Whether that’s an emergency plumber to fix a leak, a restaurant for dinner, or a groomer for the dog, our smartphones are a conduit to the things we want and need on a daily basis. For local businesses that are easily found, those Google searches turn into store visits and physical sales. 

Conducting a local SEO audit offers you peace of mind that you’re doing all you can to be visible to as much of that local traffic as possible. It’s also a chance to identify and rectify any underlying issues that might be making it easier for your competitors to outrank you in local search. 

Conducting a local SEO audit for the first time can be daunting; there’s a lot at stake and lots of different factors to consider. Taking a methodical, step-by-step approach turns what could be an enormous weight into a more manageable task.

It’s important to note that you will need to repeat this process at regular intervals due to the frequency of local SEO algorithm changes.

Why should you carry out a local SEO audit?

An audit is a thorough examination of all the components that make up a local search strategy and local pack ranking. It is the only way to ensure you have a clear picture of how your site is performing, where problems have emerged, and where opportunities exist.

If your site has suddenly lost rankings or traffic has disappeared, working through a local SEO audit checklist can help you understand why. 

It can help to think of an audit as a systematic health check—a great way to perform local SEO analysis. It allows you to pinpoint areas of concern without hastily jumping in and potentially spending a lot of money unnecessarily on a knee-jerk reaction.

What is included in an SEO audit? 

There are three key areas of the local SEO algorithm:

• Proximity: How close (or distant) the search user is from your business. 
• Prominence: how prominent is your brand online? (do you have lots of inbound links, article mentions, reviews, and citations for example?)
• Relevance: How relevant is your business to the term being searched for?

Local SEO Audit Checklist 

Because so many different factors need to be reviewed, it’s best to split your checklist into different categories and then analyze each one in turn.

1. Google Penalties
2. Local keyword research
3. Rankings
4. Links and website authority
5. Citations
6. Brand mentions / implied links
7. Google Business Profile
8. Reviews and ratings
9. Social media

How to Carry Out Your Local SEO Audit

Create a spreadsheet or document with a section for each of the items listed 1-9 above. Input the findings from your local SEO analysis as you complete each one to build out your audit.

1. Check for Google Penalties

A Google penalty can seriously undermine your SEO performance. 

It’s thought that just 5% of sites submit a reconsideration request after fixing the problem that triggered a penalty. This means many local business websites are missing out on the chance to recover lost rankings. 

Checking for Google penalties in step one of your audit means you won’t make that mistake.

A drop in rankings doesn’t always mean you have been given a penalty. This can make it difficult to determine if you’re falling behind, haven’t adapted your strategy after an algorithm update, or really are being penalized. 

Common reasons for penalties include:

• Thin content 
• Sneaky mobile redirects
• User-generated spam
• An unnatural link structure to or from your site

If you are subject to a penalty, you will be sent a notification in Google Search Console (details for how to register can be found here). 

That notice will detail why the penalty was issued, so you can take steps to fix the problem. 

A Manual Actions Report is also available from your Search Console dashboard. This lists any penalties being applied to your site. 

When you’re confident the problem has been addressed, you’ll need to submit a reconsideration request.

2. Conduct Local Keyword Research

Because the search terms used to find local businesses evolve constantly, you’ll need to perform keyword research on a regular basis.  

As new keywords are identified, they can be added to your local SEO strategy. This ensures you’re targeting relevant terms and are visible for appropriate local searches. 

Google Keyword Planner will suggest keywords relevant to your business and give some insight into search volume. You’ll need to open a Google Ads account first but this is easy to do. 

For additional keyword inspiration, it’s also worth checking out Google Trends. Input a search word or topic to reveal search volumes along with a list of related queries. 

3. Check Your Local SEO Rankings

As part of your audit, you’ll need to find out where your site ranks for your target keywords. 

Local pack ranking functions differently from the main organic search results so you will need to conduct searches from specific locations. Use a rank tracker like BrightLocal’s Local Rank Tracker tool to automate this process. 

4. Audit Your Links and Website Authority

Link quantity and quality is a recognized local SEO ranking factor and should therefore be a key part of your local SEO analysis.

Your link profile also relates to two of the three core pillars of local SEO; relevance and prominence.  

In this part of your audit, you’ll develop a big-picture view of your link profile. This means:

• Researching the number of inbound links you have (prominence)
• Deciding whether those links are from good-quality and authoritative domains relevant to your business location or its industry (relevance)
• Identifying any very low-quality links which could be classed as spam
• Assessing anchor text for use of relevant keywords and natural variety
• Identifying opportunities for organic link building to grow relevance and prominence

You can use a tool such as Ahrefs to collate a list of inbound links. From your link report, you can then check the quality of your backlink profile using the criteria above.

Once you know where you stand, repeat this same process for a competitor’s website. This gives you a benchmark to measure performance against. You can also use the competitor’s link audit to identify new inbound link opportunities for your own site.

5. Audit Citations

Local citations can help Google to confirm what it knows about your business, can increase prominence, and help with relevance. 

Duplicate or inaccurate listings are damaging to your local search visibility and inconvenience local consumers. They directly damage consumer trust and confidence in your brand. 

According to our Local Citations Trust Report:

• 93% of consumers are frustrated by inaccurate information online
• 80% lose trust in a local business if there are inconsistencies or inaccuracies in contact details or business information.
• 71% of local consumers say that incorrect information has resulted in a negative experience for them.

We recommend that you check the top citation sites for your business and verify that all data is accurate and correct. If there are any discrepancies, they will need to be corrected to optimize your search presence.

If you or your client’s local business has many citations, BrightLocal’s Citation Tracker can help you hunt them all down. 

6. Audit Brand Mentions and Implied Links

Have you ever considered the power of implied links or non-linking citations? 

Implied links are references to your business that don’t come with a hyperlink back to your site but do offer some sort of contact information such as your address or contact number.

Implied links can help you build prominence, so you need to factor them into your local SEO audit.

A Google search for your business name will help you to find all implied links. 

Look out for local news pieces, blog posts, reviews, event listings or ebooks, white papers, and industry news. 

7. Audit Your Google Business Profile

Your Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business) provides Google and local consumers with lots of useful information about your business. 

You’ll need to keep up with any changes made to Google Business Profile as it is a very important part of your local search presence. 

As part of your local SEO audit, work through each element of your business listing methodically to ensure best practice is being followed: 

• Choose the best category and sub-category for your listing
• Check the frequency of Posts updates
• Review your Google Business Profile Insights 
• Check contact info, address and opening hours are correct
• Verify the public email address is still monitored
• Ensure the Question and Answers feature is being used
• Check if videos are being uploaded
• Review your images
• Respond to any unanswered reviews

Once you have audited your own Google Business Profile, check out a competitor listing. Review how their profile appears in local search to identify if there is anything you could do better.

8. Audit Reviews and Ratings

Online reviews help you to attract consumers, establish trust and drive traffic to your site. Review signals are also a compounding factor in local pack visibility.

For this part of your local SEO audit, you’ll need a list of the top review sites for your business. Check each review site in turn and note your average star rating. Our Google Reviews Study breaks down average star ratings by industry, for benchmarking purposes.

Look for any reviews that don’t have a response. Note the proportion of ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ reviews. 

When auditing reviews and ratings, ask yourself whether there are any reoccurring negatives that need to be addressed such as slow shipping, slow check-in, or untidy stores. Note them down as you proceed with your review of these reviews.

Fake reviews are a concern as they can erode consumer trust in the genuine reviews earned. Not sure how to spot a fake review? Here’s how to identify and report them.

As your final task for this part of the audit, list any review sites you come across where you’d expect to have reviews, but don’t. These are review opportunities and something you can factor into your local SEO strategy. 

9. Audit Your Social Media

The final thing to review in your local SEO audit is social media. While your local business doesn’t need to be present on every social network, it should have a profile on the ones that are a good fit with its target consumers. A law office, for example, won’t need to prioritize Instagram but should have an active LinkedIn profile.

As part of your audit, verify that your ‘About’ information, logos, and cover images are consistent across each network. Is each profile being regularly updated? Are questions being responded to?

It’s worth reviewing the social presence of a few local competitors, too. Are they using a feature that your business isn’t? Do they use tactics you don’t, such as giveaways, ‘Lives’ or ‘Stories’? Anything you can pinpoint should be recorded so that you can factor it into your marketing moving forwards.

But, how can you make local SEO reporting more meaningful for the local businesses you work with so they easily understand the value that you’re bringing?

Here are five things to consider to make your job a little less challenging, followed by an overview of what you should be looking for in a local search rank monitoring tool:

1. Mom and Pop stores don’t think like software companies

Working with clients in the tech sector has its challenges. Startups in particular often bring in agencies once they’ve secured funding, at the kinds of critical moments when senior leaders have little time to devote to supporting external projects, and nevertheless, expect results.

