Local SEO for B2B: when a business buyer searches nearby, who is eligible for a profile, and what to build

Local SEO works for a B2B company when business buyers search for a supplier near them and expect to visit, collect from, or be visited by that supplier. Commercial cleaners, IT support firms, equipment hire depots, trade counters, commercial printers, accountants, staffing agencies and contractors all win work this way. For them the Google Business Profile, a few honest location and service pages, and reviews from business clients do most of the work. A software company or an online-only B2B service is not eligible for a Business Profile at all, so for those firms "local" means local proof on the website, not the map pack.

Does local search matter to a business buyer?

It depends on what the buyer is doing when they search. A facilities manager who needs a commercial cleaning contract, an office manager whose printer has died, or a site manager who needs a skip and a mini digger by Monday is searching with a place in mind. Those searches look like "[service] near me", "commercial [service] [city]" and "[supplier type] [area]", and the map pack answers them first.

A buyer choosing an enterprise software platform is not looking for proximity. They want proof of fit, and a local listing adds little. The test is simple: would a client ever stand in your premises, or would your staff ever stand in theirs? If yes, local SEO is a sales channel. If no, put the effort into the B2B SEO strategy that serves a buying committee instead.

Which B2B businesses can have a Business Profile

Google's eligibility guidelines, read on 22 October 2026, are the gate. They say "a business must make in-person contact with customers during its stated hours". The same page lists businesses that are not eligible, and several are common in B2B:

• "Lead generation agents or companies."
• "Brands, organizations, artists, and other online-only businesses."
• Rented mailing addresses that you do not operate from. Google calls these virtual offices and says they are not eligible.
• Offices in a co-working space, unless the office has clear signage, receives customers during business hours and is staffed by your own people during those hours.

If you fail the test, do not create a profile at a borrowed address. It is a profile Google can suspend, and it puts your real listing at risk if you open a proper office later.

Storefront, service area, or both

Most B2B firms that qualify fall into one of three shapes, and Google treats each differently.

Shape	B2B examples	How to set up the profile
Storefront	Trade counter, wholesale depot, equipment hire yard, print shop	Show the address. Keep permanent signage and staffed hours
Service area	Commercial cleaning, office IT support, mobile machinery repair	Hide the address and set the areas you serve
Hybrid	A depot that also sends engineers to client sites	Show the address and add a service area

For service areas, Google's help page allows up to 20 areas, set by city, postal code or similar, and says the overall area should not be more than about 2 hours of driving time from where the business is based. A firm that serves a whole country should not try to stretch one profile to cover it. Win the region you really serve from each base.

Setting up the profile for business buyers

• Name. Use the real-world name on your signage and invoices. Google's guidelines say not to add services or locations to it.
• Categories. Google asks for "as few categories as possible" and the most specific one that completes "This business IS a". A commercial cleaner should look for the category that describes commercial cleaning, not every service on its price list.
• Hours. Business buyers call in office hours. Show the hours you actually answer, and keep holiday hours current.
• Services and description. Write them for the buyer: contract lengths you offer, sectors you serve, response times you commit to, and certifications a procurement team will check.
• Photos. Your vans, your depot, your team on a client site with permission. Business buyers want to see that you are a real operation of the right size.

If you already have a profile, our Business Profile audit goes through every field against Google's own rules.

Reviews from business clients

B2B firms usually have fewer reviews than shops and restaurants, because they have fewer, larger clients. That makes each review count. Ask at a natural point: after a project closes, after a quarterly review, or when a client thanks you by email. Google lets you send a review link or a QR code. Its policy also says that "offering incentives, like free or discounted goods or services, in exchange for customers to post reviews" is "strictly prohibited". A discount on next month's invoice for a five star review is exactly that, so keep reviews out of commercial terms.

Reply to every review, named and specific, without client details the client would not want public. A procurement manager reading your replies is judging how you would handle their account.

The website pages that back the profile

Google says local results are "mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity", and that "there's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking". Relevance comes partly from your site. Three page types do the work for most B2B firms:

1. Service pages written for a business buyer. What the contract covers, who it is for, how you price, and what happens in the first week.
2. One page per real location. The address, phone, hours, directions and photos of that site, plus the team based there. Do not make pages for towns where you have no base and no clients; Google treats near-identical town pages as doorways.
3. Case studies with a place in them. "Weekly cleaning for a 40,000 square foot distribution centre in [area]" is local content and proof at the same time, if the client agrees to be named or described.

Local listings beyond Google

Business buyers also check the places their own industry trusts: your trade association's member directory, the local chamber of commerce, supplier portals your clients use, and Bing Places and Apple Business Connect for buyers on other devices. Keep the name, address and phone the same everywhere. A mismatch between your website, your profile and a directory is the most common avoidable fault in local listings.

Measuring it on a B2B scale

Do not judge B2B local SEO by profile views. Track calls from the profile, direction requests to a trade counter, quote forms started from a location page, and above all which closed deals started with a local search. Ask new clients how they found you and record it in the CRM. Five well-fitted contracts a year from local search can be worth more than a thousand consumer visits.

Questions about local SEO for B2B

Is local SEO worth it for a B2B company?

Yes, if clients visit you or your staff visit them. If your service is delivered entirely online, put the effort into ordinary B2B SEO and proof pages instead.

Can a B2B company without an office get a Business Profile?

Only if it makes in-person contact with customers, for example as a service-area business that visits client sites. Online-only businesses and lead generation companies are not eligible.

Can I list my co-working desk?

Only if the office has clear signage, receives customers during business hours and is staffed by your team during those hours. A hot desk does not meet that.

How many locations should I create pages for?

One page per real place you operate from. For the areas you serve from a base, describe them on the base's page and in case studies rather than writing a page for every town.

How do I get reviews from business clients?

Ask at the end of a project or after a good account review, send the Google review link, and never tie a review to a discount or any other reward.

When the buyer asks an assistant for a supplier

A growing share of business buyers type "who are the best commercial cleaning firms in [city]" or "which IT support companies near [area] work with law firms" into ChatGPT or Gemini, not only into Google. The answer is a short list of names, and assistants build it from the same public material local SEO produces: your profile, your reviews, your location pages and what directories say about you. Ranking in the map pack and being named in that list are related but separate results. AI Knows Us measures the second one, so you can see which suppliers the assistants name for your service and area, and where those names come from.