Local search marketing
Local search marketing is everything a business does to be found by people searching nearby, from local SEO to local ads and reviews.
Local search marketing is everything a business does to be found by people searching for something nearby. It includes local SEO, which earns you a place in the free results, and paid options like local search ads and promoted map pins. It also covers the work that feeds both: your listings, your reviews and what local sites say about you.
The difference from local SEO is the money. Local SEO is the unpaid part. Local search marketing is the whole plan, paid and unpaid.
What's in it
A local search plan usually brings together:
- A business profile on Google, and on the other maps and directories people use where you are
- Consistent listings, so your name, address and phone number match everywhere
- Reviews, and replies to them
- Local search ads for the searches that matter most, often shown with your address and a call button
- Local pages on your own site, one for each area or branch
- Local press, events and partnerships that get you mentioned in the area
For example, say Harrow & Pine opens a showroom in Manchester. In the first month, it runs local search ads for "oak furniture Manchester" while its listings and reviews build up. Once it shows in the map results on its own, it cuts the ad budget back to the busiest weekends.
The AI search side
Local questions are moving into AI answers too. Someone might ask an assistant "where can I buy a solid oak dining table in Manchester?" and get a short list of shops. There's no ad slot to buy in most of those answers. Being on the list depends on what the platform finds about you: listings, reviews, local news and your own pages.
So the unpaid side of local search marketing carries into AI search, and paid local ads mostly don't.
In AnswerOrbit
You can ask your prompts from a city, or in the US from a state, for the platforms that ask from them, by adding a market in Settings. If you run Google Ads, connecting it puts the keywords you bid on next to your visibility on each topic, so you can compare where you pay to be seen with where you're named for free.