But if there’s any vertical that can be called home by SEO agencies, it’s tech. Despite the difficulties, skilled SEOs typically understand the needs of these kinds of clients. The culture of SEO, after all, has evolved side-by-side with the explosive growth of the software industry.

One consequence of this is that SEOs are often great at describing their activities and results in engineering terms. Data is the shared language, so metrics take center stage.

This style of communication translates reasonably well to e-commerce, and indeed to any kind of business that lives, first and foremost, on the internet.

Even global brands that first found success offline, like Nike, have spent the last decade-or-so going through rigorous digital transformation programs. Even if they’re not quite fluent, many businesses can speak the language of software to a certain degree.

For most SEO agencies, good client management depends on a well-honed intuition of when it’s possible to have technical conversations with clients, when to explain difficult concepts and when to avoid them. Many clients may be perfectly at home with complicated SEO analysis, or even reading SEO audit reports themselves, while others may require a more simplified method of reporting focused on key real-life outcomes. 

But remember, not every business has gone through these changes. For thousands of retail and hospitality companies, ‘online’ is simply an uncomfortable necessity. Family-run businesses, especially those of which the key decision-makers are from older generations, might even view the internet as something rather dangerous and unfamiliar.

2.‘Traditional’ business owners know they need to change

Despite this, most brick-and-mortar businesses know that they need to think about how customers are finding them. At the very least, they’ll be passively aware that they could be losing business to a competitor with a more complete Google Business Profile, or more reviews on Maps.

SEO can be a fantastic way for a store, cafe, hotel, or local service provider to improve its bottom line, and its business health in general. Agencies that understand the quirks of local SEO can offer immense value to these clients, even while executing repeatable, predictable activities. It’s an enormous opportunity to scale.

But the execution is only half the battle. Getting results for a local SEO client demands a decent understanding of their business, and for the client, in turn, to understand the value of what’s being delivered, especially in the earlier, less predictable stages.

Increasing a site’s Moz Domain Authority by ten points, or shaving five percent off its homepage bounce rate, may be meaningful to tech-savvy clients. That kind of thing is less likely to be obviously exciting news to a local restaurant owner.

In order to demonstrate value and earn trust from brick-and-mortar clients, it’s necessary to understand their businesses on their own terms. All good client onboarding processes feature a lot of careful listening and asking questions, but when it comes to local SEO it has a whole extra level of importance.

3. ‘Educate us’ or ‘Just take care of it’

SEO agencies should seek to understand both the desired business outcomes and the knowledge goals of their brick-and-mortar clients.

Fundamental concepts like the customer journey still apply in this world but have an additional dimension. For instance, retail stores are conscious of footfall. This isn’t quite parallel with website traffic; a small increase in footfall can have an enormous impact. In-store experiences tend to be more memorable than website visits.

The challenge for SEOs is to map rankings and online interactions to offline goals. When it comes to in-person transactions, you can’t precisely track conversion rate.

With purely online marketing, identifying bottlenecks in the sales funnel is straightforward. Sometimes Google Analytics gives the answers in black and white—low click-through rate to product pages; poor site speed; most traffic coming from countries the business doesn’t ship to. For local businesses, it’s a little different.

Asking clients the right questions can yield insights like—“we’re busy at breakfast but the lunchtime crowd goes across the street” or “locals come from across town for our Chai Latte.” Sometimes this information can directly guide local search tactics, other times it’s simply a useful north star to ground SEO reporting on results.

One way or the other, when local SEO clients hear that they’ve nabbed a first page ranking for a high-volume keyword, or acquired prominence on Google Maps, they need to understand why that’s meaningful.

Some brick-and-mortar business owners have the intention of becoming more digital-savvy. In that case, being an educator is one of the most sticky value-adds an agency can provide. Other clients might prefer to build a relationship with a trustworthy expert who can simply take care of these matters so the owner can focus on what they do best.

The key is to establish the client’s preference early on in the engagement.

4. SEO reporting should focus on tangible business results

Of course, the best way to retain brick-and-mortar clients is to demonstrate that SEO activities are making a tangible impact on their businesses.

But there will almost certainly be periods of time when authority-building, experimenting, or investigating has to take center stage. Local SEO clients might not immediately see why these activities are important if they don’t directly move the needle for them.

Building trust early on is vital to create long-term success with these businesses.

Whether providing education or concise reports, each piece of information should connect back to the client’s day-to-day realities. For example, local citation building and efforts to improve the performance of a client’s Google Business Profile should be understood in light of extra-digital customer actions like asking for directions or calling.

The ideal local SEO report presents the headline metrics in the context of real-world objectives. For many businesses, the relationship between website traffic and revenue is immediate and visible. In the brick-and-mortar world, it’s not always so clear.

Situations may arise where it’s necessary to explain something a little more abstract to a local SEO client. Perhaps enormous digital progress has been made, like a plethora of new page two rankings or a dramatic improvement in site performance. By indicating their place in the overall plan, these results can be made meaningful to clients.

5. Adapt client services for brick-and-mortar businesses

For agencies in the process of niching down to local SEO, there are some assumptions that are easy to make but ought to be avoided.

For example, it’s typical for many business owners and managers to routinely use email at the heart of their workflows. At the more tech-savvy end of the spectrum, they may use tools like Slack or Asana to stay organized and connected. But restaurant owners and managers spend significantly less time plugged-in.

It’s a good idea to put some consideration towards adapting client service processes to better fit with the workflows of these clients. In the first instance, agencies should have a frank conversation with each new client at kick-off.

If the client is somewhat tech-savvy or committed to the strategic importance of SEO, there’s no better way to offer them clarity and convenience than having a client portal that brings all information into one place.

In other cases, perhaps phone calls have to make up the overwhelming majority of project communication. Agencies must consider how this will impact internal workflows. For instance, if extensive client knowledge is required for content creation, their input needs to be saved and made accessible to the delivery team.

There is an enormous opportunity for agencies that can find ways of working that flow dynamically with brick-and-mortar clients. These businesses absolutely need the expertise of SEOs. Any agency that overcomes these operational obstacles will surely secure lucrative relationships with local businesses.

What to Look for in a Local Search Rank Monitoring Tool

Having the correct tools to hand can be the difference between the success and failure of your search engine optimization efforts. For the most part, tools equal efficiency and provide you with the valuable data you need to make informed decisions. A prerequisite for keeping your SEO on track is a local search rank monitoring tool. The right tool can be a vital part of your local search arsenal and does much more than simply telling you that keyword A is in position X. 

Finding a local search ranking monitoring tool can be a process of trial and error. A quick Google search will return thousands of pages of results, and with literally hundreds of tools on offer, knowing where to start can be a challenge in itself. It’s important to make sure that you choose the best tool for your needs, so we’ve compiled a no-nonsense rundown of exactly what you should look for.

Why monitor local search rankings?

Having visibility in the local pack is absolutely fundamental to your a local business’s success in search. By association, this means that knowing where you rank within the local pack is a vital business insight that you simply can’t afford to overlook, guess, or have anything less than a comprehensive idea of.

Many local businesses can’t compete with national and international brands for the top three organic rankings, making local search the most valuable (and realistic) pathway to consumer visibility. This visibility is highly prized, with research confirming multiple benefits of local SEO visibility.

Did you know…

• More than four in ten searches conducted on Google are for local information?
• 97% of consumers find out the majority of information about a local business online?
• More than 8 in 10 mobile users carry out ‘near me’ searches, with 9 in 10 very likely to click on one of the first three results?
• Half of consumers who conduct a search on their smartphone go on to visit a local store within 24 hours? 

Of course, to ensure you’re in the running for these benefits, you need to know that what you’re doing is effective. The only way to tell that for sure is to have a handle on where your or your client’s business is ranking in local search. This not only tells you whether you’re making progress or need to change your direction due to a lack of tangible results, but it also gives you reliable data upon which other decisions can be made – such as whether to direct resources to a paid search campaign to compensate for a lack of local search visibility. 

While many of us are tempted to do a quick Google check each morning with our coffee to see where we rank for keywords, getting an accurate and holistic picture of local visibility isn’t quite so easy. 

To guarantee accuracy, a proper ranking check must take into account the searcher’s location and give a true picture of how you’re performing in local search for those users both close to and further away from your business location. Proximity is a local SEO ranking factor. It’s a local SEO cornerstone and can’t be accurately reflected in results when you perform a search from your desk or own device each day. If local SEO is still a fairly new area to you, the BrightLocal Learning Hub covers the different types of local search. You can start with the basics like “What is Local SEO?” or learn about a specific aspect like local keyword research. Meanwhile, this piece on explaining Local SEO to beginners has a comprehensive outline of proximity and the role it plays in the local pack.

