More people are starting their search for a web designer by asking ChatGPT instead of Googling. So I decided to find out where that leaves me. I opened a new chat, said I needed a website, mentioned I was based in Kingston upon Thames, and asked for recommendations.

I didn’t get a straight answer. I got a shortlist. And I wasn’t on it.

What ChatGPT Said First

The first answer named a handful of larger local agencies as the safest choices, based on team size, review volume and range of services. It then listed a few smaller studios and freelancers underneath, again without me.

So I asked directly. Why not Design by Nadja?

Once It Found Me, the Answer Changed

That’s when things got interesting. ChatGPT came back with this:

“That’s a fair question. Based on what I found, I wouldn’t rule out Design by Nadja at all. In fact, if you’re a small to medium business and value working directly with the person building your site, she’d move up my shortlist.”

It went on to list what it had found: close to twenty years of experience, a direct relationship with the person actually building your site rather than being handed to junior staff, ongoing support and SEO after launch, and reviews that repeatedly mention responsiveness and long term support.

Then it said something I didn’t expect. For a typical local project in the two to ten thousand pound range, it would be “quite comfortable” recommending me alongside one agency quote for comparison, and that I looked like one of the stronger independent web designers in the area rather than someone it would dismiss.

Good. But it took a follow up question to get there. The first answer should have already known that.

Why I Got Skipped the First Time

I asked it directly what would have changed its original answer. It didn’t dodge the question.

It said the bigger agencies surface first because they generate more digital noise. More backlinks, more press mentions, more directory listings, more sheer review volume. None of that is about the quality of the work. It’s about how much evidence of that work exists in places an AI can find quickly.

Then it pulled quotes straight from my own reviews that it clearly thought I was hiding.

“business increased substantially”

“SEO improvements already showing results”

“the difference it made to my business”

Those lines are sitting on review platforms. They’re not on my website where they’d actually do some work.

It also pointed out that I’ve got clients from ten and fifteen years back, but my site talks about being a “creative web designer” rather than someone with eighteen years of experience solving one specific problem for local businesses. And it flagged that I don’t have a dedicated page that simply answers the question someone would type into it. No “web designer Kingston upon Thames” page built to be found and quoted.

None of this was about my work being weak. It was about how little of the proof was visible in the right place.

What This Means for Your Own Business

Here’s the bit that matters more than any of the above. This isn’t really a story about picking a web designer. It’s a test, and it’s the same test your business is being put through right now, whether you know it or not.

Ask ChatGPT to recommend an electrician, a physio, a consultant, whatever you do, in Kingston upon Thames. See if it finds you. Then ask it why, or why not.

The gaps it found in me are the same gaps most local businesses have.

Proof buried in the wrong place. Your best reviews are probably sitting on Google or Facebook instead of on your own site where they can actually do some work.

No page that answers the exact question people ask. If someone searches for what you do plus your town, you need a page that says exactly that, clearly, not implied through clever branding.

Experience that isn’t stated plainly. If you’ve been doing this for years, say so in numbers. Don’t make people infer it.

Not enough evidence outside your own website. Directories, mentions, write ups. The more places say the same true things about you, the easier you are to trust and to find.

I know these gaps now because I just had them pointed out about my own business. If you want someone to look at yours with the same eye, that’s exactly what I do.

What I’m Doing About It

I’m not going to pretend the audit didn’t land. It was right. I’ve got the reviews and the track record, I just haven’t been putting the proof where it needs to be.

So here’s what’s changing. I’m building out proper case studies with real numbers instead of finished screenshots, rewriting my About page to actually say what eighteen years and one person doing the work means for you, and building the local pages that answer the exact questions people are typing into Google and ChatGPT.

If you want the short version, ask ChatGPT yourself. Just do me a favour and ask the follow up question too.

I rank number one in local search for my main search term. But the ranking didn’t bring me a steady flow of enquiries.

If you’re in a similar position, ranking well for your main term but not seeing the phone ring, here is what I’ve learned about why that happens, based on what I found when looking at my own stats and fixing my own site.

Ranking gets you seen. It doesn’t get you chosen.

There’s a gap between showing up in a search and someone deciding to contact you, and most business owners never look closely at that gap.

Being at the top of the results just means Google trusts your site enough to show it first. It says nothing about whether the person looking at it trusts you enough to get in touch.

Those are two completely different things. Ranking is Google’s decision. Contacting you is the customer’s decision. You can win the first one and still lose the second.

I was winning the first one for months while barely making a dent in the second.

What I found when I actually looked at my own site

Once I accepted that the ranking wasn’t the problem, I had to work out what was.

I went through my site the way a stranger would, not the way I see it after years of familiarity. A few things stood out straight away.

My case studies weren’t doing their job. A couple of them just linked out to the live website instead of explaining what the project actually involved or what changed for the client. If you’re a business owner trying to work out whether I’m any good, a link to a homepage tells you nothing.

My pricing for add on services wasn’t visible where it needed to be. I have a Google Business Profile optimisation service. You’d struggle to find the price for it unless you already knew to look.

My about page was full of qualifications and short on the actual person. Nobody deciding whether to trust a solo web designer wants a list of courses. They want to know who they’d be dealing with.

None of this was a ranking problem. It was a “would I trust this enough to email them” problem.

Three checks worth doing on your own site today

You don’t need an audit tool for this. You need to look at your site like someone who’s never met you and has three other tabs open with your competitors.

• Can a stranger tell what you actually deliver? Not “web design services”. What specifically happens, and what changes for the client afterwards.
• Is your pricing visible or hidden? If someone has to email you just to find out roughly what something costs, some of them won’t bother. They’ll go to whoever made it easy.
• Does your site look like a real person runs it? A photo, a name, some sense of who you’re actually dealing with. This matters more for solo operators and small teams than almost anything else on the page.

If you can’t answer yes to all three, that’s likely costing you more enquiries than your ranking is winning you.

Why this matters more for local service businesses

Say you’re a solicitor, an accountant or a consultant based in Kingston. People searching for you aren’t choosing based on which office is closest. They’re choosing based on whether the site in front of them looks like it belongs to someone competent and reliable, and that judgement happens before the ranking position even registers.

