Proximity is a ranking factor you cannot optimise away.

Three factors dominate: relevance, distance and prominence. You can influence the first and third; the second is geography. A business twenty kilometres from the searcher will struggle against an equivalent one nearby, and no amount of content changes that.

Data consistency across the web is the unglamorous half of the work. Your name, address and phone number appearing in three slightly different forms across directories reads to Google as uncertainty about whether the business is real.

One rule we apply without exception, including to our own site: never declare an address in a city where you do not operate. It violates Google guidelines directly and is one of the most common causes of profile suspension. If you serve an area remotely, the honest structure is a service area, not a fabricated address.