The results you see are also influenced by the type of device you’re using and your normal search habits (i.e. if you search for the same thing each day when signed into your Google account, the search results you see will be personalized to reflect this habit). 

To get the most from your local SEO investment, and to ensure you’re making data-driven decisions based on accurate data, you’ll need to invest in a local search rank monitoring tool to accurately and consistently monitor local search rankings. A proper tool will also give you the ability to check historical rankings, in order to assess gains and losses over time and per keyword. 

Look Out for These in Your Local SEO Monitoring and Reporting Tool

If you go to Google and simply type in ‘local search rank monitoring tool’ as your search term, 350 million results are returned (at the time of writing). Suffice to say, there’s a lot of information out there, thousands of tools to choose from, and plenty of opinions and claims to wade through. 

No two businesses are alike and no two needs are alike so when you look for a tool, it’s highly advisable to do your initial research with a view to creating a shortlist. From there, it’s advisable to schedule demos for all of the tools that look like they may fit the bill and assess which one suits you best. 

Focus on local SEO

Many local search rank monitoring tools aren’t designed to cater specifically to local search. In fact, only a few are entirely geared towards local rankings, and of those, some have more functionality than you’ll ever need – meaning you’ll end up paying more than necessary. Seeking out a rank tracker that has been purpose-built for local business users means that you’re far more likely to get the functionality that is useful to you, rather than paying a premium for enterprise-level tools that you’ll likely never use. 

A good indication that a local search rank monitoring tool is actually designed for local search will be the presence of other local SEO features, such as Google Business Profile audits and citation tracking. 

Keep track of your competitors

Even if you haven’t been responsible for a local SEO campaign before, you’ll still appreciate the value of competitor research as a local business owner or marketer – you may keep tabs on competitor prices, for example, their special offers, or even the number of social media followers they have, so you can benchmark your own activity. 

As the local pack has shrunk to just three spots, competition has become fiercer than ever so there’s little sense in just looking at your own rankings in isolation. You also need to know where rival businesses are located in relation to your own positions when competing in the same local area. 

Monitoring competitor activity is an essential part of SEO success, so be sure to look for tools that include this at no extra cost.

Incorporate Google Mobile and Google Maps rankings separately

As two separate properties, Google Mobile search results and Google Maps results should be tracked separately. They are each powered by different algorithms and have different features and a different search result page layout which could impact how search users interact with your listing. 

Google Mobile is more tightly connected to Google Maps than desktop results, so it’s important to understand the connection when it comes to rankings and to be able to see those rankings as separate entities. 

Account for keywords

If you’re used to running a paid search campaign, running shopping ads for an e-commerce site, or handling general SEO, you’ll most probably be familiar with working with large keyword sets. From a local SEO standpoint, it’s likely not necessary to have thousands of keywords per location. 

As a good rule of thumb, make 100+ keywords or so your starting criteria when searching for a new local search rank monitoring tool. Tools that allow thousands and thousands of keywords mean you’re paying for more than you actually need. Ideally, you’d pay for what’s essential and then purchase addons, if you really need to, at a later date.

Be aware of proximity factors

While much of your or your client’s customer base may come (broadly speaking) from the same general local area, it’s not enough to only be able to search from your desktop or device location when checking local rankings. 

The prime reason for this? A variable of even a street or two can make a big difference to your local pack position, especially when your customers are coming from far and wide in your local area and beyond—a potential customer could well be doing research for an upcoming trip while at their home in a different state, for example; you may have a certain item or brand in stock that a consumer from the next town or neighboring city wants; or, the search user could be just up the road. 

As Aleh Barysevic notes, it could be that your local pack position remains stable across your service area. Alternatively, it could be that you only appear when the search takes place within one or two streets of your location. Performance could well differ from one part of your town or city to the other and it can be useful for you to know how distance from your physical location affects your local pack rankings. For that, you need to have a local search rank monitoring tool with the option to change search location, or better yet, a tool that shows your rankings across a geo grid.

Factor in usability

Time is one of your most valuable commodities – which means a tool that is easy to use should be one of your search criteria.

Generally speaking, the larger and more powerful the tool, the more complex the dashboard and functionality. To get the most from your chosen tool, you need to be able to see ranking results from a number of different platforms (Google Mobile, local pack, Google Maps, etc.) side by side, but that shouldn’t mean hours of trawling through reports or wrangling with complex tools and functions. When taking demos for your shortlisted tools, don’t underestimate the value of ease of use.

While we might be a little biased, BrightLocal’s Local Rank Tracker and Local Search Grid have been developed specifically for local search, and we’re confident that, together, they do everything you need to monitor local search performance and report effectively to bosses and clients alike.

Even if you feel you have a good grasp of the basics of local SEO, keeping track of the various areas and tasks can be a challenge. That’s why we’ve created the local SEO checklist. Bookmark it, download it, or print it out—this is a handy resource to remind you of the different pillars under the local SEO umbrella and prompt you to complete tasks that will support your business’s local visibility. 

This article will delve into further detail under each pillar, so you can refer back to this if you need a helping hand. You’ll also find links to more comprehensive guides, free BrightLocal Academy courses, and relevant research to help you further.

Click on the image of the local SEO checklist below for an interactive PDF version. Alternatively, you can download the PDF to print.

Understanding How Local SEO Works

As of late 2024, Google’s share of the search market hovers at around 89-90%. So, it makes sense to focus your local SEO primarily (not exclusively!) on Google Search. Google’s Local Search algorithm has three key ranking factors: Proximity, Relevance, and Prominence. 

Here is a quick summary of these three key local search ranking factors:

• Proximity refers to the physical distance of a business from the searcher.
• Relevance refers to how relevant the business is to the user’s search.
• Prominence refers to how well-known a business is. You can also think of prominence as a business’ authority.

You can learn more about these three local ranking factors on the Google Help Center.

Getting Your Business Set Up for Local SEO Success

With the theory in mind, we can now focus on the actions to take to rank in local SERPs. But before you dive straight in, you’ll need to organize your business information and web properties and understand how the type of business(es) you work with—whether it’s your own or a client’s—will determine how you need to get set up on things like Google Business Profile (GBP).

First, gather information on all business locations and spend time making sure you have the correct business information. You wouldn’t want to do local SEO for three months only to find out the phone number on a Google Business Profile is incorrect, or that you’re missing a few locations.

Most businesses will fall into one of these four categories:

• Single location with a physical address
  • If you have only one location, your strategy will be simple. You will only need one Google Business Profile with a verified address.

• Multiple locations with physical addresses
  • If you have multiple locations, you will need multiple Google Business Profiles. Each location will need its own unique address and phone number, and landing pages.

• Single location with a service area (no physical address)
  • If you have only one location but don’t want to show your physical address, you can hide it and show the areas you serve. Usually, it’s best to have an address in terms of SEO rankings.

• Multiple locations with service areas (no physical addresses)
  • If you choose this strategy, make sure there is no overlap with the service areas. Google will typically filter businesses with too many service area locations and only show the one it believes to be the most prominent location.

Monitoring and Reporting

Getting set up on reporting and analytics tools can seem laborious, but we promise that the insights you will gain are more than worth it. Not only will you deepen your understanding of how consumers are searching for and finding your business, but you’ll also gain crucial competitor insights that can help you keep one step ahead.

1. Create a Website 

If you’re wondering whether your business needs a website, then the short, simple answer is: 100% yes. 81% of consumers research businesses online before making a purchase decision. If a consumer can’t verify your business’s existence by browsing your website, that’s a lot of potential missed custom.

Think of a business website as your digital ‘shop window.’ It’s a crucial trust asset for ensuring potential customers can find you in the first place. Having a website as part of your digital presence reinforces your brand credentials to search engines, like Google, and reinforces your authenticity to potential customers.

2. Set up Search Console

Google Search Console is incredibly handy for understanding the performance of your website pages in Google’s search results pages (SERPs). You can review your average ranking position, how many users are seeing your pages appearing in the SERPs, and whether they’re actually clicking through to your website. It will also highlight any issues with page indexing—in basic terms, whether Google is surfacing your website in relevant search results or not.

It may sound intimidating if you’re new to digital marketing, but getting started is actually simple.

An Introduction to Google Search Console for Local Businesses

Learn More

3. Set up Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing Webmaster Tools is essentially the Microsoft and Bing equivalent of Search Console. It’s just as important to ensure you’re set up properly within Bing—remember, not everyone searches via Google!

Diversifying your search presence beyond Google ensures that your business can be found where all of your potential customers are looking.

4. Set up Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a treasure trove of website analytics data. Getting set up here allows you to drill down into the engagement and performance of specific website pages and understand the channels and sources of traffic to your pages.

5. Carry Out Keyword Research

Now you’ve got a website, you need to add pages and content. But what do you need to write about?! Local keyword research allows you to find out what potential customers are searching for in relation to your products and/or services, as well as more informational queries you can help answer. Optimizing your product or service pages with key, transactional search terms can help ensure your business is found in organic search.