If you’re that business owner, this gap matters even more than it does for a shop or a takeaway down the road.

I redesigned my own homepage with this in mind. Real review, specific numbers where I have them, a clearer sense of who I actually am. It’s a work in progress, same as most things worth doing properly.

The bit most people skip

Fixing your ranking is a project with a clear finish line. Fixing whether people trust what they see when they land on your site is ongoing. It’s reviews you keep collecting, case studies you keep adding, pages you keep sharpening.

That’s a less exciting story than “get to number one and you’re done”, but it’s the honest one.

How to Get Your Business Found on Google: 7 Practical Tips

If people are searching for what you do and your business isn’t showing up, you’re losing work to competitors who may be less experienced, less local and less qualified than you.

The good news is that most of the things stopping you from appearing on Google are fixable. None of them require a big budget. They do require doing the right things properly.

Here’s what actually works.

1. Claim and complete your Google Business Profile

This is the single most important thing a local business can do. Your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is what makes you appear in Google Maps and the local results that show up when someone searches “[your service] near me” or “[your service] [your town].”

If you haven’t claimed your profile, you’re invisible in local search. If you’ve claimed it but left it half-finished, you’re nearly invisible.

What to do:

• Claim your profile at business.google.com if you haven’t already
• Fill in every section: business name, address, phone, website, hours, category, description
• Add photos: real ones, not stock. Your premises, your team, your work
• Choose the right primary category: this has more influence than most people realise
• Post updates regularly: even once a month signals that the profile is active

A complete, active profile dramatically improves your chances of appearing in the Local Pack, which is the map results that dominate the top of Google for local searches. I wrote a full guide to the Local Pack  if you want to go deeper.

2. Make sure your website mentions where you are

A surprising number of business websites don’t clearly state where they operate. If Google can’t work out where your business is based and who you serve, it can’t match you to local searches.

This doesn’t mean cramming your location into every sentence. It means being clear and natural about it.

What to do:

• Include your town or city in your page titles and headings where it makes sense. For example, “Accountants in Guildford” rather than just “Accountants”
• Add your address to the footer of every page
• Include your location in your About page and Contact page copy
• If you serve multiple areas, a short paragraph naming those areas on your service pages helps

None of this needs to feel forced. It just needs to be there.

3. Get your name, address and phone number consistent everywhere

Google cross-references information about your business across the web. If your business name, address and phone number (known as NAP) are different across different directories and listings, it creates confusion and Google responds by trusting you less.

This catches a lot of businesses out. You might have moved premises, changed phone number or rebranded, and the old details are still sitting on a dozen different directory sites.

What to do:

• Search your business name on Google and check what comes up: Yell, Yelp, Thomson Local, FreeIndex, Checkatrade, industry directories
• Make sure the name, address and phone number match exactly on every listing
• Update anything that’s out of date
• If you’re not listed anywhere at all, start with the main UK directories: Yell, Google Business Profile and your local council’s business directory

4. Ask your happy clients for Google reviews

Reviews are one of the strongest signals Google uses to decide how prominently to show a local business. Not just the star rating, i.e. the number of reviews, how recent they are and whether the business responds to them all matter.

Most businesses don’t ask. The ones who do consistently outperform the ones who don’t.

What to do:

• Send a direct link to your Google review page to clients after a job is done well
• Ask in person or by email, not in a way that feels pressured, just a straightforward “I’d really appreciate it if you had a moment to leave a Google review”
• Respond to every review, positive or critical: a short, professional response shows you’re active and engaged
• Don’t offer incentives for reviews: Google prohibits it and it can get your profile penalised

One well-written recent review is worth more than ten old ones. Keep asking.

5. Make sure your website is fast and works properly on mobile

Google uses your website’s performance as a ranking factor. A slow site or one that’s difficult to use on a phone will rank lower than a fast, mobile-friendly one and will lose visitors even when it does show up.

More than 60% of searches happen on mobile. If your site is clunky on a phone, you’re losing enquiries even when Google sends people to you.

What to do:

• Test your site speed at PageSpeed Insights (free, from Google). Anything below 50 on mobile is a problem
• Check your site on your own phone and ask someone else to do the same: does it load quickly, is the text readable, are buttons easy to tap?
• Make sure your phone number is click-to-call on mobile
• If your site is more than a few years old and was built on a cheap template, it may need rebuilding rather than patching

Speed and mobile-friendliness are table stakes now. They won’t make you rank on their own but ignoring them will hold you back.

6. Write content that answers the questions your clients actually search for

Blog posts, service pages and FAQs that answer real questions from real potential clients give Google more content to index and more chances to show your business to the right people.

The key is writing for the question someone types into Google, not for the way you’d describe your own service internally.

What to do:

• Think about the questions you get asked before someone hires you “how much does X cost”, “what’s the difference between X and Y”, “do I need X” and answer them properly in blog posts or FAQs
• Make sure each of your main services has its own page with clear, specific copy, not one page that mentions everything
• Include your location naturally where it’s relevant: “working with businesses in Kingston and across South West London” rather than just “working with businesses”
• Don’t publish content just to have something there. Thin, vague posts do nothing. A well-written post that genuinely helps someone is worth ten filler articles.

7. Don’t ignore what’s already there

Before you do anything new, look at what you have. Most businesses have a Google Business Profile that’s incomplete, a website that doesn’t clearly state what they do and where, and a handful of online listings with outdated information.

Fixing those things costs nothing except time and will often have a bigger impact than starting new activity.

What to do:

• Google yourself and look at the results as a stranger would. Does what comes up reflect what you actually do?
• Check that your website loads, that all the links work and that the key information (what you do, where you are, how to contact you) is immediately clear
• Look at your Google Business Profile and fill in anything that’s missing
• Check whether you have reviews, and whether you’ve responded to them

Most local businesses are losing visibility not because they haven’t done enough new things, but because the basics aren’t done properly. Start there.

Need help with your website’s visibility?

