It’s 10 PM on a Tuesday in January. A pipe just burst in someone’s basement in Mt. Lebanon. Water is pooling on the floor. Their kids are screaming. They are not pulling out a laptop to comparison-shop plumbing companies.
They grab their phone. They type “plumber near me.” And Google shows them a map with three businesses pinned on it. Star ratings. Phone numbers. A button that says “Call.”
That homeowner is calling the first business that looks legitimate. They’re not scrolling. They’re not clicking to page two. They’re picking one of those three names on the map and dialing.
Those three listings? That’s the Map Pack. And getting your business into it is what local SEO is all about.
The Map Pack Is the Game
You’ve seen it a thousand times, even if you didn’t know it had a name. Search for “roof repair Pittsburgh” or “HVAC service Cranberry Township” and before any website results load, Google drops a map right at the top of the page with three businesses highlighted. Name, rating, review count, address, hours. Everything a person needs to make a decision without ever visiting your website.
Think about what that means for your business. You could have the best-designed website in western Pennsylvania. Your prices could be the most competitive. Your work could be flawless. But if someone in the South Hills searches for the service you offer and you’re not in those top three map results, you might as well not exist to that person.
That’s not an exaggeration. That’s just how people search now.
So What Makes Local SEO Different?
Regular SEO is about your website. Keywords, content quality, page speed, backlinks. All the stuff you probably associate with “ranking on Google.”
Local SEO includes all of that, but it stacks an entirely different set of factors on top. The biggest one isn’t even on your website. It’s your Google Business Profile.
Your Google Business Profile (you might still think of it as “Google My Business”) is that listing that pops up when someone searches your company name, or when you show up in the Map Pack. It’s got your hours, your phone number, your reviews, photos of your work. For local searches, Google often treats this profile as more important than your actual website.
That might sound wild, but it makes sense. When someone needs an emergency electrician in Robinson at 8 PM, Google doesn’t want to send them to a 2,000-word blog post about electrical safety. It wants to show them a phone number, a star rating, and proof that other people trusted this business. Your Google Business Profile does that. Your website usually doesn’t, at least not as quickly.
Beyond your profile, local SEO also depends on your online reviews, how many other websites mention your business (called citations), and whether your business name, address, and phone number are consistent everywhere they appear online. None of that matters much in regular SEO. In local SEO, it’s everything.
How Google Picks the Three Winners
Google uses three factors to decide who gets into the Map Pack. Understanding them changes how you think about your entire online presence.
Relevance is about whether your business actually matches what someone searched for. This comes from your Google Business Profile categories, your business description, and the content on your website. If a property manager in Squirrel Hill searches for “commercial electrician” and your profile only talks about residential work, Google won’t consider you a match. You have to tell Google exactly what you do.
Distance is the one factor you can’t game. Google measures how far your business is from the person searching (or from the location they typed in). A plumber based in Carnegie will have a harder time showing up for searches in Cranberry Township than one actually located there. This is why your correct address in your Google Business Profile matters so much. If it’s wrong, Google is calculating distance from the wrong spot.
Prominence is Google’s way of measuring how well-known and trusted your business is. Review count, review quality, how many other sites mention you, your overall web presence. This is the factor where effort pays off the most, and it’s where most service businesses drop the ball.
Here’s a concrete example. Two roofers serve the North Hills. One has 150 Google reviews and a 4.7-star rating. The other has 3 reviews and a 4.0. Both are the same distance from the searcher. Both have “roofing contractor” as their primary category. Who do you think Google shows? Who do you think the homeowner calls?
It’s not even close.
Your Google Business Profile Deserves More Attention Than Your Website
If you only do one thing after reading this article, make it this: go claim and fully optimize your Google Business Profile. It’s free. It takes an afternoon. And it has more impact on local leads than almost anything else you can spend time on.
Here’s what “fully optimized” actually looks like.
Your business name, address, phone number, website, and hours need to be accurate. Not “close enough.” Accurate. We’ll get into why in a minute.
Your primary category is the single most important field in your entire profile. Be specific. If you’re a plumber, pick “Plumber,” not “Home Services.” If you’re a roofing contractor, don’t settle for “General Contractor.” Google uses this category to decide which searches trigger your listing, so being vague means missing searches.
