A local SEO checklist for small businesses

Local SEO sounds technical, but most of it is a list of things done carefully and then kept up. The businesses that show up on the map aren't usually doing anything clever. They just did the basics completely, and they keep doing them every month.

Here's the list we'd hand anyone starting from scratch. Work through it in order. The early items matter most.

1. Your Google Business Profile

This is where most local results come from, so start here. Google's guidelines for Business Profiles are worth reading once in full. These are the parts that matter most.

• Claim and verify it. Google says verifying "tells Google that you're authorized to represent the business, so it's more likely to show up in search results."
• Use your real business name. Google says "Your name should reflect your business's real-world name," the one on your sign and your invoices. Adding keywords or your city to the name breaks the rules and can get the profile suspended.
• Pick categories carefully. Google asks you to "Use as few categories as possible to describe your overall core business." Choose the most specific primary category that fits. "Family law attorney" beats "Lawyer."
• Get the address right. It has to be a real location where you serve customers. P.O. boxes and virtual offices aren't eligible.
• Service-area business? Hide the address. If you go to your customers, Google says "you should hide your business address from customers" and set your service areas instead.
• Use a local phone number. Google prefers "a local phone number instead of a central call center helpline number whenever possible."
• Set your real hours, including holiday hours when they change.
• Link to the right page. Point the website link at the page for this location, not a generic corporate page.
• Add services and products in the words customers use when they search.
• Write a real description. What you do, who you do it for, where. No keyword lists.
• Add photos. The outside of your building, your team, your work. Real photos beat stock.

2. Your website

Your profile and your site should tell the same story, down to the phone number.

• Name, address and phone in plain text on every page, usually in the footer. Make them match your profile exactly.
• A page for each main service. One page that says "we do everything" ranks for nothing in particular.
• A page for each area you serve, if you serve more than one. Write about the actual work you do there. A page that swaps the city name into the same template isn't worth publishing.
• Titles that say what and where. "Emergency plumber in Escondido | Your Business Name" tells people and Google what the page is for.
• LocalBusiness schema. Structured data tells Google your name, address, hours and phone in a format it reads directly. Name and address are required. Hours, phone and URL are recommended.
• Fast and easy on a phone. A lot of local searches happen on phones. If the page is slow or the phone number isn't tappable, people leave.
• Google Search Console set up, so you can see what people search to find you and spot errors early.
• A clear next step on every page. Call, book or request a quote. Pick one and make it obvious.

If you're replacing your site, protect what's already ranking first. We walked through it in how to redesign without losing your rankings.

3. Your listings everywhere else

Google looks at how your business shows up across the web, and AI tools and other maps pull from these sources too.

• Claim Apple Business Connect and Bing Places. Both are free, and iPhones open Apple Maps by default.
• Update Facebook and Yelp with your current name, address, phone and hours.
• Find the directories for your trade. Every industry has two or three that matter. Make sure you're on them.
• Make everything match. Same name, same address format, same phone. Small differences, like "Suite 4" on one site and "#4" on another, are worth cleaning up.
• Hunt down old listings. If you've moved or changed numbers, search for the old address and phone and fix every listing you find.

4. Reviews

Reviews count toward what Google calls prominence, and they're what customers read before they call.

• Ask every customer, right after the job, with a direct link.
• Reply to every review, good and bad, within a few days.
• Never offer a reward for a review, and never ask only the happy customers. Both are against Google's rules.

We covered the details in how to get more Google reviews.

5. Local links and mentions

Links from other local websites tell Google you're a real part of the community.

• Your chamber of commerce or business association.
• Sponsorships: the youth league, the charity run, the school fundraiser.
• Suppliers and manufacturers with a "where to buy" or dealer page.
• Local news, if you have a real story.
• Partners you refer work to, and who refer work to you.

Skip anyone selling links in bulk. They don't help, and they can hurt.

6. Tracking

You can't tell what's working without it.

• Google Analytics with calls, forms and bookings counted as key events.
• Search Console to see the searches that find you.
• The performance numbers in your Business Profile: calls, direction requests and website clicks.

The monthly routine

After the setup, local SEO is a routine. Here's a month that covers it:

1. Weekly: Post one update or photo to your Business Profile.
2. After every job: Send a review request.
3. Within a few days: Reply to new reviews and answer new questions on your profile.
4. Monthly: Check that hours, phone and website link are still right on Google, Apple, Bing, Facebook and Yelp.
5. Monthly: Look at Search Console and your profile performance. Note what went up and what went down.
6. Quarterly: Add or improve one service or area page.

Shortcuts to skip

Some things look like progress and aren't:

• Keywords in your business name. Against Google's rules, and a common cause of suspensions.
• Virtual office addresses to look local in a city where you don't operate.
• Paying for ranking. Google says "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google." Ads can show above the map, but they don't change where your profile ranks in it.
• Fake or paid reviews. Against Google's policy and the FTC's rules.
• Dozens of near-identical city pages. Write fewer, better ones.

Where to get help

If you want to see where you stand first, our SEO audit, from $750, crawls your site and ranks what to fix. If you'd rather hand off the whole list, our Local SEO service, from $497 a month, covers the profile, listings, location pages with matching schema, and a monthly map rank grid with a short report. For the reviews piece on its own, there's our review program. And if you want the background on how the map ranks businesses, start with how to get into Google's map results.