The keyword research tool that you choose will vary based on preference, but we’ve compiled a list of some of the top keyword research tools for you.

6. Set up Rank Tracking Reports 

While Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools provide an idea of your average position within SERPs, detailed local rank tracking reports give you the complete picture of your ranking performance and how rankings are moving over time.

You can also compare your results directly to competitors to help you understand what they may or may not be doing to outrank you. Using our rank tracking tools as an example, Local Rank Tracker allows you to view ranking positions and movement across Google, Google Maps, Bing, and Bing Local.

Local Search Grid displays local ranking information across a radius of your choosing, so you can see exactly how your business is ranking in key local areas that your business serves.

Put Your Rankings on the Map. Literally.

Track and improve rankings with BrightLocal

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Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile (GBP) is arguably the most effective local marketing tool for local businesses. This panel of information tells searchers everything they need to know about your business at a glance, appearing both in Google organic results and Google Maps results.

7. Set up Google Business Profile (GBP)

Firstly, you will need to either claim or set up your GBP listing. This allows you to claim full ownership and management of the information displayed here, from key contact information and opening hours, to your website and social links, photos of your business, and details of your products and services.

8. Verify Your GBP

Before you can update key business information on your GBP, add photos and posts with key promotions, you will need to verify your Google Business Profile. Quite simply, if you don’t verify your listing, then you will be unable to keep it completely accurate and up to date, which can be off-putting to potential customers.

If you do it poorly, you’ll have to do the whole process again. So make sure you have everything ready.

9. Set Your Primary Category

Within GBP you can set relevant categories that help users find your business. You should set your ‘primary category’ as the one that is most relevant to your business, but you can also add secondary categories if there are more that are applicable.

For example, if your business is a coffee shop that serves a wide range of food and drink, you might select the primary category as ‘Coffee shop’ and then choose ‘Cafe,’ and maybe even ‘Brunch restaurant’. It’s worth noting that category names vary slightly depending on the country that you are in.

10. Write a Business Description

Writing your own GBP business description is your opportunity to tell potential customers who you are and what you do.

Don’t sleep on this!

This is a chance to tell people why your business is unique and maybe even share some facts or history about how the business came about. 

11. Set Your Opening Hours

Setting your business’s opening hours is an important step when optimizing your GBP. Think about it, if your listing doesn’t have any opening hours and your nearby competitor does, who is a customer going to choose? In 2023, our Local Business Discovery and Trust Report found that 62% of consumers would avoid using a business if they found incorrect information online. Don’t take the risk of losing out to competitors for something so simple.

You can set individual opening hours for every day of the week, including split hours (often relevant for hospitality businesses) and even 24-hour openings for areas that may respond to out-of-hours or emergency calls.

12. Add Q&As

The Q&A section on GBP isn’t just for potential customers to ask you questions. In fact, business owners should proactively use this section to get ahead of frequently asked questions by displaying them themselves. Here are some examples you might consider adding (and answering):

• Is your business dog-friendly?
• Does your business offer [product or service]?
• Can you cater for dairy-free requirements?

13. Add Photos and Videos

Customers can add photos or videos to their reviews to illustrate their experience of your business—but you can, too! In fact, photos and videos provided by the business owner and/or managers are a great way to further showcase your products and services, highlight key facilities and amenities, and give customers some further context as to where your business is located in the neighborhood.

It’s also a good way to communicate updates and changes to the business, such as any recent refurbishments, and ultimately helps to reinforce your credibility and authenticity by proving you are who you say you are. 

14. Add Services

As mentioned in the set up of your GBP, you can outline specific products and services on your listing to help guide prospective customers. In fact, Google may choose to surface these as ‘justifications’ in search results, which helps users find exactly what they’re looking for. 

Sometimes, Google will automatically add what it thinks your services are, so it’s important to keep on top of this area yourself and ensure the information is as accurate as possible.

15. Add Social Media Links

Your Google Business Profile has dedicated fields for you to fill in with your social media links like your X (formerly known as Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube handles. If you aren’t active on all of these channels, that doesn’t matter, but for the ones you are active on, it’s useful to strengthen your brand entity and tell Google which of these channels they can surface in the SERPs. 

16. Perform a GBP Audit

When you’re a good way through getting your GBP in ship shape, it’s a good idea to conduct a Google Business Profile Audit. This will highlight any key errors or missing business information, as well as any issues such as duplicate business listings. Crucially, it will also highlight the performance of your business listing against key competitors and surface insights to help you improve your visibility in local search.

You will also see a snapshot of your Google business reviews, so you can keep on top of new reviews and head to your GBP to reply to them.

17. Create a Google Business Profile Posting Schedule

Google encourages users to share updates via GBP. These Google Business Profile posts are a little like social media posts. They let you communicate directly with your customers. Add deals, provide important updates and generally use them to highlight anything you think your customers will need to know about.

You can add three different types: updates, offers and events. Posting regularly is encouraged and posts are available for 6 months.

18. Set up a Monitoring Schedule

We’d strongly recommend creating some kind of monitoring schedule to keep track of any changes to your GBP. Remember, Google and other Google users can suggest edits to your business—such as its opening hours, contact information, and location.

When monitoring your GBP, make a note to check all of your business information is accurate and up to date, and keep an eye out for new reviews that you can respond to.

Tools like ActiveSync let you monitor for any edits on Google Business Profile. It also lets you schedule GBP posts too.

Website and Content Optimization

Once your website and analytics are set up and you’ve started conducting keyword research to guide your initial website content, you’re ready to delve further into content and on-site optimization.

19. Perform a Local Search Audit 

The Local Search Audit tool is a great place to start. It analyzes hundreds of data points, including your on-site SEO. It highlights issues that you can improve on, such as pages with sparse content, lack of internal linking, missing page titles and descriptions, and more.

We’ll delve into these below.

20. Homepage Optimization

If you’re not a natural content writer, it might feel hard to know where to begin with on-site SEO and website content. To keep it simple, we recommend starting with the homepage. This is likely the first page a user will land on when clicking through to your business.

You want your prospective customers to land on the homepage and know they’ve come to the right place. As a local business, make your identity, location and what you do clear. The key thing to keep in mind for your homepage is ensuring your key information is presented as soon as possible, without users having to scroll through lots of waffle.

21. Location Pages

Location pages are crucial for local businesses with multiple locations. They ensure customers can find information that is most relevant to them, including contact details, directions and specific facilities, and allow you to outline key differentiations between your locations.

Additionally, if your business has multiple GBP listings for various locations, you’ll use the corresponding location page as its main URL.

22. Service Pages

Service pages are specific pages that highlight the services your business provides. These are mostly used by service area businesses, where services are provided at the customers’ location, such as plumbers, HVAC engineers, landscapers, and electricians.

Be careful, though. Make sure these pages add real value and don’t simply act as gateway pages.

23. Metadata

Metadata is the information that is displayed in SERPs and essentially helps convince users to click through to your website. Although Google can (and often does) determine the information displayed in SERPs, it’s always a good idea to ensure your page titles and descriptions are optimized with relevant keywords and information useful to users.

24. URLs

As you create pages and new content for your website, you’re in control of setting the URLs (links) for these. Try to keep these simple, relevant, and concise. This helps keep things neat and clear, which is also useful for users who may copy and share links with others.

25. Main Navigation

Similarly, you’ll want to keep the main navigation (menu) of your website simple. Think of this as the main way users will navigate their way around your website, so keep it intuitive. Additionally, consider futureproofing where you can—can you easily build this out if new products or services develop, without it getting too big or complicated?

Align your navigation with the structure of your website and its pages. For example, if you have individual services pages nested within a top-level service page, your navigation should reflect this.

26. Internal Linking

A more subtle but just as important form of website navigation is through internal linking. It helps connect relevant information and content that sits on other pages and aids the overall user journey to enhance the overall experience. These should be included where natural and relevant, not simply shoehorned in.

27. NAP and Location Data on Your Website

Your name, address and phone number (NAP) information should be consistent wherever it is listed, whether it’s on your website, business listings, or social media. Not only is it frustrating for potential customers if they can’t find the information—or, worse, find incorrect information—it’s important for search engines to crawl your pages. If you’re a single location or service area business, you might list your key contact information across the footer of your website, whereas multiple business locations will list their NAP across each location page.

28. Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals is Google’s way of measuring and rating the user experience of your website. Think of things like accessibility, page speed, and mobile responsiveness. This is designed to help you ensure your website is as user-friendly as possible while accommodating for different accessibility needs.

29. Sitemap

A sitemap should be available on your website to reflect the website structure. You should also submit this to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools as it supports them when crawling your website to understand its structure.

