The local SEO checklist we use for every business

Start with how Google decides local results

Google says its local results are based mainly on three things: relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is how well your listing and website match what someone searched. Distance is how far you are from the searcher, or from the place named in the search. Prominence is how well known your business is, judged from reviews, links, articles and listings across the web, and from how your website does in regular results.

You can't move your shop closer to every customer, so distance is mostly fixed. Everything on this checklist works on relevance and prominence. Keep that in mind when someone sells you a trick. If it doesn't make you more relevant or better known, it won't hold.

Get your Google Business Profile right first

Your Business Profile is the listing that shows in the map results and on the side of Google on a computer. On a lot of local searches it's the first thing a customer sees, before your website.

Recheck the profile every month. Anyone can suggest edits to a public listing and Google can apply them, so make sure your hours, phone number and categories are still what you set.

• Claim and verify the profile, and make sure you own it, not a former employee or an old agency.
• Use your real business name exactly as it appears on your sign and paperwork. Adding city names or service keywords breaks Google's guidelines and can get the listing suspended.
• Choose the primary category that describes your main line of work, then add secondary categories only for work you actually do.
• If customers come to you, show your address. If you go to them, hide the address and set a service area instead.
• Fill in services, hours, holiday hours, a plain description, and your booking or quote link if you have one.
• Add real photos of your work, your team, your vehicles and your location, and keep adding them.

Build a website Google can read and customers can use

Your website backs up your profile. Google reads it to understand what you do and where, and customers go there to decide whether to call. None of this is complicated, but it's rare to find a small business site with all of it done.

• Your business name, address or service area, and phone number on every page, usually in the footer, written the same way as on your profile.
• One page for each main service, with a title and heading that say what the service is and where you offer it.
• A page for each city or area you serve, if you serve several, with something true and specific on each one rather than the same text with the town name swapped.
• A tap-to-call phone number at the top of the page on phones, and a short form.
• Pages that load quickly on a phone signal, because a lot of local searches happen on a phone in a hurry.
• LocalBusiness structured data, which is code that states your name, address, phone, hours and service area in a format search engines read directly.
• Google Search Console set up with a sitemap submitted, so you can see which searches you show up for and whether your pages are indexed.

Make your listings match everywhere

Your business is listed in far more places than you set up yourself: Apple Maps, Bing, Yelp, Facebook, the Better Business Bureau, directories for your trade, and a long tail of smaller sites that copy data from each other.

When those listings disagree, with an old phone number here and a former address there, Google has less reason to trust any of them, and some customers end up calling a dead line. Pick one exact version of your name, address and phone, write it down, and make every listing match it. Start with the big platforms, then work through the directories specific to your trade.

If you have moved or changed your number, this step matters more than anything else on the list. Old details can sit out there for years.

Earn reviews steadily and answer every one

Google states that review count and rating are part of local ranking, and customers read reviews before they call. Both are good reasons to ask every customer whose job went well, not just the ones who seem keen.

Ask at the moment the job is done, in person, then follow up with a text that has your direct review link. Make it a habit for whoever finishes the job, not something the owner remembers once a quarter.

Reply to every review. Thank the good ones with a line that mentions the actual job. For a bad one, stay calm, keep it short, and offer to sort it out offline. Never offer discounts or gifts for reviews, and don't ask only the customers you expect to be happy. Google's rules forbid both.

Write content that answers real customer questions

Once the basics are in place, content is how you become relevant for more searches. The best topics come from the phone. Write down the questions people ask before they book: what it costs, how long it takes, whether they need it at all, what to do in an emergency until you arrive. Each good answer is a page someone might find.

Keep posting to your Business Profile too. Updates, offers and photos of recent jobs show the listing is active and give customers something current to look at.

Track what it produces, and keep going

Local SEO is never finished. Competitors keep working, listings drift, and reviews go stale. Set up tracking so you can see calls, form fills and bookings from your profile and website, not just rankings. Local rankings change with where each searcher is standing. Calls are what pay the bills.

Run through this list once properly, then check it every month. Most of it is simple. The hard part is doing all of it and then keeping it up when the business gets busy. If you would rather hand it off, Northward's SEO & AI Search plan and Google Business Profile Management plan cover this list between them, at $499 a month each on a 30-day agreement.