Upload real photos. Not stock images. Photos of your crew, your trucks, completed jobs, your storefront if you have one. Businesses with photos get 42% more direction requests and 35% more website clicks than businesses without them. People want to see that you’re real before they hand you the keys to their house.
And use Google Posts. This is the feature almost nobody uses, which is exactly why using it helps. You can publish short updates, seasonal offers, project highlights. Posting every week or two signals to Google that your business is active and engaged. Most of your competitors aren’t doing this, so the bar is low.
Reviews: Your Most Powerful (and Most Neglected) Asset
Let’s be honest about something. You already know reviews matter. Every business owner knows reviews matter. But knowing it and actually doing something about it are two very different things.
Reviews affect your local rankings directly. Google has said this publicly. But they also affect something equally important: whether a real human being decides to call you instead of your competitor.
Picture this. A homeowner in the Mon Valley needs their furnace looked at. They search “HVAC repair near me.” Two companies show up in the Map Pack. One has 12 reviews. The other has 180. The ratings are similar. Which one are you calling?
You’re calling the one with 180 reviews. Everyone is. It’s not even a conscious decision. That number just communicates something: this company has been doing this for a while, and a lot of people trusted them.
Responding to reviews matters too. Thank people for the good ones. For the bad ones, respond professionally, acknowledge what happened, and offer to make it right. Google has confirmed that responding to reviews is a positive ranking signal, and potential customers absolutely read how you handle complaints. A thoughtful response to a negative review can actually build more trust than a five-star review with no response.
The NAP Problem Nobody Thinks About
NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone number. Boring? Absolutely. But inconsistent NAP information across the internet is one of the most common reasons service businesses underperform in local search.
Here’s what happens. You set up your Google Business Profile and enter your address as “140 E Main St, STE #3.” Then you create a Yelp listing and type “140 East Main Street, Suite 3.” Your Facebook page says “140 E. Main.” Your BBB listing drops the suite number entirely.
To you, those are all the same address. To Google, those are four different signals that don’t match. Google’s job is to confidently recommend businesses to searchers, and when it sees conflicting information about where you’re actually located, that confidence drops. Your rankings drop with it.
The fix is tedious but straightforward. Go through every directory, platform, and social profile where your business appears. Yelp, Angi, BBB, Yellow Pages, Facebook, LinkedIn, your Chamber of Commerce listing, industry directories. Make your name, address, and phone number identical everywhere. Same abbreviations. Same formatting. Same phone number. Character for character.
Your Website Still Matters (Just Differently)
Your website isn’t the main character in local SEO, but it’s a strong supporting actor.
Mention the areas you serve naturally throughout your site. Your homepage, your service pages, your about page. Not in a spammy way. Just the way you’d actually talk about your business. “We’ve been serving homeowners across the South Hills, Robinson, and the greater Pittsburgh area for over 15 years.” That sentence does real work for local SEO without reading like a keyword list.
Put your name, address, and phone number in your website footer. Every page. This reinforces your location to Google on every single page it crawls, and it makes it dead simple for visitors to contact you no matter where they are on your site.
If your web developer knows what they’re doing, they should implement LocalBusiness schema markup. This is structured code that tells Google exactly what type of business you are, where you’re located, your hours, and your services. It’s invisible to visitors but it gives Google crystal-clear information about your business. Not every competitor is doing this, so it’s a real advantage.
The Bottom Line for Service Businesses
Here’s the reality. When someone’s AC dies in July and it’s 95 degrees in their house, they’re not browsing websites. When a tree falls on someone’s roof in Cranberry Township after a storm, they’re not reading blog posts. They’re looking at the Map Pack, checking the reviews, and calling.
Local SEO isn’t a one-time project you check off a list. Your Google Business Profile needs regular updates. You need to keep earning reviews. Your citations need to stay consistent as you move, change phone numbers, or expand your service area. Your website needs to keep sending the right signals.
But for service businesses that depend on local customers, nothing else you can spend time on delivers leads this consistently.
Want to know where you stand right now? Go grab your phone. Search for your main service plus your city. “Plumber Pittsburgh.” “Roofer Mt. Lebanon.” “Electrician South Hills.” Are you in those top three map results?
If not, now you know where to start. And if you want help getting there, that’s what we do.