The Local SEO Checklist: 60 Steps From Setup to Ranking (Free)

You are opening, relaunching or inheriting a local business’s online presence and want one list that covers everything local SEO actually requires, in the order it should be done, without paying for a platform. This is that list: 60 tasks in seven phases, from the decisions to make before touching a Google Business Profile to the routine that keeps rankings once you have them. Each task carries a one-line why or how and, where a free tool can check it, a link to the tool.

How to use this checklist

Before anything else, run the free Google Business Profile Optimizer on the listing. It scores the public profile out of 100 across six checks (website, hours, phone, photos, review count, category) and ticks off several phase 2 items for you.

Single location. Work the phases in order. Later items depend on earlier ones: services and attributes appear only after categories are set, schema needs the final name, address and phone, and a rank grid only means something once the profile is complete.

Multi-location. Do phases 1, 3 and 6 once at brand level, then phases 2, 4 and 5 per location, with one location page per profile.

Agency or freelancer. Use the list as the onboarding audit: score each item done, not done or not applicable, and turn the 30/60/90 table into the proposal. Our guide to Google My Business SEO explains the reasoning behind the order; our pillar on how to rank higher on Google Maps covers the ranking mechanics.

The 30/60/90-day order

Window	Phases	What gets done	What you should see
Days 1–30	1, 2, start of 4	Canonical details agreed, profile complete, review ask running	Optimizer score up; category and services changes on the rank grid
Days 31–60	3, 5	Location page and schema live, citations corrected, first link requests sent	Service terms in the profile’s Performance searches; details agree everywhere
Days 61–90	6, 7	AI visibility checked, tracking routine in the calendar, second grid run	Review gap narrowing, wider green area on the grid

Phase 1: Foundations (7 items)

Decisions made here are copied into every other phase; write them down.

• Fix the canonical name, address format and one local phone number. Every profile, page and directory copies this line; use the version on your signage.
• Decide whether you are a storefront, a service-area business or a hybrid. Google’s service-area business rules decide whether your address is shown; our service-area business guide covers the edge cases.
• Use a Google account the business owns, and add a second owner or manager. Profiles tied to an employee’s or agency’s account are the ones owners fight to get back.
• Search Google Maps for your phone number, address and any former name. Claim an existing listing rather than creating a second; duplicates split reviews and risk suspension.
• Confirm you control the domain, hosting and analytics logins, and that the site uses HTTPS. Phase 3 stalls when a former developer holds the keys.
• Choose three to five target searches, each a service plus your city or neighborhood. Use the words customers say.
• Note the three profiles ranking for each target search in an incognito Maps tab. Their categories, review counts and landing pages are your benchmark.

Phase 2: Google Business Profile (14 items)

This phase moves rankings more than any other. Our pillar on how to optimize a Google Business Profile walks through every field.

• Claim and verify the profile. Nothing else goes live until verification completes; start it on day one.
• Enter the real-world business name with no keywords, city or slogan. Google’s naming guidelines are explicit; a stuffed name is the commonest route to suspension.
• Set the most specific primary category that describes the core of the business. It decides which searches you are eligible for; the free GBP Category Optimizer shows what the ranking competitors chose.
• Add secondary categories only for services you genuinely sell. An aspirational one dilutes relevance and brings the wrong calls; our categories guide covers close calls.
• Put the pin on the customer entrance, or hide the address and set a service area. A wrong pin misleads customers and Google’s proximity calculation.
• Add the local phone number from phase 1, not a tracking or toll-free number. It must match the website and directories.
• Point the website field at the location page, not the homepage. That page carries most of the website’s weight in local ranking.
• Enter regular hours, holiday hours and any “more hours” sets. Being open at the time of a search can affect local results.
• Write the description for a customer comparing three profiles. What you do, where, for whom and what is different; it has not moved rankings in our tests, so do not stuff it.
• Fill the services list under each category, with a line per service. Google shows “Provides: …” under results when a query matches a listed service.
• Set every attribute that is true and none that are not. Attributes power Maps filters; false ones are a compliance problem.
• Upload real photos of the exterior, interior, team and work, plus a recognizable cover photo and logo. Follow the photo guidelines.
• Seed the Q&A with the questions your front desk answers weekly, from the business account. Otherwise strangers answer, often wrongly.
• Add a booking link if you take appointments, and turn on messaging only if someone will answer it.