If you’re based in London or Surrey and your business isn’t showing up the way it should, the issue is usually a combination of things: your website, your Google Business Profile and how they work together.

I work with established owner-led businesses in Kingston and across London to fix exactly this. I build professional WordPress websites designed to rank in local search and I offer ongoing support so you’re not left to manage it alone.

Book a free consultation and tell me about your business.

FAQ

How long does it take to get found on Google? It depends on what you’re fixing. Some changes like completing your Google Business Profile can show results within a few weeks. Building up content and reviews takes longer, typically three to six months before you see consistent improvement.

Do I need to pay for Google Ads to show up? No. The tips in this post are all about organic and local search  appearing in the results Google shows for free. Paid ads can complement this but they’re not necessary to get found locally.

What’s the difference between Google Search and Google Maps results? Google Search shows a mix of organic website results and a local section (the Local Pack) with a map. Google Maps results come from your Google Business Profile. Ideally you want to appear in both and they influence each other a strong website helps your Maps ranking and a strong profile helps your overall visibility.

My business is already on Google but I’m not getting enquiries. Why? Visibility and conversion are different problems. You might be showing up but your profile or website isn’t giving people a clear reason to contact you. Check your reviews, your photos, your website speed and whether your site makes it easy to get in touch.

Do I need a website or is a Google Business Profile enough? A Google Business Profile alone gives you limited visibility. A well-built website that supports your profile  with proper service pages, location mentions and fast loading significantly increases how often and how prominently Google shows you.

Google Search Console is free, it comes directly from Google and it tells you things about your website that no other tool can. Yet most small business owners either haven’t set it up or set it up years ago and never looked at it again.

This post covers how to set up Google Search Console and get it connected in about 20 minutes and, more importantly, what to actually pay attention to once it’s running.

What is and how to set up Google Search Console

It’s a free tool from Google that shows you how your website is performing in search results. Not estimated performance, not inferred data but actual recorded information straight from Google about what people searched for before finding your site, which pages are indexed, whether Google can crawl your site properly and where things are going wrong.

Third-party SEO tools like Semrush are estimates based on crawling your site. Google Search Console is the source. When you see a discrepancy between them, Search Console is always right because it shows what Google actually recorded.

It’s particularly useful right now. Search Console now reports on performance across traditional search results, AI Overviews and AI Mode so you can start to see how your site is performing across the full range of ways Google is serving results in 2026.

Step 1: Go to Search Console and sign in

Go to search.google.com/search-console and sign in with the Google account you use for your business. If you use Google Analytics or Google Business Profile, use the same account. Keeping everything under one account makes life considerably easier.

Step 2: Add your website as a property

Click “Add property” and enter your website URL. You have two options: a domain property or a URL prefix property. A domain property covers all versions of your site (http, https, www and non-www) in one place. That’s the one to choose if you can access your domain’s DNS settings.

If DNS sounds intimidating, the URL prefix option is simpler. Just paste in the exact URL that appears in your browser when you visit your site, including the https://.

Step 3: Verify that you own the site

This is the step that puts people off, but it’s straightforward.

If you’ve already set up Google Analytics using the same Google account, Search Console sometimes verifies automatically. If you see a confirmation screen, you’re done.

If not, the easiest method for a WordPress site is the HTML tag. Google gives you a short piece of code to paste into the head section of your homepage. In WordPress, your SEO plugin handles this without touching any code. In Rank Math, go to General Settings > Webmaster Tools and paste the code into the Google Search Console field. In Yoast, it’s under SEO > General > Webmaster Tools.

Once you’ve verified, it takes a day or two for data to start appearing. Don’t worry if the dashboard looks empty at first.

Step 4: Submit your sitemap

Once verified, submit your sitemap so Google knows exactly what pages your site contains.

Pages from your site can be discovered by Google without submitting a sitemap, but doing so may speed up discovery and lets you monitor sitemap-related information directly in the tool.

If you use Rank Math or Yoast, your sitemap is generated automatically. The URL is usually yourwebsite.com/sitemap_index.xml. In Search Console, go to Sitemaps in the left menu, paste the URL in and click Submit.

What to actually look at

This is where most guides stop being useful. Here’s what matters for a small business website.

The Performance report

This is the most important section. It shows you which search queries are bringing people to your site, how many times your pages appeared in search results (impressions) and how many people actually clicked through.

A new branded queries filter now automatically separates traffic from people who searched for your business name from traffic that came through genuinely competitive searches. That distinction matters. If most of your clicks come from people already searching your name, your SEO isn’t growing your audience, it’s just serving people who already know you exist.

Look for pages with a lot of impressions but very few clicks. That means you’re showing up in search results but something about your title or meta description isn’t convincing people to visit. Those pages are quick wins – a better title tag often makes a meaningful difference.

The Indexing report

This tells you which pages Google has indexed and which it hasn’t, and crucially, why. If a page isn’t indexed, it won’t appear in search results at all.

Common reasons pages don’t get indexed: they’ve been accidentally set to “noindex” in your SEO plugin, they’re blocked in your robots.txt file, or they’re so thin on content that Google doesn’t consider them worth including. The Indexing report flags all of these.

The Page Experience report

This covers Core Web Vitals, which are Google’s technical measures of how fast and stable your pages feel to a user. An SEO PowerSuite study found a 30% drop in weekly organic clicks when Core Web Vitals moved from green to amber, with recovery when they returned to green. In 2026, pages with poor Core Web Vitals scores are also less likely to appear in AI Overviews.

You don’t need to understand the technical detail behind each metric. Just check whether your pages are marked as “Good”, “Needs improvement” or “Poor” and flag anything that isn’t green to whoever manages your site.

The Insights tab

Search Console Insights is now integrated directly into the main dashboard rather than being a separate tool. It shows trending pages, content gaining or losing visibility and a high-level overview of clicks and impressions in a format that’s much easier to read than the main Performance report.

It’s a good place to start each time you log in, before going deeper into the data.

How often should you check it?

