Local business SEO practices

Hello everyone, after reading and learning a lot on this forum i decided to take action and i've just got my first contract with a small local crossfit affiliate box in my country.
My job will be to re-create their website (yes, the actual one is really bad) and to rank it on the first positions of the serp for some really low-competition keywords like crossfit box "city name".

I've ranked some websites during last years but they were all product related websites, so i would like to ask your help to get some directions on where to start and which strategy to follow.
Before jumping into which strategy i thought i would like to say that targeted keywords have really low competition, the main competitor is another box from the town, which we want to outrank.

So, here we go:
(Let's assume that on-page SEO is done properly.)

Since it's a local business website i thought about creating a blog section and publishing articles related to wellness and crossfit and try to rank them for my keywords. Those articles will also allow me to create external links and do brand awareness.
I was thinking about which route to take for off-page SEO and the only thing that came in my mind was creating web 2.0 properties to power-up the website later in future. The company i'll work for has no budget right now to invest for buying guest posts or quality backlinks, so i'll have to do all manually.

P.s i don't know if this might be useful but the business is already on google local business and it has all 5* reviews (all real), but still the competitor with less positive review rank #1 for those keywords.

Any help will be appreciated,
Thanks a lot

If you're looking for a local business SEO guide look up Neil Patel local seo.

Anything specific questions? Your query is a bit too general to answer.

Without knowing who the competitor is, it would be difficult to gauge the step that need to be taken to get the #1 spot. Did you you do an analysis of what the competitors doing

Tehan123 said:

If you're looking for a local business SEO guide look up Neil Patel local seo.

Anything specific questions? Your query is a bit too general to answer.

Click to expand...

Well, i'm looking for differences between a local website SEO and a general money making website SEO, since i've always done the last one. I know my question was generic but it was meant to be like that, i was looking for generic advices aswell. I'll read that guide you suggested!

Ruffaro said:

Without knowing who the competitor is, it would be difficult to gauge the step that need to be taken to get the #1 spot. Did you you do an analysis of what the competitors doing

Click to expand...

So basically the competitor is a famous box in the town and the site is great looking even tho it's outdated. It is updated only for publishing daily workouts and nothing more, they used to have a blog but the last article is very old (like 2 years ago). They mostly don't do any kind of SEO and i think their rank is due to their popularity among people of my city.

As you are doing local seo so I would suggest you to do business listing and optimize your google business page to get better ranking. Also, I would recommend you to proper on page of your site