They Look Similar. They Work Differently.
When you Google "plumber in Austin," you see two types of results:
Most people think optimizing for one automatically helps the other.
It doesn't.
How the Local Pack Works
The local pack is powered primarily by:
Your website matters less here. A business with a mediocre website but an amazing GBP can rank in the local pack.
How Organic Results Work
Organic rankings are powered by:
Your GBP matters less here. A website with great content and strong backlinks can rank organically even without a perfect GBP.
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Why You Need Both
The local pack captures the most clicks for local searches. But not everyone clicks on the map. Some scroll down to organic results.
And some searches don't trigger a local pack at all.
By optimizing for both, you can potentially appear TWICE on page one — once in the local pack and once in organic results. Google Search Console helps you track your organic rankings while GBP insights track your local pack performance.
Come closer. Listen.
Businesses that rank in both the local pack AND organic results get roughly 2x the traffic of businesses that only rank in one. That's not a small edge. That's a moat. Our SEO strategy fundamentals guide covers how to build both simultaneously.
The Unified Strategy
For the local pack: Optimize your GBP, build citations, generate reviews, and maintain NAP consistency.
For organic: Create local content, build backlinks, optimize your website technically (starting with Core Web Vitals), and build location pages.
For both: Internal links between your location pages and GBP, consistent NAP, and localized content.
Track All 113 Tasks
SEO Checkup covers both local and organic SEO across 4 checklists. Free. No credit card. 30 seconds.