30. Structured Data (Schema)

Structured data is a technical component of SEO that also helps search engines to understand the structure of your website and on-page components. For example, local business-specific structured data can be added to relevant pages to surface specific information in SERPs.

31. Broken Links

Links can break for all sorts of reasons, but if you don’t keep on top of them, it creates a frustrating user experience. Tools like Local Search Audit can help identify broken links across your website, so be sure to keep on top of these.

32. Call Tracking

Call tracking is a game-changer for many local businesses and helps directly attribute ROI to your local marketing efforts. It will also give you a more comprehensive picture than just mobile call insights from GBP.

33. Content Calendar

When you feel ready, it’s a good idea to set up a content calendar to plan your approach to creating and publishing new content regularly. Use keyword research to uncover opportunities for new content, such as informational and educational blogs (top-of-the-funnel or ‘awareness’ content), and create a schedule accordingly. 

Content doesn’t have to be always specific to your business’s products and services, as long as it’s relevant and useful to your audiences. For example, local accountancy firms could compile resources for small business owners based on recent economic developments. 

34. Publishing Content

When your content is live, don’t just leave it there and hope people will find it. Find ways to actively share your content, such as via social media or email newsletters and using ‘Updates’ on GBP.

Citation Building and Listings Management

Listing your business on relevant directories or claiming your business profiles helps reinforce your online presence, verify your authenticity, and help customers discover you.

35. Claim the Important Listings 

It’s worth noting that different search engines use different business directories to surface business information. Google, as we know, uses Google Business Profile. Bing uses Bing Places, and Apple Maps uses Apple Business Connect, but both often also show review information from Facebook and Tripadvisor. 

Additionally, some search engines may prioritize results from directories such as Yelp or Tripadvisor fairly high in organic search results.

36. Claim Social Media Channels

Aside from Facebook, which has long been considered an official business listing platform, it’s important to claim business profiles across various other social channels. This isn’t just because many of them now have their own local business features, like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat, but because Google can also use your social presence as a nod to your authenticity and credibility. 

37. Conduct a Citation Audit 

You can easily audit all your citations by using Citation Tracker. Not only does this pinpoint errors and inconsistencies with your data, but it also reviews your competitors’s citations to highlight some you might be missing.

38. Check for Consistency

Citation consistency refers to how consistent your key business information (NAP) is across various business listings. For example, if there is any missing information or errors in the spelling/formats or old phone numbers or addresses have been left on some listings. You can use the Citation Tracker report to highlight these and fix them accordingly.

39. Build New Citations on Prominent Directories

There are many different business directories for local businesses, from general business directories like Yell.com to more industry-specific directories like Thumbtack. It’s a good idea to make sure you’ve claimed listings across prominent and relevant directories, including those specific to your industry or niche and the country you’re based in.

40. Remove Duplicate Listings

Duplicate listings can confuse search engines and humans, particularly if the same listing has different business information. You can use tools like Citation Tracker to highlight suspected duplicates and then review the profiles to remove any duplicates.

41. Highlight Competitor Citations

As mentioned, Citation Tracker also lists competitor citations, which is a great opportunity to highlight prominent citations that you haven’t yet claimed. You can sort the results by ‘citation value’ to see the best options, or conduct some research to find ones you might be missing.

42. Set Up Listings Management 

Managing your business listings can quickly become a big job, particularly if any key information related to your business changes. You want to be sure that your business information is synced across every business directory, with changes updated quickly. When this is the case, you might consider listings management services to take the manual work off your plate.

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Review Management

43. Build Profiles Across Review Platforms

Not everyone uses Google to write reviews, and not everyone wants to create a new user profile just to do so. So, just as we don’t recommend putting all of your eggs in one basket for search, the same goes for reviews. After all, you wouldn’t want to have a strong rating on one platform and a terrible rating on others. Splitting your efforts across multiple review platforms helps to maintain a consistent review presence, helping to avoid any jarring customer experiences.

44. Create a Review Link to Ask for Reviews

When asking your customers to write a review, make it as easy for them as possible. Create review links and QR codes that you can attach to communications like emails and text messages.

If you need to generate a Google review link, there are free tools available to do just that.

45. Respond to Your Reviews

Our Local Consumer Review Survey found that 89% of consumers would use a business that responds to all of its reviews, compared to 44% who said they’d use a business that doesn’t respond to any reviews at all.

Whether positive or negative feedback, responding to all of your reviews shows your customers that you’re listening, taking feedback on board and, where necessary, making changes.

46. Create Review Response Templates

Having written review request templates can help speed up the process of asking for customer reviews, particularly when you’re dealing with a large number of people. You might want to consider having several templates for different types of purchases or experiences.

You can even create review response templates, which is especially helpful if you don’t always know how to respond. 

47. Monitor Your Reviews

Stay proactive by monitoring your reviews and tracking new feedback. This will allow you to respond to responses in a timely manner and implement any changes or improvements.

If managing this manually is too much of a task, consider using a review monitoring tool. This will be a game-changer if you’re tracking large numbers of reviews and reviews across multiple platforms.

48. Flag Fake Reviews

Fake reviews are harmful to everyone. They can harm a business’s reputation and mislead potential customers. Report fake reviews to Google (and other platforms!) to protect your reputation.

Link Building

In the world of local marketing, ‘link building’ goes beyond asking (or hoping) other brands or publications to link to your business. There are also many in-person and community opportunities to consider.

49. Perform a Backlink Audit and Look at Competitor Gaps

There are various tools available to audit your backlink profile. This can show you what domains are linking to you, how many links your website has, and which pages are linked to the most often.

You can also use this as an opportunity to audit your key competitors and identify opportunities you might currently be missing, such as relevant publications that might be interested in your business, as well as content topics that you can cover on your own website.

50. Look for Local Sponsorships, Charities, Communities and Events

Getting involved in your local community is a great way to truly earn backlinks. Could you sponsor a local sports team or club? Can you give any space, items, or services to a local meet-up?

What about local charities? How can you get involved with those? You could even consider scholarships.

Basically, companies that really get involved with their local communities can earn links in a really natural way. Plus, it can really help with your reputation.

51. Investigate Opportunities with Local Publications

Does your community have prominent news outlets or trade publications that could benefit from your expertise? A partnership can often be a win-win: They get your expertise, while your business gets the brand awareness (and link!).

Maybe you could invite someone along for a review? Or provide comment on stories that you have insight on.

52. Track Brand Mentions and Reclaim List Links

Brand mentions and social listening is a useful way of finding out what is being said about your business in various places online, even if they’re not necessarily linking to your website. It’s helpful to monitor sentiment around your business, but can also be a good opportunity to reach out to brands and publications and secure a link back to your website if your business is listed in articles.

As mentioned above, if you’re finding articles and lists where your business is mentioned but not linked to, link reclamation is an effective way of gaining links to your website. You could add these to a spreadsheet as you come across them and conduct the outreach to ask for links in small chunks. The worst that can happen is you either get a ‘no’ or no reply.

53. Investigate Other Ways to Do Link Building

A few other ways you could approach link building include:

• Talking to local community websites
• Providing testimonials for other businesses in the area you’ve worked with
• Creating PR campaigns
• Working with local bloggers and influencers

Community and News

Don’t underestimate the power and reassurance of online communities! Help, support and inspiration are often just a click away, and we’ve compiled some of the top resources to help you. 

54. BrightLocal’s Regular Newsletter

Did you know that we send a regular digest newsletter of industry news, local marketing resources, and drops of our latest research, webinars and free Academy courses?

Subscribe today and be the first to know about what’s going on right now in local.

55. Relevant Industry Newsletters

Likewise, there are so many fantastic resources out there—no matter how niche you feel your business area is! For SEO, local marketing and digital news, consider Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal and Marketing Week. Meanwhile, multi-location businesses and brand marketers will love Street Fight, The Drum, and Campaign.

Have a search for newsletters or publications relevant to your industry, and you’ll be sure to find a whole host of new resources.

56. Follow Useful Accounts on Social Media

Another way you can stay up to date with brands and publications is by following them on social media. You’ll find that the main channels businesses are active on can vary by industry, but generally LinkedIn, Bluesky, and X are good places to find local marketing and small business news.

You can follow us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, Threads, and X. Phew!

57. BrightLocal Academy

We’re super serious when we say that all of the video courses on BrightLocal’s Academy are 100% free. Our courses have been devised by real local SEO experts to help you get the most out of your local marketing, whether you’re a total beginner or more intermediate. We have courses on everything from the very basics of local SEO and creating website content, to specifics for multi-location businesses and mastering link building.

58. Join The Local Pack

The Local Pack is our very own local SEO community on Facebook. We created this as a space for anyone involved in local marketing to connect, share and help each other out. From small business owners and marketing consultants to long-time SEO experts, it’s a lively group with people from all sorts of backgrounds.

What is a local SEO strategy? 

