Local SEO for AU Small Business

When to use

Triggers:

• "Local SEO for [business]"
• "Help with Google Maps ranking"
• "Google Business Profile" / "GBP optimisation"
• "Why aren't we showing up in [suburb]?"
• "We're invisible locally"
• "[service] near me rankings"
• Any AU SME with a physical address or a defined service area

Don't fire for:

• Pure ecommerce / online-only businesses (use seo-audit plus programmatic-seo if installed)
• Franchise-scale multi-location SEO (different playbook)
• National lead-gen with no local component

Why local SEO is different

Standard SEO gets you into organic rankings. Local SEO gets you into the "map pack" — the 3 businesses that appear above organic results on a "near me" or suburb-qualified query. For most AU SMEs (trades, allied health, accounting, dental, mechanical, hospitality, retail) the map pack is where 60–80% of new-customer queries start.

Three signals drive map-pack ranking:

1. Proximity — how close you are to the searcher (you can't change this)
2. Relevance — does your business match the query (you can influence)
3. Prominence — how strong is your presence online (you can materially build)

This skill focuses on 2 and 3.

Step 1 — Google Business Profile audit

GBP is the single most important local-SEO asset. Audit yours:

Basics that must be perfect

• Business name — exact legal trading name, no keyword stuffing (Google penalises "Acme Plumbing Perth 24/7 Emergency")
• Category primary — the most specific match (e.g. "Electrician" not "Electrical Services"; "Thai Restaurant" not "Restaurant")
• Category secondary — up to 9 more, ranked by relevance. Use them; they're free surface area.
• Address — must match everywhere else online. Consistency is a prominence signal.
• Service area — if you go to customers, define the suburbs / LGAs. If you're location-based, leave blank.
• Hours — current + holiday hours. Google rewards businesses that set holiday hours for AU public holidays.
• Phone — local area code preferred (Google's algorithm slightly favours local numbers over 1300/1800)
• Website — obvious, but must redirect cleanly (www vs non-www, http vs https consistency)

What to fill in that most SMEs skip

• Business description — 750 chars available. First 250 are the most visible. Name the suburb(s) and services specifically.
• Attributes — wheelchair accessible, women-owned, LGBTQ+ friendly, outdoor dining. Each attribute is a ranking + filter signal.
• Services — itemise each service with a 300-char description. This is where map-pack-sensitive keywords live.
• Products (retail / hospitality) — load products with images
• Photos — 10 minimum, refreshed monthly. Include storefront, team, work-in-progress, finished jobs, menu items.
• Posts — weekly short posts about promotions, new services, community involvement. Google rewards active profiles.

Red flags that tank rankings

• Duplicate GBP listings — if old addresses or old business names still have listings, they dilute authority. Claim and merge or close duplicates.
• Category mismatch — "Electrician" when your actual work is solar installation means you show for the wrong queries.
• Thin / missing description — 2-sentence description vs 750 chars is a prominence signal.
• Photo-less or old photos — 1-year-old photos signal a dead business.

Step 2 — Review generation (ACCC-compliant)

Reviews are the second-biggest prominence signal after GBP quality.

Legal constraints

The ACCC and ACL prohibit fake reviews, incentivised reviews that aren't disclosed, and misleading review-generation practices. The line:

• Legal: Ask satisfied customers to leave a review. Provide a direct link. Follow up once.
• Legal: Send a post-service SMS or email with "How was your experience? If great, leave us a Google review at [link]".
• Grey: Offering a discount in exchange for a review without disclosing the incentive in the review. ACCC has prosecuted this.
• Illegal: Writing fake reviews yourself, from staff accounts, or via paid review farms.
• Illegal: Filtering so only happy customers get the review request (called "review gating"; Google also penalises).

Practical review-generation workflow

1. After every completed job / service, ask every customer for a review — not just the ones you think were happy. Google's algorithm considers the rate of bad reviews as a signal; suppressing them artificially gets caught.
2. Use a direct GBP review link (Google's Place ID Finder generates it).
3. Send the request via the channel the customer prefers — SMS works well for residential, email for commercial.
4. One follow-up reminder 3–4 days after the first ask. Not more.
5. Respond to every review (see review-response-au-reputation skill for the per-review response mechanics).

Target: 1+ new review per month minimum, more if your customer volume allows. Consistency signals an active business.

Step 3 — Local schema markup

Schema markup is structured data that helps search engines (and AI search) understand your business. For local, the key schemas are:

LocalBusiness (primary)

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "LocalBusiness",
  "name": "Acme Plumbing",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "12 High Street",
    "addressLocality": "Toowong",
    "addressRegion": "QLD",
    "postalCode": "4066",
    "addressCountry": "AU"
  },
  "telephone": "+61 7 1234 5678",
  "url": "https://acmeplumbing.com.au",
  "openingHoursSpecification": [...],
  "geo": { "@type": "GeoCoordinates", "latitude": -27.48, "longitude": 152.99 },
  "priceRange": "$$",
  "areaServed": { "@type": "AdministrativeArea", "name": "Brisbane Western Suburbs" }
}

AggregateRating (if you have reviews on your own site)

{
  "@type": "Product" or "LocalBusiness",
  "aggregateRating": {
    "@type": "AggregateRating",
    "ratingValue": "4.8",
    "reviewCount": "147"
  }
}

⚠ Don't inject aggregate rating from third-party sources without their consent. Google's policy requires the ratings come from reviews your own site has direct knowledge of.

