Local SEO or SEO? Which one your business actually needs
If your customers come from a town or a service area, you need local SEO. If they come from anywhere in the country, you need SEO. The two are sold as one thing and they are not: local SEO is mostly about your Google Business Profile and the map results, while SEO is mostly about your website’s pages and the ordinary results. Most small businesses need one of them clearly, and paying for the wrong one is the commonest way to waste a year of marketing budget.
The one-sentence test
Would a customer in another state ever buy from you? If no — a plumber, a dentist, a restaurant, a salon, a local law firm — you are a local business, and the map results are where your customers look. If yes — an online store, a consultancy that works remotely, a software company, a training provider — you compete in the ordinary results, nationally, and the map is a sideshow.
Some businesses are both: a firm with an office that also sells nationally. Then you do a version of each, but you still start with whichever brings more customers today.
What local SEO actually involves
Your Google Business Profile, built out fully and kept active. Consistent business details across the directories that matter for your sector and city. Reviews arriving steadily and being answered. A page on your website for each service and each area you serve, so there is something for Google to connect the profile to. Photos and posts that show the business is alive. The outcome is measured in calls, direction requests and where you rank in the map for the searches you care about, not in traffic.
What SEO actually involves
Technical work first: the site fast, indexable, structured so Google understands what each page is about. Then research into what your buyers actually type, and pages or articles that answer it better than what currently ranks. On-page work on your service pages. Links from other sites over time. The outcome is measured in enquiries and revenue from search, and it compounds slowly — months, not weeks.
Where people get sold the wrong one
A local business is sold “SEO” and pays for blog articles nobody in their town searches for, while their Google profile has three photos and wrong hours. Or a national e-commerce store is sold “local SEO” for a warehouse address nobody will ever visit. Both are common, and both are the result of an agency selling what it has rather than what you need.
What each costs with us
Our local SEO plan is $400 a month for one location, with a $499 profile setup that is waived when you start the monthly plan in the same month; extra locations are $149 a month each. Our Growth SEO plan is $800 a month and starts with a $450 audit that is credited to your first month. Both are monthly with 30 days’ notice to cancel, both are reported on enquiries rather than impressions, and if you book a call to ask which you need, we will tell you — including when the answer is the cheaper one.
Want a second opinion on your own site?
Send us the address and a person will look at it properly, then email you what they find. Free, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.