Think of your local SEO strategy as a blueprint for success. It maps out everything you need to do to build a stronger local search presence, using a range of local SEO best practices. 

Creating a local SEO strategy can take some time, but as you will refer to it continuously to help you outrank other local businesses, the time and resources you invest in getting this right at the start will pay dividends later on. 

A good strategy should cover: 

• Your present situation: What keywords are you ranking for? What local SEO activity (if any) are you already working on? 
• Competitor research: who’s performing better than you in search and what are they doing that you aren’t?  
• Opportunities for improvement: Where do gaps in your current SEO activity exist and how can your site be better optimized? 
• Plan of action: A list of tactics that you’ll need to deploy to boost your local search presence.

How do I create a local search strategy?

Any type of local business hoping to attract more local consumers needs a strategy in place to guide their actions and ensure time and resources are being allocated in the most effective manner.

However, building out a strategy for the first time can feel overwhelming, not least because there are so many local ranking factors to consider. A methodical approach is best, allowing you to tackle each element in your plan thoroughly while also ensuring that you don’t miss any local SEO best practices that could transform your results and see your site ranking higher across the Local Pack, Local Finder, Maps and local search results. 

Step 1: Your Present Situation 

Before you can decide which SEO tactics will serve you best, you need to understand where your site is ranking and how it’s performing right now. An audit is the best way to build an objective and data-led view and will flag up any urgent tasks that should be prioritized before other local SEO work takes place. 

The easiest way to complete the audit process and gather as much useful, accurate, and up-to-date information as possible is to use a tool such as Local Search Audit. 

If you’re going to conduct a manual audit, you’ll need to: 

• Create a keyword ranking report, showing which keywords you’re ranking for along with their local search position.
• Review your on-page optimization. Pay particular attention to any issues which could impede your local SEO progress such as missing and inaccurate page titles, slow loading pages, broken links, duplicate and low-quality content, and a poor user experience from mobile search.
• Review your Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business) to understand where gaps in optimization exist. 
• Create a link report showing inbound links to your page, along with anchor text.
• Study your online reviews, paying attention to how many positive and negative reviews you currently have, which platforms the reviews appear on and whether or not you’re responding in a timely manner.
• Create a list of local citations, noting any with incorrect or outdated information.

Step 2: Competitor Research 

Your competitors are likely to be a very useful source of local SEO intel. The local businesses appearing higher than you in search are likely there because they’re doing a better job of implementing local SEO best practices on a regular basis. Taking the time to understand what they are doing well and which tactics they’re deploying will give you a useful starting point for your own strategy. 

For a thorough analysis, you can repeat step one above but, this time, focus on specific competitors, follow our suggestions here or, use a tool like Local Search Audit to do the heavy lifting for you.

Step 3: Opportunities For Improvement 

Steps one and two should give you a very clear idea of where your site stands, how it’s performing now, what you’re doing well, where you’re falling down and how competitors are outranking you. 

Now, you can use this data to pinpoint specific areas where opportunities for improvement exist and use this to begin populating your local SEO strategy. If your on-page audit revealed that your site is populated with poor or outdated content, for example, creating more useful and valuable content for a local reader should form part of your plan. 

Likewise, if your competitor analysis confirmed that your rivals are doing a much better job at replying to Google reviews, you’ll want to ensure that your strategy includes more time for review management.  

Armed with all of this information, it’s now time to formulate your local SEO strategy. 

Sample Local SEO Strategy For a Small Business

To help you get your local SEO plan down on paper, we’ve chosen a small business at random and outlined a suitable local SEO strategy. Use this as your framework for creating your own strategy. 

This business is a unisex barbershop in San Francisco. As you’ll see, any identifying information has been blurred out. 

Google Business Profile

Although this business has claimed its listing, there are a number of ways that it could improve its use of this local marketing tool, including:

• Adding more photos
• Publishing Posts
• Asking and answering questions
• Adding more business information

Photos

No new photos have been added to the profile since 2017. This could give the impression that the business has closed or indicate that the business is not active online.

The photos that can be seen are predominantly of hair products, whereas potential customers are more likely to want to see examples of different haircuts and styles.

By regularly adding new and helpful photos, the business could highlight the skills of the people who work there and show customers what to expect. Before and after images of a restyle for example could be useful for a potential customer.

Posts

The business isn’t using GBP Posts to share news and updates. This is a missed opportunity to connect with customers and push promotional offers. Posts are also a great way to share new information on products and services, and to make other announcements such as competitions, late availability appointments, and new team members.

Although using Google Posts likely doesn’t improve local search rankings, it can help businesses to attract attention and, therefore, earn new customers.

Q&A

A potential customer has asked a question through the Q&A section but the business hasn’t responded. Similar to the previous point on photos, this could lead a potential customer to assume the business is closed, or that it doesn’t prioritize customer service.

Responding to customer questions is a quick and easy way to build relationships and share information. The business can also ask questions itself and answer them. Using this tool to have a list of FAQs can be useful for the local consumer by giving them more information to aid in decision making.

Business Information

The business address listed on Google doesn’t match the address listed on the company website. This could be confusing to customers and also sends mixed signals to Google, which could be harmful to search rankings. Ensuring NAP is consistent across the web begins with the content that the business can control, such as its own website, Google Business Profile, and social media profiles. 

Local Link Building

In order to build local links, this business should be reaching out to other local businesses in San Francisco, especially those within the hairdressing and beauty industries.

Launching a blog on the website would be a powerful way to start building the authority of the site and earn links. The business could also get valuable local links by creating local citations.

Citation Building

This barbershop has created citations on a number of sites, including:

• Yelp
• Foursquare
• Better Business Bureau and
• MapQuest

Although the business has built some citations, they aren’t all being consistently managed or maintained. For example, the business has been reported as closed on Yelp, and the business hasn’t rectified this:

Additionally, the prices listed on various business directory sites don’t match the prices from the business website.

Discrepancies in business information across the web don’t create a good impression for potential customers and are also harmful to local SEO.

Spam Fighting

Several Google Business Profiles in the same category are using spammy practices to boost their rankings, and a number of them are outranking the business in question.

For example, a number of businesses are using the words ‘barbershop’, and ‘barbers’ in their GBP name, even though these words aren’t in their actual registered business name.

The business in question could spend some time reporting these spam listings to get a boost in rankings.

Website Optimization

Although a great deal of local SEO is specific to Google Business Profile, there’s still much to be gained by having a strong website. The localized organic results are made up of websites, and this is still an important source of traffic for local businesses.

There are several ways that this business can optimize its website. The areas to address include:

• the reviews page
• social links
• keyword research and
• image optimization

Reviews Page

The site has a dedicated page for reviews, but only four reviews are featured:

Given that the business has hundreds of positive reviews across multiple platforms, this is a missed opportunity to showcase this feedback. The reviews listed are also several years old, which will likely not encourage a potential customer to use the business.

In fact, only highlighting a very small number of old reviews could actually be harmful to the business’s reputation. This is because a user might assume they don’t have more positive, recent reviews to share. Embedding review widgets on the website to lead visitors to review platforms would be an easy way to ensure that a full range of relevant reviews is easily accessible to potential visitors, without the business needing to make timely manual updates.

Social Links

The website links to a Facebook account that hasn’t been used since 2016 and only has eight followers.

The website also links to the company’s YouTube channel, which has only one video from four years ago.

This lack of activity might give somebody the impression that the shop is closed and cause them to look elsewhere.

This business isn’t using any other social platforms, which means they’re missing out on reaching new audiences. Instagram is a particularly great place for barbershops to promote themselves for free.

If the business were to create an Instagram account, then it could be connected to the website to automatically feature new photos and videos there. This would demonstrate the expertise of the staff, and also show potential customers that the business is active—both online and offline.

Keyword Research

The website for this business ranks for approximately 200 different keywords. However, the only search term on the first page is the exact match term for the business name. The remaining keywords rank on page two and beyond. The amount of monthly traffic to the website is estimated to be very low.

It’s likely that the business hasn’t done much (if any) keyword research to inform the content used on the website.

There are typically around 1,000 searches per month for ‘barber san francisco’, and 720 searches for ‘best barbershop san francisco’. It’s evident that ranking on the first page for these search terms, and similar terms, would be advantageous.

Creating a keyword-informed content strategy and using it to launch a blog could soon help to get this website ranking well in the localized search results.

Image Optimization

Several different images are used across the business website, but none of them are properly labeled or optimized. As you can see from the image below, the photos have generic file names, which have no SEO value. 

By using data from keyword research for the file names, the business could target relevant search terms through its images. This is a simple fix and could give the website a boost in the rankings.

Reviews

The business doesn’t appear to have responded to any customer reviews across multiple platforms in the last few years, such as GBP, Yelp, or Facebook.