Once a month is enough for most small businesses. Set a recurring reminder, log in and spend 15 minutes looking at:

• Whether your overall clicks and impressions are trending up or down
• Any new pages that aren’t indexed that should be
• Any pages with lots of impressions but very few clicks
• Whether your Core Web Vitals are still showing green

You don’t need to act on everything you see. The goal is to understand what’s happening so that when something does change, such as a traffic drop, a new page not appearing in search, you have context to work from.

One thing worth knowing in 2026

AI Overviews are reducing click-through rates on informational search queries. A site can be ranking well and receiving fewer visits than it used to. The only tool that shows this clearly is Search Console, because it’s the only tool that shows both impressions and clicks at query level. If your traffic has dropped but your rankings haven’t, this is often why.

It doesn’t mean your SEO has failed. It means the search results page has changed around you, and understanding that distinction is important before making any decisions about your site.

If you’d like me to take a look at what Search Console is showing for your site and flag anything worth fixing, that’s something I cover as part of my local SEO service. Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes on the data makes all the difference.

If you’re about to hire a web designer or SEO specialist, there’s one thing worth understanding before you do: internal linking for local SEO.

It doesn’t sound exciting. Most business owners have never heard of it. But it’s one of the things I check first when I look at a new site, and it’s almost always broken.

Here’s what it is, why it matters for local search, and what you should expect any decent SEO person to sort out.

What Is Internal Linking for local SEO?

An internal link is a clickable link that goes from one page on your website to another page on the same website.

That’s it.

Your navigation menu is full of internal links. But the ones that matter most for SEO are the ones sitting inside your actual page content, connecting relevant pages to each other.

For example: a blog post about website maintenance that links through to your maintenance packages page. Or a page about web design that links to a case study showing the results. Those contextual links, sitting naturally in your content, are where the value is.

Good anchor text is specific, natural and relevant to the page you’re linking to. Google’s own guidance on links and crawlability makes this point directly.

Why It Matters for Local SEO

Search engines like Google use links to crawl your website. They follow links from page to page, building a picture of what your site is about and which pages are most important.

When you link between pages thoughtfully, you’re doing two things:

Helping Google find everything. Pages that have no internal links pointing to them, what’s known as “orphan pages”, can be missed by Google’s crawlers entirely. They receive no authority from the rest of your site and often don’t rank. This is more common than people realise, especially on sites that have grown gradually over the years.

Telling Google what matters. The pages on your site that receive the most internal links are read as your most important pages. If you want your web design page or local SEO page to rank, other pages on your site should be linking to them.

For local businesses, this is particularly relevant. Your service pages, your location pages, your case studies, and your blog posts should all be connected. A well-linked site is a coherent site. Google rewards that.

What Good Internal Linking Looks Like

You don’t need dozens of links on every page. You need the right links, in the right places, with the right wording.

Here’s what I’d look for on any well-optimised small business site:

Blog posts link to relevant service pages. If you publish a post about how to choose a web designer in Kingston, that post should link through to your web design page. The blog works as a way to pull in traffic, and the link guides readers towards your services.

Service pages link to case studies. If someone is reading about your web design packages and you have a case study showing what you’ve achieved for a local business, link to it. It builds trust and keeps the visitor engaged.

Related service pages link to each other. If someone is reading about web design, there’s a good chance they’ll also be interested in website maintenance or local SEO. A simple link between those pages helps both the user and Google.

Anchor text is descriptive. Anchor text is the clickable words in a link. “Click here” tells Google nothing. “Website maintenance packages for London businesses” tells Google exactly where that link goes and what the destination page is about. Good anchor text is specific, natural and relevant to the page you’re linking to.

What Weak Internal Linking Looks Like on a Real Site

Most small business websites I review have one or more of these issues:

• Orphan pages that were added at some point but never linked to from anywhere. They sit on the site, invisible to Google.
• Blog posts that go nowhere. Lots of effort writing content, but no links from those posts back to service pages. The traffic arrives and has nowhere logical to go.
• Generic anchor text throughout. Every link says “read more” or “find out more” with no useful information for Google.
• No links between service pages. Web design, maintenance and SEO are all separate in the menu but never cross-referenced in the content itself.

None of these are catastrophic on their own. Together, they mean your site is much harder for Google to understand and much less likely to show up for the searches that matter.

What to Ask When You’re Hiring Someone

If you’re hiring a web designer or SEO specialist, internal linking should be part of the conversation. Here are a few questions worth asking:

Will you audit my existing internal links? A proper site review should flag orphan pages, weak anchor text and missing connections between pages. If they’re not looking at this, they’re not looking at the full picture.

How will blog posts be connected to my service pages? New content should always be written with links in mind. Every post should have a reason to exist beyond traffic, and that usually means connecting it to a page you want to rank.

What’s the structure of the site? Your most important pages, your homepage, your main service pages, your key location pages, should be reachable within a couple of clicks from anywhere on the site. If someone has to go three or four levels deep to find your main service, that’s a structural problem.

You don’t need to understand every technical detail. But knowing the right questions to ask means you’ll be better placed to evaluate whether the person you hire actually knows what they’re doing.

Internal Linking and Location Pages

If you’re targeting clients in a specific area, Kingston, London, Surrey, or beyond, internal linking becomes even more important.

Any page that targets a location should be linked to from other relevant pages. If you have a case study featuring a Kingston business, that page should link to your local SEO service page. If you have a blog post about local search, it should link to your location-specific service pages.

This builds a web of relevant, locally-focused content that reinforces your geographic authority in Google’s eyes. It’s one of the reasons a site with 15 well-connected pages can outperform a site with 50 disconnected ones.

Where to Start if Your Site Already Exists

You don’t have to rebuild everything. Start here:

1. Check for orphan pages. Go through your site and make a list of every page. Then ask: is this page linked to from anywhere in the body content? If not, find a relevant place to add a link.
2. Look at your blog posts. Does each one link to at least one service page? If not, add a contextual link where it fits naturally.
3. Review your anchor text. Search for “click here” and “read more” across your site. Replace them with something descriptive.
4. Link between your service pages. If your web design page doesn’t mention your maintenance packages anywhere, fix that.

