Ask Me Anything About Local SEO Challenges

[Phong Hoang 1]

Hey BHW,
Over the past month I’ve shared some of my experiences with Local SEO – from citations and reviews to local link building and case studies. I know many of you are running local projects or client campaigns, so I thought it would be useful to open up an AMA.Drop your questions about Local SEO – whether it’s ranking in the map pack, review strategies, or citation issues – and I’ll do my best to answer with what’s worked for me. Let’s turn this into a thread full of actionable insights for everyone.

 

[karenisking]

Nice initiative. Local SEO can be tricky with maps and reviews. Curious how you handle duplicate listings or suspension issues.

 

[GreyFrogEX]

Nice gesture, I'm doing it for a few businesses as well as part of my service, and results haven't been great yet.
finding it very hard to get organic leads, tought of a method to open a few GBPS and try to rank them high enough to track more traffic from local nearby cities.
Is it viable? Are there any other methods?
Also, what would you recommend doing in order to rank high in the map pack, not just very locally also in nearby not so not-so-close areas?
Also, what is your review strategy? I found that velocity matters more than amount.
Finally, about citations, how do you find the best ones? Do you have a list? I'm looking for niche-specific ones

Thanks in advance!

 

[Thunder Digitals]

tought of a method to open a few GBPS

How do you create new GBPs?

Also, what would you recommend doing in order to rank high in the map pack, not just very locally also in nearby not so not-so-close areas?

I would recommend checking your competitor first, get some ideas from them then implement it. Also, create location pages for each specific location, interlink them to homepage and service pages, do GBP posts, get some reviews and create citations. That's pretty much you need to rank in google maps.

Also, what is your review strategy? I found that velocity matters more than amount.

Review frequency, velocity and rating they all matters the most.

Finally, about citations, how do you find the best ones? Do you have a list? I'm looking for niche-specific ones

I would suggest getting the list from Google; you can find plenty of them there. And build country specific first, then go for niche specific.

 

["Sumati Ben "]

What’s your go-to strategy for building high-quality local citations without getting penalized?

 

[Mia Harris]

In your experience, which factor tends to move the needle more for local rankings - consistent citations or quality local backlinks?

 

[proxygo]

Hey BHW,
Over the past month I’ve shared some of my experiences with Local SEO – from citations and reviews to local link building and case studies. I know many of you are running local projects or client campaigns, so I thought it would be useful to open up an AMA.Drop your questions about Local SEO – whether it’s ranking in the map pack, review strategies, or citation issues – and I’ll do my best to answer with what’s worked for me. Let’s turn this into a thread full of actionable insights for everyone.

its hard to ask you anything when you have been herre 7 weeks.

 

[Thomas SEO]

Awesome initiative man always good to see real local SEO experience shared here. Got a few tricky map pack cases I’ll definitely drop in soon.

 

[Ethan Murphy]

Are niche directories still useful for local SEO in 2026?

 

[avahamilton]

What's your experience with schema markup for local SEO?

 

[nateconnel]

removed keyword stuffing from my gmb name, dropped from top 10 to 40-50. expected that but now google doesnt even connect my website to my gmb anymore - showing page 3 for my own brand name lol

profile is 6yo, 150 reviews, post daily, everything optimized

what would u do to recover?

 

[NabilaRahmawati]

Appreciate this! Any tips for multi-location businesses?

 

[Nomadic Marketers]

is local citaiton work?? or just waste of time?

 

[nnnoli]

Is it me, or did OP not answer a single question, despite the point of his whole post? Maybe he's just PM'ing and I'm not seeing it..

 

[Waifuraeee]

how did u start? i mean, how u get in the business