Local SEO is vital for any business with an office, storefront (AKA Brick and Mortar), or a service area of around 15 to 35 mile radius.  The main goal is to show up in search in the Google Map Pack (on the search results page) or in Google Maps.  The typical example would be searches that end with 'near me'.

LOCAL SEO has evolved over time, all the traditional elements are still relevant::

• Keyword Optimized content (including city names for keywords) on your website
• Consistency across your Listings
• A healthy flow of Reviews on your Google Business Profile
• A Tuned Google Business Profile
• Monitoring keywords Geographic with Heatmaps

Now with more people using LLMs here is a next layer of SEO.  To help people who are new to understanding this, we wrap it all together and call it NextGen SEO.

NextGen SEO tactics

• Reviews everywhere - LLMs are agnostic between review sites, so having reviews in multiple locations is actually better than having all your reviews in the since Google basket.
• Citations are great - before a citation (or mention) in a news article was great for your credibility with people, but the search engines couldn't 'connect the dots' but now LLMs can.  
• Backlinks are still Better - we love citations but still, if an opportunity ever presents itself for you to get a backlink, go for it!

References:

Tuning your Google Business Profile 

INTERNAL: Adding a location in Apple Business Connect 

SEO 

https://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-local-seo