pestering those who have already left one, and, of course, Do not offer discounts, gifts, or other incentives in exchange for positive reviews.
And just as important as receiving them is responding to them—both the good ones and the bad ones. A well-thought-out response shows that behind the listing is an active business that listens to its customers.
Use advertising to reach people in your area
Organic search takes time. If we want to gain visibility more quickly or promote a specific campaign, we can rely on geographically targeted digital advertising.
Imagine you've just opened a new store, want to promote an event, or need to clear out certain products from a brick-and-mortar location. It wouldn't make much sense to show those ads to users throughout Spain.
Platforms such as Google Ads and social media allow define the geographic scope of the campaigns and adapt the strategy the audience we can actually serve.
On Google, we can also reach users who are already searching for terms related to our product or service. From our Google Ads agency We focus specifically on segmentation, search queries, and data for each business to determine where it makes sense to invest.
In other cases, we may want to reach users who aren't yet actively searching for the product but fit our target audience. That's where other strategies come into play, such as digital advertising, such as Social Ads or video campaigns.
SEO and advertising don't have to compete with each other. In a local strategy, they can cover different moments and help us be present both when the user is actively searching and before that need arises.
Increase your visibility in local media and on local websites
Authority is also built outside of our own website.
Regional media outlets, business associations, specialized directories, or partnerships with other local companies can help ensure that the brand appears in spaces that are already relevant within its environment.
Returning to e-commerce in the pet industry, one of the initiatives we worked on was the Link building in local media. This helps us strengthen the brand's authority, not only within its immediate sphere but also on a broader scale—something we track using Semrush.
Here, too, it's not about getting links just for the sake of it. A Media related to your city, your industry, or your audience makes much more sense as part of a local strategy to accumulate mentions on pages that have no connection to the business.
And not everything has to happen online. Sponsor a local event, collaborate with an organization, or participate in city initiatives It can also generate visibility and, in some cases, ultimately result in online mentions and links.
What We've Learned from Working on Local SEO
If there's one thing we've noticed while working on these kinds of projects, it's that There is no single action that can make local marketing take off..
For this pet e-commerce business, it wasn't just about optimizing its Company Profile. We also worked on reviews, media coverage, and other elements of its digital strategy.
In the time-and-attendance system, on the other hand, spot an opportunity SEO focused on a specific province allowed us to start gaining visibility through search queries where competing at the national level was much more difficult.
They are different businesses, and therefore their priorities are different as well.
That's why, before creating landing pages for every possible city or launching a local advertising campaign, it's a good idea to analyze how your customers actually search, where you have a presence, who your competitors are, and which channels can contribute the most to your business.
How to Tell If Your Local Marketing Strategy Is Working
A local strategy also needs to be evaluated. And simply looking at whether we've moved up or down in the rankings isn't enough.
We can analyze trends in local searches and the number of visits to web pages that we have created for specific locations, calls, forms, sales, or interactions generated by the Company Profile.
Tools such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4 They help us understand what's happening on the web, while Sistrix and Semrush allow us to supplement that analysis with information on visibility and search rankings.
But data is only useful if we know what we want to achieve with it. That's why a good web analytics It must be based on business objectives: we won't measure a brick-and-mortar store that wants to increase foot traffic the same way we would a service company whose goal is to collect contact forms.
Where to Start Building Your Local Presence
You don't have to do everything at once.
If your business relies heavily on customers from a specific area, start by reviewing how you currently appear when someone searches for your products or services from that location. Check your Business Profile, search for your main services along with the name of your city, and see which businesses appear before yours and why.
From there, you'll be able to determine whether you need to work on your business listing, create or improve local content on your website, get more reviews, strengthen your authority, or support specific actions with advertising.
At Geotelecom, we focus on local SEO as part of our SEO consulting, combining content, technical optimization, and authority based on the needs of each project.
Because Appearing in your area isn't just a matter of repeating the name of your city on the website. The goal is to ensure that when someone close to you needs what you offer, they can find you, understand why you're a good choice, and take the next step.
