Local SEO checklist

Start by choosing your business type

Google ranks local results on three things it names publicly: relevance, distance and prominence. You cannot change distance. You can change the other two. But the rules differ depending on whether customers visit you or you visit them.

A virtual office or a mailbox is not a location in Google's eyes. A profile built on one risks suspension, and a suspension is slow to reverse.

Google Business Profile checks

• 1. Claim and verify the profile. Note: verification can take days, so start this before anything else.
• 2. Pick the most specific primary category. Note: this is the strongest relevance signal you control. 'Dental clinic' beats 'Health'.
• 3. Add secondary categories only for services you really sell. Note: three honest ones beat ten stretched ones.
• 4. Use your real trading name. Note: adding keywords or a city to the name breaks Google's guidelines and is a common reason profiles get edited or suspended.
• 5. Set accurate hours, including holiday hours. Note: wrong hours produce the one-star reviews that hurt most.
• 6. List services and products with plain descriptions. Note: these are read by people before they call.
• 7. Add original photos of the premises, team and work. Note: avoid stock images; they add nothing.
• 8. Link the profile to the matching service or location page, not always the home page. Note: send people where the answer is.

Consistency and citations

A citation is any mention of your name, address and phone number on another site. Search engines compare them to decide whether you are who you say you are.

• 9. Pick one exact format for name, address and phone and write it down. Note: 'Street' versus 'St.' is minor; a different suite number is not.
• 10. Audit the top directories for your country and your trade. Note: five accurate listings beat fifty abandoned ones.
• 11. Fix duplicates before adding new listings. Note: duplicate profiles split reviews and confuse maps.
• 12. Add your address and phone number as text in the site footer, not only in an image. Note: crawlers cannot read a screenshot.
• 13. Record every listing in a sheet with the login owner. Note: lost logins are the usual reason fixes stall a year later.

Reviews

• 14. Ask every happy customer for a review with a direct link. Note: make it one tap, not a search.
• 15. Never offer discounts for reviews and never filter who you ask. Note: both break Google's review policy, and selective asking is easy to spot.
• 16. Reply to every review, positive or negative, within a few days. Note: a calm reply to a bad review is read by every future customer.
• 17. Do not copy reviews to your site as marked-up star ratings for your own business. Note: Google does not show stars for self-served reviews of a business's own name.

On-site local pages

A common mistake is to publish fifty near-identical city pages. Write a page only where you have a reason to be found and something specific to say, such as the neighborhoods you cover, local rules, real jobs done there or a team member's name.

• 18. One page per core service. Note: the page should answer 'what does this cost, how long, what happens next'.
• 19. One page per real location or tightly defined service area. Note: add a map, parking or travel notes and local staff.
• 20. Title tag with service and place, written for a person. Note: 'Emergency plumber in Leeds' is enough.
• 21. LocalBusiness schema that matches the visible details. Note: see our schema markup checklist.
• 22. A phone number that is a link on mobile. Note: it is the most used button on local pages.
• 23. Fast mobile pages. Note: most local searches happen on a phone.

For a clinic or practice, booking matters as much as ranking. On the MVR LSM Clinic website we focused on two clear paths, a program or a consultation, so visitors know what to do next.

Measure it

• 24. Track calls, direction requests and website clicks from the profile. Note: these are the local results that become customers.
• 25. Tag the profile website link so analytics separates it from organic. Note: otherwise map traffic hides inside organic.
• 26. Check Search Console queries that include a place name each month. Note: it shows which towns you actually appear for.
• 27. Check your visibility from a real location, not your office. Note: results shift by street; use a private window on a phone from a customer's area.
• 28. Re-run this list every quarter. Note: hours, staff and listings drift.

A downloadable copy of this checklist is meant to sit on this page, so you can assign each item to a name and a date.