GEO (Geographic SEO)
GEO is optimisation for location-based searches. It covers Google Business Profile, local citations, service-area pages and consistent name, address and phone data across the web. It matters for any business whose customers are limited by how far they are willing to travel.
Why it matters for your rankings
Location changes results more than almost any other factor. The same query typed two miles apart returns different businesses, which means national ranking reports are close to meaningless for a local business.
This creates both a problem and an opportunity. The problem is measurement: your agency's rank tracker may show position two while customers three suburbs away never see you at all. The opportunity is that local competition is usually far weaker than national competition. Ranking for 'SEO audit' is a multi-year project. Ranking for the same service in a specific city is often achievable in months, and those searches convert better because the searcher has already narrowed by geography.
How to check it on your site
Check rankings by location, not nationally
Use a local rank tracker with a grid, or search with Chrome DevTools location override set to your target suburbs.
Confirm your service areas are explicit
Every location you serve should be stated in text on a real page, not implied by a map embed.
Verify NAP consistency
Your name, address and phone must match exactly across your site, Google Business Profile and every directory.
Build genuine location pages
One substantive page per location with local detail beats twenty templated pages with the city name swapped.