Given that the business has several negative reviews, this is a huge, missed opportunity to salvage its reputation and rebuild these relationships. It’s also a lost chance to say thank you to those who left positive reviews to encourage repeat custom.

In Summary

Although this business seemingly has a lot of happy customers, there’s a lot more that it could be doing to enhance its online presence. Addressing the issues mentioned here with the help of a documented local SEO strategy would help the business build a better reputation and potentially drive business growth.

Either way, BrightLocal’s Local SEO Glossary explains all the relevant terms to bring you up to speed.

A

Anchor text

The visible, clickable text that links out to another web page. Anchor text can be supported by the alt attribute behind the link.

This text signals to users and search engines what the content of the hyperlinked page is about. It’s SEO best practice that anchor text is descriptive and relevant to the hyperlinked page’s content.

Apple Business Connect

Officially launched in January 2022, Apple Business Connect is the system businesses use to manage their appearance on Apple Maps. You sign up, verify your business, and you can then add photos, post updates (called “showcases”), and allow customers to message you.

Another way of putting it if you’re familiar with Google is that Apple Business Connect is to Apple Maps what Google Business Profile is to Google Maps

Apple Maps

The default map system for Apple products, and the second most popular maps application among mobile users, after Google Maps.

Local SEO should target Apple Maps alongside Google Maps through Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business), and Bing Maps through Microsoft.

Average star rating

The rating that shows up next to a business listing on any directory that features business reviews, such as Yelp and Google.

The review score is calculated from user ratings and a variety of other factors, and after someone leaves a new review, it may take up to two weeks to get an updated review score.

B

Bing Places for Business

A free tool for businesses to appear in Bing search engine results, as well as in Cortana results.

It’s suitable for businesses with storefronts, chains with multiple locations, or service providers without a physical store.

Bulk management

Adding, changing, or deleting data for more than one business/citation/location at the same time.

This is usually done through a tool (such as BrightLocal) and is especially useful for agencies, as well as enterprise or multi-location businesses.

C

Centroid

A concept in the local search industry used to define a central point of geography or activity.

Wherever a user is physically located at the time they search for something local, Google’s results will be customized to display the businesses nearest to the user’s device. This may be referred to as “proximity to the point of search” or the “user-as-centroid phenomenon”.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a language model—a form of artificial intelligence that uses a data source to answer questions and respond to prompts.

It’s particularly interesting in local SEO as it can be used to scale up the creation of content in bulk and complete simple tasks in a cost-effective way. However, experts recommend you always check and edit the content it creates rather than using it blindly.

Citation

In local SEO, a local citation is a complete or partial web-based reference to a business’s name, address, phone number, plus other core data.

Structured citations can occur in the form of formal local business listings on local business data platforms. Unstructured citations occur as simple mentions of a business on a blog, news site, website, or other online publication.

Citation campaign

The practice of auditing, cleaning up, and building citations for a local business on a variety of local business data platforms.

D

Data aggregator

A data aggregator is a company that collects data on local businesses such as their name, address, phone number, opening hours, etc. in order to present it elsewhere online.

Data is verified then sold (leased) to other companies in need of local business data. Companies that typically buy this data are online directories (e.g. YP.com), local-mobile applications, and mapping and GPS companies (e.g. TomTom).

Directory

Any website which lists business names and contact information in an organized fashion, typically in alphabetical order or by business type.

Directory information is frequently assimilated by local search engines.

Duplicate listing

Any time you have more than one listing on a given platform (like Google Business Profile) representing a single entity (a business), that’s considered a duplicate.

It’s important to regularly check for and consolidate any duplicate listings for the same business.

F

First-party reviews

User reviews that are collected and displayed on your own website with no input from the business owner.

G

Geo modifier

Also known as a geographic modifier, location modifier or location qualifier, this is the part of a search term which references a location.

Examples of keywords with geographic modifiers would be “plumber London” or “plumber near me”, rather than just “plumber”.

Geotagging

The process of adding geographical identification data to various media such as a website, image, video, SMS messages, QR code or RSS feed.

Geotagging helps search engines make the connection between your content and the location of what it depicts.

Google Business Messages

A Google add-on that allows mobile users to message a digital agent from within search results and Google Maps.

Google Business Messages offered an interactive method of get answers to frequently asked questions, tracking orders and refunds, and accessing live customer support. It was retired in July 2024.

Google Guaranteed

A Local Services Ad label indicating that a business has passed the screening and qualification process and that Google will back the work of the business. This only applies to ‘home services’ businesses, including plumbers, locksmiths, electricians, etc.

If a customer that booked service via a Local Services Ad is not satisfied with the quality of the work, Google might reimburse the customer up to the amount they paid for the service (with a lifetime cap per customer of $2,000 in the United States).

Google Screened

A Local Services Ad label indicating that a business has passed the necessary screening and qualification process but is not backed by any kind of guarantee from Google.

Only businesses that provide professional services including law, financial planning, and real estate are eligible for the Google Screened badge.

Google Maps

A web mapping platform that offers street maps, satellite imagery, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets, and real-time traffic conditions.

It also offers route planning for traveling by foot, car, bicycle, air and public transportation. Crucially for local SEO, it enables users to search for places and businesses, and see their descriptions reviews and more details from Google Business Profile.

Google Business Profile 

Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business) is a free tool that allows businesses to set up a profile to promote business information on Google, such as address, phone number, email, social media links, and more.

Your profile will appear in Search and Maps, and you can use it to post photos and updates to your business profile, and see how customers are interacting with your business on Google.

Google Business Profile API

An API is an Application Programming Interface—in this case a dedicated link between an agency of business system and the Google Business Profile platform.

It allows for multiple locations to be more easily managed, along with alerts for user updates, a streamlined verification process, and additional engagement features.

Google Business Profile attributes

Having these displayed on your profile will help give potential customers a better idea of what you offer. They range from accessibility and languages spoken, through to the type of crowd and what the business is popular for.

• Business-generated attributes are selected from within a Google Business Profile, with some attributes only offered for specific primary categories.
• User-generated attributes are taken from user reviews or via Google’s prompting, and cannot be influenced or altered by the business.

Google Business Profile categories

Set these so that your business will show up in relevant local search results:

• You can select one primary category—choose the one that’s the most relevant (and specific) to your business as this will determine which profile features become available.
• You can also add up to nine secondary/additional categories from a list of nearly 4,000—a look at your closest competitors’ chosen categories is a good starting place to narrow this list down.

Only add the categories that match your business, as adding unrelated ones can cause ‘category confusion‘ and lead to a drop in rankings.

Google Business Profile guidelines and suspensions

Google has a set of guidelines that all businesses must follow for their Google Business Profile.

Failure to comply with these may result in either a soft (temporary) or hard (permanent) suspension from the platform, and may require the submission of a reinstatement request.

Google Business Profile insights

A Google Business Profile tool that provides data on business profile views, searches and actions from both organic search results and Google Ads.

It includes metrics on search queries, direction requests, phone calls, and what a business is best known for.

Google Business Profile location group

This is the equivalent of having a ‘business account’, where GBP information can be shared and managed by a group of users.

It allows for changes and updates to be made to multiple locations in one go.

Google Business Profile Manager

An individual business’s profile information can be updated either through the ‘Manager’ area of the Google Business Profile website (or app), or directly from Google Search or Maps results.

This latter approach is sometimes called the Direct Edit Experience, or New Merchant Xperience (NMX).

Google Business Profile messaging

A Google Business Profile messaging tool that allows customers to get in touch with a business using WhatsApp.

Google Business Profile Q&A

Q&A is a Google Business Profile tool that enables searchers to ask and answer questions about a business, and also gives the owner or representative the opportunity to respond.

Anyone with a Google account can leave questions for the business through this section, and all Q&As are visible on the listing.

Google Business Profile products

A Google Business Profile tool that allows businesses that don’t have the ability to integrate product feeds via Google Merchant Center to add product inventory manually.

Access to GBP Products is dependent on a business listing’s primary category.

Google Business Profile services

A Google Business Profile option for a business to add the services it offers, along with descriptions and prices.

When local customers search on Google for a service that a business offers, that service may be highlighted in their Google Business Profile as a justification.

Google Business Profile spam

The act of unfairly employing spammy tactics in local search results to get ahead of competitors.

Examples include keyword stuffing, having multiple Google Business Profiles, lead generation websites, and falsified reviews to manipulate local search results.

Google Business Profile verification

Businesses who have registered with Google Business Profile won’t be able to make changes to a listing until they have been verified. This is usually via a physical postcard sent out to the business’s registered address.

This is to make sure that only authorized representatives of genuine businesses can create and manage listings.

Google Business Profile website builder

A free feature that creates a simple, one-page website for a business based on information from its GBP.

This option is available during GBP setup, or can be accessed later on from within your account. You can also choose between a free GBP web address, or pay for a custom domain.