These are quick wins that cost nothing except a bit of time and attention. If you’re bringing someone in to do this for you, these are the basics they should cover before anything else.

If you’ve ever been told you need to “do SEO” without any further explanation, you’re not alone. Most small business owners know they need to be visible online but have no idea that there are fundamentally different approaches to achieving that, with very different costs, timescales and results depending on your business type.

Traditional SEO and local SEO are not the same thing. For an established business serving customers in a specific area, understanding the difference could save you a significant amount of money and point you towards the strategy that will actually move the needle.

What Traditional SEO Is Trying to Do

Traditional SEO, also often referred to as organic SEO, is about ranking your website as high as possible in Google’s search results for broad keywords. A business targeting “psychologist”, “accountant” or “personal trainer” through traditional SEO is competing nationally, sometimes globally, for those terms.

The problem for small businesses is the competition. Those broad keywords are dominated by large brands, established agencies and websites that have spent years building authority. Getting onto page one for “accountant” requires an enormous amount of content, a strong backlink profile and significant ongoing investment. Even then it typically takes 12 to 24 months to see meaningful results, with no guarantee of reaching the top.

For a national e-commerce brand selling to customers anywhere in the country, traditional SEO makes sense. For a business serving clients in Kingston, London or Surrey, competing nationally for broad keywords is a slow and expensive way to reach people who may never become your customers anyway.

What Local SEO Is Actually Targeting

Local SEO vs traditional SEO comes down to one fundamental difference: who you are trying to reach.

Local SEO targets people who are searching in your area right now, with intent to buy. When someone searches “plumber Kingston,” “psychologist near me” or “accountant Surrey,” Google shows a local pack: the map with three business listings that appears above the organic results. Getting into that local pack puts you directly in front of people who are already looking for what you offer, in exactly the area you serve.

The search intent is completely different. Someone searching “web designer” might be doing research, writing an article or browsing from another country. Someone searching “web designer Kingston” is a business owner in Kingston who wants to hire someone. That specificity is enormously valuable.

Businesses listed in the Google 3-pack get 126% more traffic and 93% more actions, including calls and website clicks, compared to those ranked between positions 4 and 10. That alone makes the case for prioritising local search if you serve a defined geographic area.

The Competitive Reality in 2026

Traditional SEO has never been more difficult for small businesses. The top positions for most commercial keywords are occupied by large directories, national brands and businesses with dedicated marketing teams and substantial budgets.

When you look at local SEO vs traditional SEO in terms of competition, local SEO is far more winnable. You are not competing with every business in the country. You are competing with the businesses serving the same geographic area as you. In many sectors and locations that pool is still very manageable, and a well-optimised local presence can reach the top three results without the kind of investment traditional SEO demands.

46% of all Google searches have local intent, meaning nearly one in two searches comes from someone looking for a product or service near them. That is an enormous pool of high-intent traffic, and for businesses in Kingston and London, much of it is genuinely winnable.

What Local SEO Actually Involves

This is where a lot of business owners are surprised. Local SEO is not just about your website. The signals Google uses to decide who appears in the local pack come from several places:

• Your Google Business Profile is the single most important factor. A complete, well-maintained profile with accurate categories, regular updates, photos and active review responses tells Google your business is current and trustworthy. A verified Google Business Profile gets around 200 clicks or interactions per month on average.
• Your NAP consistency matters significantly. Your name, address and phone number need to appear identically across every directory, social platform and website that mentions your business. Inconsistencies create doubt in Google’s systems and quietly suppress your visibility.
• Reviews are a direct ranking signal and a conversion tool simultaneously. Volume, recency and how you respond all contribute to where you appear and whether people choose to contact you. 68% of consumers will only use a business with a rating of 4 or more stars.
• Your website still plays a role. Location-specific pages, local keywords used naturally throughout your content and technical foundations like page speed and mobile performance all support your local rankings.

None of this requires the kind of ongoing content production and link building that traditional SEO demands. It does require consistency and attention, but the entry point is far more accessible for a small business.

Who Local SEO Is Right For

Local SEO works best for businesses serving customers in a defined geographic area, whether that is a specific town, city or region. It is particularly effective for:

• Service businesses where clients come to you or you go to them, including consultancies, health practitioners, therapists and professional services.
• Businesses with a physical location that people visit or contact directly.
• Owner-led businesses competing against larger competitors, where local trust and reputation carry significant weight.

If your business can serve anyone anywhere in the country and geography is irrelevant, traditional SEO or a combination of both approaches makes more sense. But for the vast majority of established businesses in Kingston, London and Surrey, local search is where the highest-intent customers are and where the competition is most winnable.

The Honest Comparison: Local SEO vs Traditional SEO

Local SEO vs traditional SEO are not in opposition. They share foundations: a well-built website, good content and a credible online presence help both. But they target different audiences, operate in different competitive environments and require different levels of investment to see results.

For a small business in Kingston or the surrounding area, local SEO is almost always the more efficient starting point. You are targeting people who are already looking for you, in a competitive pool you can realistically compete in, with results that come considerably faster than the 12 to 24 month timescale traditional SEO typically requires. Initial improvements from Google Business Profile optimisation and review responses can show results within weeks, with more significant ranking improvements following within 3 to 6 months of consistent effort.

Traditional SEO can complement that over time as your authority grows. But it rarely makes sense as the primary strategy for a location-based business that wants to generate enquiries in the next six to twelve months.

If you are not sure where your local search presence currently stands, my small business local SEO service is a good place to start. I look at your Google Business Profile, your citations, your reviews and your on-site signals and give you an honest picture of what is working and what is not. If you would like to talk it through, book a free consultation and we can go from there.

You’ve Googled a competitor and noticed it. Stars on Google search results. You’ve spotted them on a competitor’s listing and wondered why yours don’t show. Theirs do. And you can’t work out why, because their reviews aren’t even better than yours.

Here’s what’s actually going on, and what you can do about it.

You Can’t Force Stars on Google Search Results

This is the first thing to understand. There is no button, no setting, no piece of code that guarantees your stars appear in Google search results.

