The local SEO checklist
34 checks across six sections, in the order we would actually do them. This is
the working list we run against client sites, published in full rather than hidden
behind a form.
Work top to bottom. The order is the point.
The sections are sequenced by leverage, not by topic. The Google Business
Profile section is free and takes about an hour, and it moves more than everything
below it combined. The ‘readable to the engines’ section is the least glamorous and the widest open: when we scanned 79 real Triad businesses, 99% of them had published nothing an engine could read about what they sell.
You do not need all 34 to see movement. Most
local businesses are missing between 20 and 30 of them, and the first ten fixes
usually account for most of the result.
Google Business Profile
Free, and the biggest single lever you control.
If you have never logged in, start here. An unclaimed profile can still be edited by the public.
This field influences more of your local visibility than anything else on the profile.
Additional categories, but only ones you genuinely serve.
Not one paragraph. Each service as its own entry.
Wrong hours generate one-star reviews faster than anything else on this list.
Your team, premises and actual work. Not stock.
Public, indexable, and almost universally ignored.
Weekly is better. Offers, updates, finished jobs.
Identity and citations
One business, described one way, everywhere.
Pick the format and enforce it, down to whether you write Suite or Ste.
The most commonly missed one, because people only audit third-party directories.
These feed the wider ecosystem, including some AI answers.
Often years out of date and quietly authoritative.
Multiple numbers read to a machine like multiple businesses.
Call tracking numbers need care here. Use the same one publicly.
Your website
The part you actually own.
One page cannot rank for eleven towns.
Landmarks, neighbourhoods, the specific work you do there. Not a find-and-replace.
Services buried in a single list page do not rank.
Duplicates are the most common technical finding we make.
Most local searches are mobile, outdoors, in a hurry.
A number that is an image, or plain text, costs calls silently.
Discovery by map rather than by luck.
Reviews
Volume matters less than recency and replies.
Automated text or email with a direct link. A system, not a campaign.
Especially bad. Prospects read the reply more closely than the review.
40 reviews from this year usually beats 200 that stopped in 2023.
97% of the businesses we scanned have reviews machines cannot connect to their site.
Readable to the engines
The least glamorous section, and the biggest gap in the market.
Name, address, hours, area served, in machine-readable form.
99% of businesses we scanned publish none. This is the single widest gap.
The format answer engines quote back to users most often.
How engines resolve you as an entity rather than a string.
Broken implementations are common and silently ignored by engines.
The 2026 additions
New since the last time you read a checklist like this.
Describes the business and its key pages for the AI engines. 86% of businesses we scanned have none.
Tell ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and the rest they are allowed in. Silence means the engines guess.
A real question as a heading, then a direct answer in the first two sentences.
Ask ChatGPT and Google AI who they recommend in your category and city. Read what comes back.
Want us to run this list against your site?
The free AI Visibility Scan checks most of the machine-readable half of this list
automatically and gives you a score out of 100 with the gaps in priority order.
Fifteen minutes, no obligation, and the report is yours either way.