The website will be mobile-responsive, and information and designs can be edited. However, it will be limited for SEO features and for things like social media share buttons.

Google Local Guides

People who “write reviews, share photos, answer questions, add or edit places, and check facts on Google Maps”.

In return, these influencers earn points and rewards — such as badges, partner perks, and early access to new Google features.

Google Places

The old name for the Google Business Profile suite of tools, which changed in 2014 when Google consolidated its Places services with Google+ Local.

Google Posts

A Google Business Profile tool which allows businesses to provide updates and promote offers from their Business Profiles, which show up in the local panel on Google search and on Google Maps.

I

Internal links

Any link from a page on your own website to another page on your own website.

You can use this ‘link architecture’ to guide people across your website. This includes funneling users towards particular calls to actions to meet business objectives.

This architecture also helps search engines understand the context of content on your site, as well as its overall structure.

J

Justifications

An extra snippet of text that Google displays in the local pack, local finder, and in Google Maps to signal to searchers that a feature of the business specifically matches their perceived intent.

L

Local backlinks

A link from another local website to your own website, which will boost your domain’s authority in the eyes of search engines.

Local SEOs can earn local backlinks from a variety of sources, this includes submitting to local business directories, newspapers, and blogs.

Local business schema

Schema (or structured data) is a standardized format for providing information about a web page to help search engines display relevant results.

Local business schema includes business hours, department sections, reviews, reservation or ordering systems, payment areas, and other actions.

Local finder

An extended listing of local businesses which appears when clicking on the ‘More Places’ link at the bottom of Google’s Local Pack.

Local landing page

A landing page is the page a user first visits when arriving on your website. In local SEO, a local landing page is one which offers details about a specific store location or branch, and which may be optimized for that specific location.

Local landing pages are particularly important for multi-location business websites, who may have a separate local landing page for every business location.

Local keywords

Any keywords that contain location-specific terms with the intent of generating results related to a geographic area.

A continuous cycle of local keyword ddeation and validation is needed for effective local SEO.

Local pack (also known as 3-pack, Local 3-pack / Google 3-pack / Google map pack)

Also known as the 3-pack, Local 3-pack, Google 3-pack or Google map pack, the local pack is a Google feature that displays a map and details of an area’s top three local businesses. For instance, if a user searched “restaurants near me”, it would display three restaurants near to the user’s current location.

Earning a rank in the local pack can drive a lot of local traffic and brand visibility to a business.

Local search intent

Any query in which a search engine assumes the user is looking for a local result.

Local search ranking factors

The components that contribute to the rankings of a local business.

These can change over time but tend to focus on Google Business Profile, on-site SEO, reviews and links.

Local SEO

Local search engine optimization is similar to SEO in that it is also a process affecting the visibility of a website in a search engine’s unpaid results.

Local SEO differs in that it focuses on optimizing for display by search engines when users enter local searches for its products or service, for example by including the name of a town/city, or by adding the phrase “near me”.

Local SEO audit

An assessment of existing and potential search engine optimization activities, with the goal of improving search visibility for a geo-specific target audience.

This will typically (but not exhaustively) include an analysis of internal and external backlinks, on-page SEO, Google Business Profile signals, citation and review profiles, and social engagement.

Multi-location businesses, or enterprise businesses with larger websites, will face different challenges when it comes to auditing their local SEO.

Local Services Ads

Pay-per-lead ads that appear at the top of local search results, above organic results and traditional Google Ads.

To run Local Service Ads, businesses must first pass a screening process that involves background checks, license checks, and insurance checks.

Localized organic search results

Search results returned for a specific location, dependent on local search intent, the physical location of the user, etc.

Ludocid / Ludo CID

The Ludocid, sometimes referred to as the ‘CID’, is a unique ID that Google assigns to a specific business location in order to identify it within its systems.

It can be used within Google search URLs to return the Knowledge Panel for that specific business. It can also be used within Google Maps to view a specific business.

N

Name spam

Name spam refers specifically to any manipulation of the business name in Google Business Profile, such as keyword stuffing.

NAP

Local search engines use Name, Address and Phone number (NAP) information to judge the accuracy of the data in their own indexes. They do this by crawling the web to assess authenticity, or receive it from other data providers.

Consistent NAP information helps to improve search engine rankings and is beneficial to local customer acquisition.

New Merchant Experience (NMX)

This is the name Google gave to the new (at the time, in 2022) way of editing your Google Business Profile within the SERP rather than via a dedicated dashboard. The change included a number of popular features around data insights and photos being removed.

P

Place IDs

Place IDs uniquely identify a place in the Google Places database and on Google Maps.

They are available for most locations and businesses, and it is possible for the same place or location to have multiple different place IDs. Place IDs may change over time.

Place Topics

A feature in Google Maps that looks at data from customer reviews, and highlights relevant information to a searcher.

Note that topics will only be created once there is a sufficient amount of customer reviews for the business.

Pointy from Google

A Google Business Profile add-on that helps brick-and-mortar retailers list products online
and appear in search engine results.

Prominence

One of the three pillars of local search, along with relevance and proximity. These pillars drive Google’s local algorithm and help determine the local pack and rankings.

For prominence, the algorithm is asking, “Which businesses are the most popular and the most well regarded in their local market area?”

Proximity

One of the three pillars of local search, along with relevance and prominence. These pillars drive Google’s local algorithm and help determine the local pack and rankings.

For proximity, the algorithm is asking, “Is the business close enough to the searcher to be considered to be a good answer for this query?”

R

Relevance

One of the three pillars of local search, along with prominence and proximity. These pillars drive Google’s local algorithm and help determine the local pack and rankings.

For relevance, what the algorithm is asking is, “Does this business do or sell or have the attributes that the searcher is looking for?”

Reserve with Google

A Google Maps service that allows for reservations and bookings of restaurants, tickets and appointments.

Review attributes

A Google reviews feature, where consumers are prompted to leave a ‘critical’ or a ‘positive’ quality rating, and offered pre-set buttons (such as “Good value” / “Not responsive”) to click.

Review attributes will show for almost all service based businesses, but the specific prompts will vary depending on the business’s primary category.

Reviews

A customer’s text summary of their experience at a particular business.

Reviews can be left on search engines, apps or websites, and are often simultaneously assigned star ratings. Google-based reviews are believed to impact Google’s local rankings.

Review gating

The act of soliciting feedback from a customer, and then deciding whether to ask them for a Google review based on their response.

This is strictly against Google’s review guidelines and can come with heavy penalties.

Review management

The practice of generating, and responding to, customer reviews, either manually or with the help of software.

Review spam / fake review

A fake customer text summary about a particular business.

This can include fictitious positive or negative statements made about a business for the purpose of helping or harming its reputation or rankings.

Reputation management

The strategy of determining and working towards how a business wishes to be perceived by its audiences.

This includes—but is not limited to—online reviews, PR, and overall brand messaging.

S

Service area

Typically used to describe specific neighborhoods, towns, or cities served by the service-area business model, which includes businesses like plumbers, cleaners, or gardeners.

Service-area business

A term frequently used to describe go-to-client businesses that travel to customers’ locations to render services, such as plumbers, electricians, and carpet cleaners.

• A ‘pure’ SAB visits or delivers to customers directly, but doesn’t serve customers at its own business address—for example plumbers, electricians, and carpet cleaners.
• A ‘hybrid’ SAB either directly visits or delivers to customers, or serves customers at their business address.

If a business doesn’t have permanent on-site signage, it’s not eligible as a shopfront and should be listed as a service-area business.

Small-to-Medium-sized Business (SMB)

Small businesses are usually defined as having less than $50 million in annual revenue and/or fewer than 100 employees.

Medium businesses typically make more than $50 million, but less than $1 billion, in annual revenue, and/or have between 100 and 999 employees.

Spam fighting

Reporting businesses who are gaining an advantage by breaking Google’s policy guidelines. Common examples of this kind of spam are keyword stuffing in the GBP business name and creating multiple listings for a single business.

When creating your Google Business Profile, it’s important to use your legal, registered business name so that you can’t be accused of spamming.

Structured citation

Business listing information built into the structure of a pre-existing digital platform or database, usually a business directory.

T

Third-party reviews

User reviews that are collected by third-party websites, such as Google, Facebook and Tripadvisor, which are independent of the business.

U

Unclaimed listings

Where a listing for your business already exists on a business directory, but you do not have control over it.

Unstructured citation

A non-directory listing of a business’ complete or partial contact information, for example in an online news article, blog, best-of list, etc.

V

Verified reviews

These can only made after a customer has made an online purchase from a business.

Verified reviews offer a more reliable way for real customers to leave feedback on Google, and the option must be turned on from within the Merchant Centre area.

Y

Yelp

A publisher of crowd-sourced reviews about businesses, currently with 100 million reviews worldwide.