Local SEO is the practice of making a business findable to people searching from a specific place, usually with location intent baked into the query ("plumber near me," "St. Catharines accountant," "WordPress developer in Niagara"). It sits at the intersection of [on-page SEO](/glossary/on-page-seo/), Google Business Profile work, and the unglamorous bookkeeping of [NAP Consistency](/glossary/nap-consistency/) across every directory that mentions you.
The work breaks roughly into three areas: getting your business listed accurately everywhere it matters, earning reviews and local mentions that signal you actually serve the area, and writing on-site content that maps to what local searchers are typing. [Barnacle SEO](/glossary/barnacle-seo/) — attaching your business to bigger local platforms like chamber directories or regional newspapers — often does more for a small operator than another round of on-site tweaks.
What local SEO will not fix: a weak service offer, an empty review profile, or a business that does not actually have a local presence to point at. I have watched operators spend a year tuning their Google Business Profile while their phone stayed quiet because the underlying offer was not one anyone wanted. The optimisation amplifies what is already there. If the foundation is thin, local SEO makes the thinness more visible, faster.