Google decides. You influence.

The stars in google search results you see next to a business listing in organic search results (not the map, not the ads, the regular blue link results) are pulled directly from that business’s Google Business Profile. Google makes its own decision about whether to display them, based on signals it’s looking for across your whole online presence.

That means two businesses with identical ratings can get completely different treatment. One gets stars. One doesn’t. It isn’t always fair and it isn’t always logical.

What you can do is make sure everything Google looks for is properly in place. That’s where most businesses fall short.

Where the Stars Actually Come From

A quick bit of clarity on where stars on Google search results actually come from.

The stars in organic search results come from your Google Business Profile, the listing that appears on Google Maps and in the panel on the right when someone searches your business name.

They do not come from reviews on your own website. They do not come from Trustpilot or Yell. And despite what some guides suggest, adding rating code to your website will not trigger them for a local service business. Google stopped allowing that for local businesses years ago and considers it self-serving.

The only source Google trusts for this is your GBP. So that’s where your focus should be.

What Actually Needs to Be in Place

None of this is complicated. But it all needs to be done properly.

• A fully completed Google Business Profile. Not half-finished. Every section filled in: business description, categories, services, opening hours, photos. Google looks for completeness as a trust signal.
• Your GBP linked to your website domain. Google needs to connect your profile to your site. If the website URL on your GBP doesn’t match your actual domain, or if your site isn’t verified in Google Search Console, that connection is weak.
• Consistent business details everywhere. Your business name, address and phone number need to match exactly across your GBP, your website and anywhere else you’re listed online. Even small differences (St vs Street, missing Ltd) create confusion for Google.
• Real reviews coming in steadily. Not a burst of ten in one week then nothing for eight months. Listings with consistent review activity rank higher in local searches and are more likely to have their ratings surfaced. Slow and steady beats a sprint.
• Responses to your reviews. Google notices whether you engage. Responding to reviews, positive and negative, signals an active and credible business. It takes two minutes and most businesses don’t bother.
• A rating worth showing. There’s no official threshold, but in practice you want to be above 4.0 and have more than a handful of reviews. A 5.0 from three reviews carries less weight than a 4.7 from thirty.

What Won’t Work

Worth being direct about this, because there’s a lot of bad advice online.

Adding review schema code to your website won’t trigger stars for a local service business. Google has explicitly said it treats this as self-serving and won’t reward it with rich results.

Buying reviews or asking friends to leave fake ones is not just ineffective, it’s now explicitly against UK law. From April 2025 the CMA can independently fine businesses up to 10% of global turnover for fake review violations, with no court process needed. It’s not worth the risk.

And chasing a perfect 5.0 rating isn’t the goal either. A business with 4.8 from 40 genuine reviews is in a far stronger position than one with 5.0 from 6. Volume and consistency matter more than a perfect score.

Why Your Competitor Might Have Them and You Don’t

A few common reasons:

Their GBP has been active and well-maintained for longer. Google factors in the age and consistency of a profile, not just the current snapshot.

Their website is properly verified and linked to their GBP in a way Google can confirm. This is a common gap that’s easy to miss and easy to fix.

Google is still deciding. The display of stars in organic results isn’t permanent. It can appear, disappear and reappear as Google tests and updates how it shows results. Your competitor having them today doesn’t mean they’ll have them next month.

The Honest Summary

Set everything up properly. Keep your GBP active. Get reviews consistently. Respond to them. Make sure your website and profile are properly connected.

Then let Google do what it does. The businesses most likely to show stars on Google search results are the ones that have done the basics properly and kept them up.

You can’t force the stars to appear. But businesses that do the above are the ones most likely to see them — and more importantly, they’re the ones Google trusts enough to recommend in local search results, which is what actually drives enquiries.

If you want help getting your Google Business Profile properly set up and connected to your website, that’s something I offer as a standalone service and as part of my ongoing support packages.

AI search local SEO is one of those topics most business owners have not thought about yet. Which is exactly why it matters right now.

Here is a test worth doing. Open ChatGPT. Type: “your business name in Kingston upon Thames.” See what comes back.

If your business is not in the answer, you just found a gap. A growing number of potential clients are skipping Google entirely and asking AI tools directly for recommendations. When they do, the AI does not return ten options and let the user decide. It picks. And if it does not know who you are, it picks someone else.

This is not a reason to panic. The volume of AI-driven enquiries is still small compared to Google. But the direction is clear, the growth is fast, and the businesses getting ahead of this now are going to have a real advantage in two years. Here is what actually determines whether AI recommends you and what you can do about it.

How AI search local SEO actually works

When someone asks ChatGPT for a local service recommendation, the AI does not run a live Google search. It synthesises an answer from multiple sources it already trusts: your website, your Google Business Profile, review platforms and directory listings across the web.

The businesses that show up consistently in AI answers share the same characteristics: they are clear about who they are, their content is easy for AI to extract, and they appear across multiple independent platforms. The AI picks businesses it can verify easily. If your information is clear, consistent and appears across several independent sources, the AI gains confidence and recommends you. If those sources contradict each other or whole sections are missing, it picks someone easier to verify.

The key insight: this is not a new set of rules. It is the same trust logic that has always driven local SEO, applied more rigorously.

The data sources most local businesses have never thought about

Over 70% of local business results in ChatGPT come from Foursquare. Not Google. Foursquare.

Most people’s reaction to that is confusion, because Foursquare shut down its consumer-facing city guide in 2025. But the underlying business database is very much alive and it has a direct confirmed data partnership with OpenAI. When ChatGPT receives a local query, it queries Foursquare’s database first, which covers over 100 million businesses across 200 countries. Only if it cannot find enough there does it fall back to other sources.

The problem is that since the public app closed, most listings have gone unmaintained. Outdated contact details, old addresses, missing categories. Nobody has been updating them because nobody realised they mattered. They now matter enormously.

Search for your business on Foursquare right now. If you are not listed or your details are wrong, this is the single most impactful fix you can make for ChatGPT visibility. Claiming full management access costs around $20 and takes about twenty minutes. Almost nobody has done it yet.

