Local SEO in St. Louis for City, County and Metro East Businesses

The name St. Louis covers two separate governments, a metro area that crosses the Mississippi into Illinois, and suburbs across the Missouri River in St. Charles County. Below: the facts we plan around, what the service includes, and two case studies from San Diego County, California.

The City of St. Louis and St. Louis County

The Census Bureau treats the City of St. Louis as a county-equivalent of its own, separate from St. Louis County, and its Vintage 2025 estimates give the City 278,144 residents on July 1, 2025. St. Louis County had 990,911 in those Vintage 2025 estimates, more than any other county in Missouri, with 87 incorporated cities, towns and villages wholly or partly inside it.

Florissant (51,124), Chesterfield (49,309), Kirkwood (29,331) and Webster Groves (23,450) are among those 87 in the Vintage 2025 estimates, along with Clayton (17,807), the county seat. Another 316,284 county residents, nearly a third, lived outside any municipality in that Vintage 2025 count, in unincorporated communities such as Affton, Mehlville, Oakville and Lemay.

So an address in Tower Grove South or Carondelet is inside the City, one in Kirkwood or Clayton is in a separate municipality, and one in Oakville is governed by the county alone. Each of those places needs its own line on the priority list you send us, because the audit builds its Map Pack and keyword targets from the names on it.

St. Charles County, across the Missouri River

St. Charles County reached 426,499 residents in the Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 estimates, a gain of 3,909 in the year to July 1, 2025 and the largest of any county in the metro. Its largest city, O'Fallon, Missouri (96,101 in the Vintage 2025 estimates), ranks second in the metro after St. Louis, ahead of St. Charles (72,561), St. Peters (61,479) and Wentzville (49,495) in that same Vintage 2025 count.

I-70, I-64, Route 364 and Route 370 each cross the Missouri River between St. Louis County and St. Charles County. A roofer in Chesterfield and one in St. Peters work from opposite banks, so each should start its priority list on its own side and add the other county only where it takes jobs.

The Metro East in Illinois

Eight of the metro's 15 county-equivalents are in Illinois, and Vintage 2025 Census Bureau estimates count 671,953 residents there, just under a quarter of the metro total. Most live in Madison County (263,110) and St. Clair County (250,708) in those Vintage 2025 estimates, where Belleville (40,237), O'Fallon, Illinois (32,656), Granite City (26,807), Edwardsville (26,463) and Alton (25,013) are the largest cities.

The Poplar Street Bridge (I-55 and I-64) and the Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge (I-70) link downtown St. Louis with the Illinois side, I-270 crosses to the north, and I-255 crosses south of the city on the Jefferson Barracks Bridge. The metro holds two O'Fallons and two Troys, one of each in Missouri and in Illinois, so every page and citation that names one should carry the state. A business working both banks shows one name, address and phone across its Missouri and Illinois listings, since a second version of those details produces a duplicate listing.

Business counts by county

Counting establishments with paid employees, the Census Bureau's 2023 County Business Patterns record 69,470 across the metro: 29,717 in St. Louis County, 8,946 in St. Charles County, 8,468 in the City of St. Louis, 5,659 in Madison County and 4,973 in St. Clair County. The 2023 County Business Patterns metro total included 4,066 specialty trade contractors, 5,980 food service and drinking places and 1,581 automotive repair and maintenance shops.

For citations, Starter uses general directories, Business uses tracked industry and local ones, and Biz+ uses deep stacks of both. On Business and Biz+, the category and services you give us are used to place a Belleville or Edwardsville business on industry-relevant directories.

What Local SEO includes for a St. Louis business

Our Local SEO service applies to the City, the county and the Metro East alike:

• Audit and targets. We start by reviewing your Google Business Profile, existing citations and reviews, then set Map Pack and keyword targets for places such as Soulard, Ballwin or Collinsville.
• Citation listings. Listing counts are 30 for Starter, 40 for Business and 80 or more for Biz+, each built or corrected to show the same name, address and phone, whether the business sits in Missouri or Illinois.
• Backlinks. Tiered links are built every month to the landing pages you choose: about 1,000 over a Starter campaign, about 5,000 on Business and up to about 100k dynamic on Biz+. Biz+ also adds 2 to 5 guest posts a month on topic-relevant publishers.
• Profile and reviews. All three plans cover profile optimization and support for getting reviews. Business and Biz+ add monthly posts, Q&A, services and UTM tagging, so a Q&A entry can spell out which O'Fallon you mean; Starter does not carry those additions.
• Monthly report. Each month's report shows rankings, Map Pack position and traffic for every listed area, from the City to the Metro East, and the next round of citation, content and link work follows what is gaining.
• Extras. Priced on their own: extra service area pages (one per place, such as Clayton or Edwardsville), an additional Google Business Profile location for a second real address, and review response management.

Plan details are listed on our pricing page. For background, Google keeps a help page on local results (opens in new tab).

Case studies from outside Greater St. Louis

We have no client in the St. Louis metro. Both case studies below are from San Diego County, California.

The Key Korner locksmith case study is about Key Korner Sports Arena, a San Diego locksmith storefront whose site maps 40+ neighborhoods with a distance and expected response time for each. The case study reports the name, address and phone aligned on 80+ directory citations and 136 Google clicks on 21,200 impressions from late June through late September 2026, and it puts 'locksmith pacific beach' at an average position of 9.5 and 'locksmith point loma' at 7.0.

The A-K Tech case study is about a repair shop for phones and computers in El Cajon that started without a website. The case study credits the project with a 300% increase in online visibility within 3 months and 150% more phone inquiries from the website, plus a PageSpeed score of 95+. Both projects began with a website build, priced separately from Local SEO.

Getting started

Our team works from El Cajon, California. For the audit we need Google Business Profile manager access, the name, address and phone exactly as every listing should show them, your website and its main landing pages, your category and services, and your areas in priority order, whether the list begins with The Hill, Chesterfield or Belleville. Read access to Google Analytics and Search Console adds traffic to the monthly report.

Send the list through our contact page.