The map pack is a different competition
Local rankings are driven by proximity, prominence and profile completeness, not by the same authority signals that move national organic results. A single strong domain does not win forty local markets by itself.
Location pages that are not templates
Each location page needs genuinely local content: staff, services actually available there, parking and transit detail, local reviews and embedded directions. Spun paragraphs with the suburb name swapped in are the fastest route to a page that is crawled and never indexed.
Citation and profile hygiene
Name, address and phone consistency across the major aggregators, one owner per profile, categories reviewed quarterly, and photographs refreshed on a schedule. Unglamorous work that reliably moves rankings.
Review velocity beats review count
A steady flow of recent reviews with responses outperforms a large stale total. Build the request into the operational workflow rather than running periodic campaigns.