The second source worth knowing about is Bing Places. ChatGPT has a direct integration with Bing search, and Bing Places listings feed directly into that ecosystem. If your business has a complete and accurate Bing Places profile, ChatGPT can reference that information when answering local queries. Most UK businesses have never touched their Bing Places listing. It is free to claim and takes less than an hour to set up properly.

The technical issue quietly blocking websites

This one surprises most business owners and web designers alike.

In July 2025 Cloudflare changed its default settings so that all new domains added to its platform have AI crawlers blocked from the start. Cloudflare protects roughly 20% of all websites on the internet so this affected a significant number of sites.

Here is the important thing: you do not need to have joined Cloudflare after July 2025 for this to affect you. Many existing users had already switched the block on manually without fully understanding what it does. So regardless of when you signed up, it is worth checking your settings.

If the block is active, AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews cannot crawl your content. Your site can look completely fine in Google and have perfectly good technical SEO, but AI crawlers hit a wall and stop. You would never know from looking at your analytics.

To check: log into your Cloudflare dashboard, go to Security then Bots, and look for the toggle labelled “AI Scrapers and Crawlers.” There is also a more granular AI Crawl Control panel that lets you manage individual crawlers separately. Check both.

Switching the block off takes thirty seconds and immediately opens your site back up to AI search crawlers.

How to check if AI can actually access your site

If you are not on Cloudflare, your site is most likely accessible to AI crawlers. But it is worth confirming regardless of your setup.

The quickest manual check is your robots.txt file. Go to yourdomain.com/robots.txt in your browser and look for any lines that disallow access to crawlers with these user agent names: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot or anthropic-ai. If those names appear with a Disallow rule, AI tools are being blocked at source.

For a faster answer, llmrefs.com is a free tool that checks whether AI crawlers can reach your site and flags anything blocking them. Takes about thirty seconds and requires no technical knowledge.

What to do on your website

Once AI can actually access your site, the content itself needs to be easy for it to extract and trust. This is where good local SEO and AI search local SEO overlap almost entirely, which is useful because it means the work you do here improves both.

Structure every page clearly with H2 and H3 headings, short paragraphs, numbered processes where relevant and bullet points for key facts. AI systems break your pages into individual passages and evaluate each one separately. Every section needs to make sense on its own, without the context of the rest of the page.

Start each service page with a direct answer in the first 40 to 60 words. Include an FAQ section on your key pages. AI tools rely heavily on clear question and answer pairs when building their responses and will often lift your FAQ content directly into an answer.

Be specific about what you do and where you do it. If your service pages are vague, or your location only appears in a footer, the AI cannot confidently verify that you are the right answer for a location-based query. Mention Kingston, London and Surrey naturally throughout your pages.

Schema markup matters here too. LocalBusiness, Service and FAQPage schema now serve a dual purpose: they help Google and they help AI tools parse your content more reliably. If you are unsure whether your site has this in place, read my post on how to properly structure a service page for local SEO.

Why third-party mentions matter more than your own content

This is where AI search local SEO diverges most sharply from traditional SEO. Research across 21,311 brand mentions found that 85% of all brand citations in AI responses come from third-party pages, not the business’s own website. AI tools strongly favour earned mentions and authoritative external sources over anything you publish about yourself.

Businesses appearing on four or more independent platforms are 2.8 times more likely to appear in ChatGPT responses. Cross-platform consistency is one of the strongest signals of legitimacy an AI system can detect.

What that means practically for a local service business:

Get listed in local and industry directories. Your local Chamber of Commerce, local business associations and any directories relevant to your sector. Each independent listing is a trust signal that AI can cross-reference. These are also the same citations that strengthen your rankings in the Google Local 3-Pack, so you get double value from the work.

Earn mentions in third-party content. A local news feature, a blog post that references your work, a case study published by a client. These carry far more weight in AI answers than anything on your own site.

Ask for detailed reviews. Reviews play a significant role in AI recommendations. LLMs use them as a shortcut to assess quality and tend to favour businesses with strong, recent and plentiful reviews. When asking clients for a review, steer them gently. Ask them to mention what you did and where they are based. A review saying “Nadja redesigned our WordPress site in Kingston and our enquiries have doubled” is worth twenty generic five-star ratings to an AI system. If you want to understand how reviews affect your wider local visibility, Google’s own guidance on review best practices is worth reading.

What about llms.txt?

You may have come across llms.txt, a file some sites are adding to guide AI tools towards their most useful content. I have one on this site and it took about ten minutes to set up via Rank Math.

But I would be misleading you if I said it is making a meaningful difference right now. Independent research across hundreds of thousands of domains found no measurable impact on AI citations, and no major AI platform has confirmed it actively uses the file. Set it up if you want to stay ahead of the curve, but do not prioritise it over the things in this post that actually move the needle.

The summary

AI search local SEO is not replacing Google for local businesses yet. But it is growing fast and the businesses being recommended by ChatGPT right now are not there by accident.

The good news is that most of what works is an extension of solid local SEO: be consistent, be specific, be easy to verify. The practical additions are straightforward rather than complex.

• Check your Cloudflare settings.
• Confirm AI crawlers can reach your site.
• Claim your Foursquare listing.
• Set up Bing Places if you have not already.
• Structure your content so AI can extract passages directly.
• Build your presence beyond your own website.

None of this requires starting from scratch. It requires doing the existing work more thoroughly and adding a few things most of your competitors have not thought about yet.

Every few months, a new headline lands about Google’s algorithm changing everything. AI is destroying search. Rankings are collapsing. Small businesses need to act now or disappear from Google entirely. Most of it is overblown. But 2026 is different enough that it is worth explaining what has actually changed, what it means for businesses in Kingston, London and Surrey, and what you can do about it. Some of it matters a lot. Some of it is not worth losing sleep over. I will tell you which is which.

