This is the checklist our strategists work through for every local client, in the order we do it. If you run a local business and want to do some of this yourself, start at the top. If you'd rather we did it, that's what our local SEO service is for.
Google Business Profile (the big one)
- Claim and verify your profile. Obvious, but a surprising number of businesses never complete verification.
- Choose the right primary category. The single most influential setting. "Plumber" vs "Heating contractor" vs "Boiler supplier" changes which searches you appear for. Pick the one that matches your main revenue, then add secondary categories.
- Fill in every field. Services (with descriptions), products, attributes, opening hours, holiday hours, booking links, a description that mentions your main service and location naturally.
- Add real photos, regularly. Team, premises, vehicles, work in progress. Profiles with regular photo uploads get measurably more engagement.
- Post weekly. Offers, news, completed jobs. It signals an active business.
- Answer the Q&A. Seed it with the questions customers actually ask and answer them yourself.
- Make sure your address is correct and consistent with your website and every other listing. Service-area businesses: set your service areas and hide the address if you don't serve customers there.
Reviews
- Have a system for asking. A link, a QR code on invoices, a follow-up email or text. Businesses that ask consistently get five to ten times more reviews than those that don't.
- Aim for velocity, not just volume. Twenty reviews over the last three months beat a hundred from 2021.
- Reply to every review, positive and negative, promptly and like a human.
- Never buy, incentivise or write reviews. Google removes them and can suspend the profile. It's also a breach of UK consumer law.
Website: local pages
- A dedicated page for each service. Not one "Services" page with a paragraph each. "Boiler repair", "Boiler installation", "Gas safety certificates" each get a page.
- A dedicated page for each area you serve, with genuine local content: areas covered, local landmarks or estates, local case studies, travel times. Not the same page with the town name swapped.
- Name, address and phone (NAP) in the footer, matching your Google Business Profile exactly.
- LocalBusiness schema with address, phone, opening hours, geo-coordinates and service areas.
- Embed a Google Map on the contact page.
- Title tags that include the service and location: "Emergency Plumber in Stockport | Brightline Plumbing".
- Mobile speed. Local searches are overwhelmingly mobile. Core Web Vitals should pass on your service pages.
Citations and consistency
- List the business on the directories Google trusts: Yell, Thomson Local, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, FreeIndex, Scoot, trade bodies (Gas Safe, NICEIC, Checkatrade, etc.) and local directories.
- Make NAP identical everywhere. "Ltd" vs "Limited", "St" vs "Street", an old phone number: inconsistency erodes trust. Audit and fix.
- Remove duplicates, including old Google listings from previous addresses.
Local links and authority
- Get links from local organisations: chamber of commerce, business networks, sponsorships of clubs and events, suppliers, charities you support.
- Get in the local press. Regional newspapers and news sites are still among the best local links available, and they need stories.
- Earn links from your trade. Manufacturer "approved installer" pages, trade association directories, industry blogs.
Tracking
- Track rankings from your location, across a grid. A local rank tracker (we use one that checks a grid of points across your service area) tells you where you actually appear, not where you appear from your own desk, which is always flattering.
Want it done for you? Everything on this list is included in every SEOBOOM plan, with guaranteed local keywords. Request a free local SEO audit.