Local SEO gets treated like a mysterious black box, but the fundamentals are fairly consistent: consistent business information everywhere it's listed, genuine reviews, location-specific content, and a website that actually loads fast on mobile.

Name, address and phone number inconsistencies across directories quietly undermine rankings more than most business owners realize. So does a website that takes six seconds to load on a phone with average signal. Fixing those two things alone often produces a bigger jump than any amount of keyword stuffing.

From there, ongoing content that answers the specific questions local customers are searching for — not generic industry blog posts — is what sustains rankings over time.