What the Google 2026 Algorithm Actually Changed

Google ran three major core updates in 2025, in March, June and December, and each one tightened the same screws: is this content genuinely helpful, and is it from a source that actually knows what they’re talking about? That question now shapes how most sites rank.

The biggest shift is not AI replacing search results. It is Google getting much better at telling the difference between content that demonstrates real expertise and content that just uses the right keywords. A Kingston accountant who has handled local business tax returns for ten years should now outrank a generic national directory, if their website is set up properly. That is the direction things are moving.

A few specific changes are worth knowing about:

• Content freshness matters more. Pages updated in the last three months get more visibility. Old, static service pages are losing ground.
• Page structure is being read by AI systems as well as Google’s traditional crawlers. Clear headings, well-organised content and proper schema markup help both.
• Thin content is being penalised harder. A single sentence under a service heading is not enough anymore.
• Local signals have become a bigger part of the ranking picture, especially for service-based businesses.

AI Overviews: Should Local Businesses Be Worried?

This is the question I get asked most often right now, and the honest answer is: less than you probably think, if you are a local service business.

AI Overviews are the summaries that appear at the top of some Google results, generated by Google’s AI rather than linking to individual pages. They have reduced clicks to websites for certain types of searches. Ahrefs analysed 146 million search results in November 2025 and found that only 7.9% of local searches trigger an AI Overview, compared to over 22% for non-local queries.. The searches most affected are informational ones, like when someone ask ‘how does conveyancing work’ rather than ‘conveyancing solicitor Kingston.’

If someone is looking for a web designer in Kingston, a plumber in Wimbledon or an accountant in Surrey, they want to speak to a local business. They are not looking for a generic AI summary. That intent is still sending people to websites and Google Business Profiles, not keeping them on the results page.

If someone is searching for a web designer in Kingston, they want to speak to someone local. AI Overviews are not changing that.

What AI Overviews have affected significantly is blog and article traffic. If you have invested heavily in informational content, such as how-to guides, explainers, general advice articles, you may have seen traffic to those pages fall. Google is now answering many of those questions itself. This does not mean you should stop writing content, but it does mean the content needs to do more than just answer basic questions. It needs to demonstrate your specific expertise and local knowledge.

• AI Overviews affect informational searches far more than local or transactional ones.
• Service businesses in Kingston and surrounding areas are less exposed than content-heavy sites.
• Blog content that shows genuine expertise and local knowledge still performs. Generic how-to content is losing traffic.
• Being cited in AI Overviews is becoming its own form of visibility: well-structured, authoritative pages are more likely to appear as sources.

E-E-A-T: Why Google Wants Proof, Not Promises

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Google added the first E for Experience in 2022, and it has become more significant with every update since. The principle is simple: Google wants to surface content from people who have actually done the thing they are writing about, not just people who have researched it.

For a small business in Kingston or London, this is genuinely good news. You have real experience. You have completed real projects for real clients in the area. The problem is that most small business websites do not show any of this. They have a services page that says ‘we provide professional results’ and a contact form. That is not enough anymore.

Google wants to know you have actually done this work, not just that you say you have.

Google’s own guidance through Google Search Central is clear that original, first-hand content is what their systems are trained to reward. That means real project examples, real client outcomes, specific local knowledge, not generic text that could apply to any business in any city.

What E-E-A-T looks like in practice for a local business:

• Service pages that reference actual projects you have completed, with location and context.
• An About page that explains how long you have been doing this and what kind of clients you work with.
• Case studies or project examples, even brief ones, that show real work rather than stock descriptions.
• Testimonials on the relevant service pages, not just collected on one Reviews page.
• Consistent business information: name, address, phone number, across your website and all directories.
• Schema markup that tells Google exactly what your business does, where you operate and how to contact you.

Your Google Business Profile Is Your New Homepage

This is not new advice, but it has become more urgent. Your Google Business Profile is now the primary source of data that Google uses to answer local queries, including in AI-generated results. If your profile is incomplete, out of date or inconsistent with your website, you are losing visibility.

Research on local search in 2026 consistently shows that AI-driven local results pull directly from Business Profile data. The businesses that appear when someone searches ‘web designer near me’ or ‘web designer Kingston’ are the ones with properly set up, actively maintained profiles. This is one of the fastest ways to improve local visibility without touching your website at all.

• Make sure your service categories are specific, not just ‘Web Designer’ but the subcategories that match what you actually do.
• Add photos regularly. Active profiles with recent photos perform better than static ones.
• Respond to every review. This signals to Google that the business is engaged and trustworthy.
• Post updates when you complete projects or have news. Treat it like a simple feed, not a static listing.
• Keep your address, phone number and website URL exactly consistent with what appears on your site and in other directories.

Your Google Business Profile is doing more work than your website for many local searches. It needs to be treated that way.

What Your Website Actually Needs to Do in 2026

The fundamentals have not changed. Fast load times, mobile-friendly design and clear structure still matter enormously. What has changed is what Google is looking for beyond those basics.

The websites I build for businesses in Kingston and across London and Surrey are structured to perform for local search specifically. That means dedicated service pages for each service, with local context built in. It means adding completed projects to those pages as examples. It means proper schema markup so Google can read exactly what the business does and who it serves.

Here is what is worth prioritising on your website right now:

• Service pages with depth. Each service should have its own page with a proper explanation, local context and at least one real example or case study.
• Location pages or location references. If you work across Kingston, Richmond, Wimbledon and Surrey, your site should reflect that in a way that feels natural and specific.
• Schema markup. Local business schema, service schema and review schema all help Google understand your business accurately. This is something I include in all the sites I build.
• Page speed and Core Web Vitals. Google still measures how fast your pages load and how stable the layout is as it loads. A slow site is a signal of a poorly maintained business.
• Internal linking. Your blog posts and case study pages should link back to your relevant service pages. This is how you use content to strengthen the pages that actually generate enquiries.
• Updated content. Static websites that have not been touched in two years are losing ground to ones with fresh content and recent examples.

None of this is complicated, but it does require someone to actually do it. Most business owners do not have the time or the knowledge. That is why I offer ongoing support after launch rather than just handing over a website and disappearing.