Service (one per service offered)

FAQPage (if your site has FAQ content)

BreadcrumbList (always — helps AI crawlers especially)

The seo-audit skill validates these render correctly (remembering that web_fetch can't see JS-injected schema — use Rich Results Test or render in a browser).

Step 4 — NAP consistency across AU directories

NAP = Name, Address, Phone. Consistency across directories is a prominence signal. Inconsistency actively tanks rankings.

Top AU directories to audit

Tier 1 (must be accurate, must be claimed):

• Google Business Profile
• Bing Places
• Apple Business Connect (Apple Maps)
• Facebook Business Page
• LinkedIn Company Page

Tier 2 (high-value, claim + verify):

• True Local
• Yellow Pages AU (Sensis)
• Yelp AU
• Hotfrog
• Start Local
• Australian Business Directory
• ProductReview.com.au (if relevant)

Tier 3 (industry-specific — relevant ones only):

• TripAdvisor (hospitality)
• Healthengine / RateMDs / HealthDirect (healthcare)
• WhistleOut (telco / internet)
• OneFlare (trades / services)
• FindABuilder / hipages (trades)
• OpenTable / Zomato (restaurants)

For each directory:

• Does your listing exist?
• Is the NAP identical to GBP (down to punctuation)?
• Is the category matched?
• Are opening hours consistent?
• Is the website URL identical (including www / non-www / https)?

The "same NAP, everywhere" rule

If your ABN is under Acme Plumbing Pty Ltd but your trading name is "Acme Plumbing QLD", pick one for NAP and use it everywhere. Inconsistency creates duplicate entity signals, which Google resolves by picking one and deprioritising the others.

Step 5 — Local content strategy

On your website, the content that drives local rankings:

Suburb / service landing pages

One page per (primary service) × (priority suburb) combination. Generic "Plumber in Brisbane" is less effective than "Emergency Plumbing in Toowong". Don't generate 400 doorway pages — 5–15 real, substantive pages beats 400 thin ones.

Each page should have:

• Suburb name in H1
• 400+ words unique content about serving that suburb
• Local references (landmarks, street names, common issues — "older Queenslander homes in Toowong often have [specific plumbing issue]")
• Customer reviews / case studies from that suburb
• Service-specific schema markup
• Embedded map of the service area

Local blog content

• "Best time of year to do [service] in Brisbane" — calendar-relevant, seasonally searchable
• "Common [problem] in [suburb] / [postcode] — why and what to do"
• Community involvement posts — local charity, sponsorship, neighbourhood events
• After-storm / after-heatwave content when the seasonal context hits

Blog cadence: 1 genuinely useful piece per month beats 10 thin pieces per week.

Step 6 — Local citations & backlinks

Beyond directories, AU-specific high-authority sites worth getting mentioned on:

• Local news (your suburb's community paper — digital and print)
• Industry association sites (Master Plumbers, Electrical Contractors, etc.)
• Local Chamber of Commerce
• Industry awards and recognition (even regional)
• Charity sponsorships (they usually list partners on their sites)
• Local sporting club sponsorships
• Local Council supplier directories (if you work with councils)

Each is a citation + backlink + prominence signal.

Measurement

Track monthly:

• GBP insights — calls, direction requests, website clicks, photo views
• Review velocity — new reviews per month, average rating, response rate
• Impressions vs actions — if impressions up but actions flat, the listing isn't compelling
• Keyword rankings for "[service] [suburb]" — use a free tool like Local Falcon sample, or your Ahrefs/Semrush subscription
• Calls / enquiries attributed to local search — add UTM tags + call tracking

Pair this with the ai-roi-measurement-for-sme framework if running as part of a broader AI-assisted marketing effort.

What this skill does NOT do

• Build links for you. The skill advises; the operator does outreach / applications / sponsorships.
• Manage GBP posts on autopilot. Some tools automate this; if you go there, flag that Google's terms require posts be accurate + relevant + not misleading.
• Guarantee rankings. Local-pack positions are a function of proximity + Google's algorithm decisions. Good fundamentals compound over months, not days.
• Replace seo-audit. If you have technical SEO issues (crawlability, indexation, SPA render problems), fix those first — no amount of local signal compensates for an unindexable site.

Tier access

Base. Local SEO fundamentals are universally valuable. Pro-tier members get a per-quarter audit + review-velocity coaching.

Related skills

• seo-audit — broader technical + on-page foundation
• review-response-au-reputation — the "respond to every review" half of the review signal
• thl-react-spa-seo-remediation (admin-internal) — if the client's site has the React SPA indexability failure mode
• ai-roi-measurement-for-sme — measure the local-SEO effort honestly

References

• Google Business Profile — Guidelines for representing your business
• ACCC — Fake or misleading reviews
• Schema.org — LocalBusiness
• Google — Place ID Finder