Phase 3: Website and landing pages (11 items)

Google says a business’s position in web results feeds local ranking; the page the profile links to matters most.

• Show the canonical name, address and phone in the footer of every page. Google compares it with the profile; our NAP consistency guide covers the mismatches that hurt.
• Build one location page per profile with services, hours, directions and an embedded map of your listing. This is the page the website field points to.
• Put the main service and the city in the location page’s title tag and heading. Once, naturally.
• Create a page for each core service, in the words customers search. Each backs the services list and ranks organically on its own.
• Add LocalBusiness structured data to the location page. The free schema generator prefills the JSON-LD from your listing; our schema markup guide explains each property.
• Test the markup and fix every error. Use Google’s Rich Results Test; its LocalBusiness documentation lists what is read.
• Make the phone number click-to-call and check the page loads fast on a phone.
• Link service pages to the location page and back. Internal links tell Google which pages belong to this location.
• Verify the site in Google Search Console and submit the sitemap. It is the only source of your organic queries and indexing errors.
• Use real photos of the premises and team with plain descriptive alt text.
• Do not publish near-identical pages for towns you do not serve. Doorway pages are a policy problem and rarely rank.

Phase 4: Reviews and reputation (7 items)

Reviews are the part of prominence you control most directly; Google is explicit that more reviews and positive ratings can improve local ranking. Our Google reviews guide covers the routine.

• Create your review link, QR code and a counter card. The free review link and QR code generator makes all three from your listing.
• Decide when, who and how you ask, and write it into the job. Google’s page on asking for reviews allows it; the businesses that get reviews ask everyone, right after the work.
• Never offer incentives, filter who you ask or write reviews yourself. All three break the review content policy.
• Reply to every review, including the good ones, within the week. The free AI Review Response Generator drafts three replies; our guide on how to respond to Google reviews covers the hard ones.
• Record the review count and rating of the three profiles above you and set a monthly target that closes the gap.
• Flag reviews that break policy; answer legitimate negatives calmly and once. Public arguments cost more calls than the review did.
• Claim and monitor the other review sites your industry uses. Google and AI assistants read them too.

Phase 5: Citations and links (8 items)

Citations confirm the profile’s details across the web; links build the slow half of prominence. Consistency beats volume.

• List every site that already mentions the business. Search the name with the phone number, then with the old address and any former name.
• Correct the major directories to the canonical details. Apple Maps, Bing Places, the big review sites, the social profiles, character for character.
• Merge, close or remove duplicates and listings at old addresses. A live listing at a former address contradicts the profile every day.
• Add the industry and local directories that matter in your trade and country. Association lists, the chamber, the trade body; skip paid directory bundles.
• Submit to the data aggregators that feed smaller directories in your country. One correction there propagates widely.
• Make every social profile show the canonical details and link to the location page. They are citations too.
• Check where the three ranking competitors are listed and linked, and earn the ones you qualify for.
• Keep a quarterly list of five local links to pursue. Sponsorships, suppliers, the local paper, a neighborhood association; a few relevant local links outweigh a hundred directories.

Phase 6: AI answers visibility (5 items)

Assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity increasingly answer “best dentist near me” questions, and in our checks they draw on the same public sources: profile, reviews, directories and website. Our pillar on AI search optimization for local businesses covers the detail.

• Run the free AI Visibility Checker for your target searches. It asks the major assistants and reports whether, and how, you are recommended.
• State plainly on the profile and location page what you do, for whom and where. Assistants summarize; our guide on how AI assistants recommend local businesses explains what they pick up.
• Add a short FAQ to the location page answering the questions people ask assistants. Price range, first visit, parking, who you are best for.
• Make sure the sources assistants cite for your category describe you consistently. Same name, services and area as the profile.
• Encourage reviews that describe the specific service in the customer’s words. “Great” says nothing; “fixed our boiler the same evening” gets repeated.

