Local SEO and SEO are different jobs that happen to share a website. SEO gets you the blue links and runs on your website, and Local SEO gets you the map and runs mostly on things that aren’t your website.
A business can rank first for its main service and be nowhere in the map results one suburb over, and most local businesses that “do SEO” are in exactly that position.
Short version: if you serve a defined area, you need both.
SEO gets you the blue links
SEO is the work that gets your website into the organic results, the links under the ads and under the map. It runs on your site: what the pages say, whether Google can crawl them, how fast they load, and who links to you.
Authority, in a word.
Where it wins is anything without a place attached, from “how much does a hot water system cost” to your own business name. The further a query sits from “someone near me, today”, the more SEO is the job that answers it.
Nothing in 25+ years of search work has dislodged this: SEO is still the thing people think they’ve bought when they’ve bought a website. They haven’t.
Belmore Digital’s SEO service is the work that actually does it.
- Search your main service without a suburb and note where your site sits.
- Search your business name and check the site, not a directory, comes first.
- Ask whoever did your SEO what they did to the website itself. Vague answer, vague SEO.
Local SEO gets you the map
The map is Local SEO’s territory: the map pack, Google Maps, the business panel down the right of the page. Increasingly it’s also the local recommendations AI systems produce when someone asks for a plumber in Marrickville.
It runs on a different set of signals, starting with your Google Business Profile and whether your name, address and phone number match everywhere they appear. Then your citations, your reviews, the suburbs named on your site, and LocalBusiness schema. The six Local SEO components are the hub piece’s job, not this one’s.
Local SEO wins anything with a place in it, said or implied, from “electrician Marrickville” to “best coffee” typed from a phone at 8am. Google ranks those on proximity, relevance and prominence, and how Google decides which local businesses to recommend has the mechanism.
- Search your main service plus your suburb and look at the map, not the links.
- Open your Google Business Profile and check who last touched it, and when.
- Search your phone number in quotes and count how many versions of your address come back.
Where Local SEO and SEO share the work
The website is the overlap. A page that names the suburbs you serve, in text a person can read, helps the organic result and backs up what the profile claims.
LocalBusiness schema helps both, and so does technical health. A site Google can’t crawl properly is a weak organic result and an unverifiable profile.
Links and mentions overlap too, up to a point. A mention on the local chamber of commerce site is a citation for Local SEO and a link for SEO.
Anyone who’s done SEO properly has done some of the Local SEO groundwork without calling it that. Which is where the trouble starts, because “some of the groundwork” gets reported back as “we do Local SEO too”. It isn’t.
- Check your site names your service suburbs in text, not only in a footer map.
- Check your LocalBusiness schema exists and says the same thing the profile does.
- List your links and mentions and mark which ones also carry your address.
What your Google Business Profile, citations and reviews never touch
The profile, the citations and the reviews are map signals, and they stay on the map. Three hundred five-star reviews and a spotless profile won’t move “commercial electrician Sydney” one place in the blue links.
Equally, a strong link profile and good content do little for map pack position. Google fills the three map slots from the profile, the distance, and how consistently the web agrees about who and where you are.
Here’s the case I see most. A commercial electrician ranks first organically for “commercial electrician Sydney”, earned through years of content and links. Search “electrician Marrickville”, where the workshop actually is, and the map pack shows three competitors, none of whom rank organically for anything much.
The reasons all sit on the profile, claimed in 2019 and never touched since. The category says “Electrician” and nothing about commercial work, two directories still carry the old workshop address, and the last of its 11 reviews arrived in 2023.
Every one of those is a Local SEO problem, and not one is something the SEO agency was hired to fix.
The reverse happens too, less often. The café with 400 reviews and a one-page website nobody can find for “best brunch Sydney”.
- Take your best organic ranking and search the same service with your suburb. If you’re not in the map, that’s your gap.
- Take your best map position and search the service without the suburb. If you’re not in the links, that’s the other gap.
- Write down which signals each result actually runs on. They’re not the same list.
Do you need both Local SEO and SEO?
If you serve a defined area, yes, both, and the order matters. Local SEO comes first if the budget only stretches to one, because the map result sits closer to the enquiry.
The person searching “plumber Marrickville” at 7pm wants a plumber tonight, and the map pack is where they’re looking. The person searching “how to fix a leaking tap” is three steps further from ringing anyone. None of that is a knock on SEO, just a fact about where the customers are standing.
If you serve anywhere, the balance flips. A software company or a national wholesaler gets its heavy lifting from SEO, and Local SEO matters for the name and the office.
Nobody searches “near me” for accounting software.
Service-area businesses, the ones who drive to the job, need both, and setup decisions weigh more with no shopfront doing a pin’s work. Local SEO for service-area businesses goes through what’s different.
If someone’s charging you for “SEO” and the profile hasn’t been opened in a year, you’re paying for one job and getting one job.
Which is fine, as long as you know it.
- Decide whether your customers come from a defined area or from anywhere. That decides the order.
- If it’s a defined area and you can only fund one, fund the map first.
- Ask whoever’s invoicing you which of the two they’re doing. Make them answer with a list.
Two searches that show whether it’s the map or the links you’re missing
Search your main service with your suburb, then without it. Where you’re missing tells you which job hasn’t been done. Do both from a private window with the location set to your suburb.
In the map for the first and nowhere in the links for the second? SEO is the gap, and the website needs the work.
In the links for the second and missing from the map in the first? Local SEO is the gap, and why a business isn’t showing on Google Maps lists the usual causes.
Nowhere in either? You need both, and the map gets you in front of a customer sooner.
The 15-minute local visibility check takes this further, four searches and what each tells you. Two is enough here.
If Local SEO is the one you haven’t got, that’s the job Belmore Digital’s Local SEO programme exists for. It starts with an audit, and doesn’t pretend to be SEO.
- Run the two searches in a clean session, location set to your suburb.
- Note which result type you appear in for each. Map, links, both, neither.
- Match the gap to the job. Then find out who’s doing that job for you, if anyone.
FAQ
Is Local SEO different from SEO? Yes, and the difference is in what each one runs on. SEO gets your website into the organic results, on the strength of its content, technical health and links. Local SEO gets your business into the map pack, Google Maps and AI local recommendations, on the strength of your Google Business Profile, NAP consistency, citations and reviews.
Do I need Local SEO if I already do SEO? If your customers come from a defined area, yes. SEO work rarely touches the profile, the citations or the reviews, so a business can rank well organically and still be absent from the map results. Search your main service with your suburb, and if you’re not in the map, your SEO hasn’t done the Local SEO job.
Can I do Local SEO without SEO? Yes, and plenty do. A well-run profile, consistent citations and steady reviews will put a business in the map pack with a weak website behind it.
The site still matters for verifying the profile, so it’s a floor, not a ceiling.
TL;DR
- SEO gets you the blue links and runs on your website. Local SEO gets you the map and runs mostly on things that aren’t your website.
- They share the site, the schema and some of the links. They don’t share the profile, the citations or the reviews.
- Ranking first organically and missing from the map pack is the common case, not the exception.
- Serve a defined area? Both, map first. Serve anywhere? SEO, and Local SEO for your name.
- Two searches, with and without your suburb, tell you which job hasn’t been done. No report required.
If you’re not sure which of the two you’ve actually got, get in touch with JB.