Phase 7: Tracking and routine (8 items)

Nothing above is finished until you can see whether it worked.

• Run a baseline rank grid for two target searches before changing anything. The free Local Rank Checker maps positions on a 3×3 or 5×5 grid around the business; save the screenshots.
• Re-run the same grids at four weeks and twelve weeks. Category changes show early, reviews and links late; our guide on checking your Google Maps ranking covers reading the grid.
• Read the profile’s Performance report monthly. Google documents the metrics; if only your name appears in the search terms, relevance is still the problem. Our Performance guide explains each view.
• Re-run the Optimizer after phases 2 and 3. Anything still failing is a gap you missed.
• Keep a change log with a date for every edit. When a grid moves you will know why.
• Check Edit profile monthly for edits Google or the public applied. Hours, categories and even the name can change without your approval.
• Put the weekly, monthly and quarterly routine in a shared calendar.
• Refresh the competitor benchmark each quarter. Categories, review counts and landing pages of the current top three.

Worked example: a new yoga studio in Portland

A first-time owner, call her Maya, opened Alberta Flow Yoga on NE Alberta Street in Portland’s Alberta Arts District and worked the list from the top.

Phase 1 took an evening: a studio name without “Portland” in it, a local landline instead of her cell, a Google account under the business email with her partner as manager. Searching the address on Maps found the previous tenant, a nail salon, still listed as open; she marked it closed rather than claiming it. Her target searches were “yoga studio alberta”, “yoga near me” and “beginner yoga portland”, and the three studios ranking for them along Alberta and Killingsworth became the benchmark.

Phase 2 took a weekend. Primary category “Yoga studio”, no secondaries because she does not yet teach Pilates; services were the class types, private sessions and the intro month; photos showed the actual room and teachers; the Q&A covered parking, mats and a first class. The Optimizer went from failing photos, reviews and website to failing only reviews.

Phase 3 waited on the web designer: a location page with the schedule, a map embed and schema from the generator, clean in the Rich Results Test, and the website field moved to it. Phase 4 began in week two with a QR card at the desk and an ask at the end of every intro month. Phase 5 was an afternoon across Apple Maps, Bing, the big review sites, the neighborhood business association and the booking platform’s directory.

The baseline grid, 5×5 at 0.5 km, was green only in the cells nearest the studio. At twelve weeks, with a steady run of reviews describing beginner-friendly classes, green covered Alberta and Concordia and amber reached toward the Hollywood District. The AI Visibility Checker found nothing in month one; by month three one assistant listed the studio for beginner yoga in northeast Portland.

Common mistakes

• Treating the list as a one-off. Phases 4 and 7 are routines; a profile that stops earning reviews slides.
• Starting with the website. Phase 3 before phase 2 polishes the half that matters less.
• Adding categories or service pages for things you plan to offer. Both dilute relevance now for a payoff that may never come.
• Chasing citation volume. Two hundred entries with three phone numbers between them hurt more than twenty that agree.
• Buying reviews, or asking only the happy customers. The first breaks policy; the second is filtering, which Google also prohibits.
• Checking rank from the shop. You stand at the one point that flatters you; use the grid.
• Skipping the change log. Without it every ranking move is a guess.

Keep it alive

Weekly, fifteen minutes. Reply to new reviews, answer new questions, post if there is news, and confirm the review ask is still happening.

Monthly, one hour. Add a few real photos, check hours and pending edits, read the Performance search terms, and send the link requests on your list.

Quarterly, half a day. Re-run the rank grids and the Optimizer, compare categories and review counts with the current top three, check the canonical details on the major directories, and run the AI Visibility Checker again.

Do this now: the first hour

1. Run the Google Business Profile Optimizer and write down the failed checks.
2. Check the canonical name, address and phone against signage, website footer and profile.
3. Search your phone number and address on Google Maps for duplicates.
4. Run the Category Optimizer for your main target search and compare primary categories.
5. Run the Local Rank Checker for that search and save the baseline grid.
6. Put the 30/60/90 windows in the calendar, starting phase 2 this week.

What to do next

Read our guide to Google My Business SEO for the reasoning behind the order, then how to optimize your Google Business Profile for the detail behind phase 2.