Local SEO for small businesses: a practical checklist

Local SEO for a small business means making your business appear in Google results for searches near your customers. Do six jobs: claim and complete your Google Business Profile, earn and answer reviews, add local details to your website, keep other listings consistent, earn local links, and check your position from more than one place. This article gives you that checklist, and shows which of Google's local ranking factors each job feeds. For general SEO, such as keywords and page speed, read SEO for small business first. This article covers only the local part.

What makes local SEO different

General SEO helps a page rank for a topic. Local SEO helps a business rank for a place. When someone searches for a service near them, Google shows nearby businesses, and the order depends on the searcher as well as on you.

Google's local ranking guidance names three factors. Relevance is how well a profile matches the search. Distance is how far the business is from the searcher. Prominence is how well known the business is, and Google says it is also based on how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have. Google also states that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.

Local SEO ranking factors and what you do about each

You cannot work on all three equally. Use this table to see where your effort goes.

Factor	Can you change it?	What you do
Relevance	Yes	Complete the profile. Match your name, categories and services to what you really are
Distance	No	List each real location. Do not invent one
Prominence	In part	Earn reviews, answer them, and earn links to your website

The table shows where your effort goes. Start with the profile, which you control.

Which kind of local business you are

Google sorts local businesses by how customers reach them. Your type decides what you show on the profile.

• Storefront. Customers visit your address. You show the address and keep signage with your name there.
• Service-area business. You travel to customers. Google says that if you do not serve customers at your address, remove it from your profile and set service areas.
• Hybrid. You have a storefront and you also travel. Google's service-area page covers hybrid businesses as well.

The service-area page sets limits. You cannot use a radius around your business. You name cities, postal codes or another type of area. You can have up to 20 areas, and the overall area should stay within about 2 hours of driving from your base. Pick the type first. The rest of the checklist depends on it, because it decides what the profile shows and which pages your website needs.

Gather your facts first

Before you edit anything, write one sheet with the facts of your business. Include:

• the business name as it appears on your sign
• the address, or the list of service areas
• the phone number and the website address for each location
• the regular hours, and the dates of any special hours
• your main category and your services

Use this sheet for the profile, your website and every other listing. When a fact changes, change the sheet first, then update each place. This habit stops two places from showing two different phone numbers.

The local SEO checklist

Work through the six jobs in order. Each one links to a longer guide.

1. Claim and verify your Google Business Profile

Add your business, or claim it if a profile already exists. Google says you can add or claim your business at no charge, and only eligible businesses can do it. Choose a verification method and follow the steps. Verification is what lets you edit the profile and manage reviews.

Check eligibility first. Google's guidelines do not accept P.O. boxes, and virtual offices are not eligible. If you do not serve customers at your address, hide it and set service areas instead. For the full rules, read Google Business Profile optimization.

2. Complete every field of the profile

Fill in the name, address or service area, categories, hours, phone number, website, description, services and photos. Follow the rules in each field. Two rules save the most trouble:

• Use your real-world name. Do not add keywords, taglines or locations to it.
• Keep your hours current. Set special hours for holidays.

Google's ranking page lists the tips in plain terms: verify, keep information up to date, respond to reviews, and add photos and videos. Do those four things before you try anything else.

3. Earn reviews and answer them

Reviews feed prominence. Ask customers to review you with a Google link or a QR (quick response) code. Ask soon after you finish the job, while the customer remembers it, and put the QR code where every customer can see it. Reply to the reviews you receive. Google's review tips say to be professional and polite, keep replies short, and avoid offers in a reply.

Do not buy reviews or offer a reward for one. Google's prohibited content policy bans incentives. Its Rating Manipulation section also bans discouraging negative reviews or selectively soliciting positive ones. Ask every customer the same way. The full routine is in Google review management.

4. Add local details to your website

Your website is the other half of relevance and part of prominence. Do these four things.

Put your location where it fits. Google's SEO starter guide says a title could include the physical location of the business. A title for a plumber could name the service and the town. Keep each title unique, clear and short.

Match your details to your profile. Google's guidelines say your profile name should match your signage, your website and your stationery. Use the same name, address and phone number on your contact page that you use on your profile. A name, address and phone number set is often called NAP.

Give each location its own page. If you have two shops, a page per shop with its own address, hours and phone number is clearer than one page for both. Google's guidelines tell you to give a phone number or website that represents each individual location.

Add structured data. Google's local business structured data page explains how to give Google details such as business hours. Structured data is code on a page that labels facts in a form that machines read. The page lists name and address as required. It recommends telephone, openingHoursSpecification, geo, url and priceRange, among others.

The page says geo needs at least 5 decimal places of precision, and priceRange must be under 100 characters. Use the same values on the page that you use on your profile.

5. Keep other listings consistent

Other sites list businesses too: directories, maps and review sites. These listings are called citations. If they show an old address or phone number, customers go to the wrong place. Start with the sites that customers in your trade use. Check each one for your name, address and phone number, and correct the mistakes. Compare each listing with your fact sheet. Local citations explains how to find and fix them.

6. Earn local links

Google says prominence is also based on how many websites link to your business. Links come from other sites that choose to point to yours. Ask for one where the link helps a reader: a supplier you buy from, a local club you sponsor, a business association you belong to, a local news site that covered an event. When a link appears, check that it goes to a page that exists and names your business correctly. Google's pages here do not describe a link method, so treat these places as ideas to test, not as rules.

Measure your local results

Check two things: how your website performs in search, and where your profile appears on the map.

For the website, use the Search Console Performance report. It shows clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position. You can group the table by queries, pages, countries and devices. Look for queries that name your town or service. Write down the date of each change you make. Then you can match a change in results to its likely cause.

For the map, one position is not enough, because distance is a factor.

Check your position from several points around your business. In Strategist, the Local section runs a rank grid for a keyword, 3 by 3 or 5 by 5, and shows the cost before you run it (local businesses). The article on local rank tracking explains grids in detail, and Google Maps ranking covers what decides the order.

Mistakes to avoid

• Adding keywords to your business name. Google's guidelines say the name should be your real-world name.
• Using a virtual office or P.O. box as an address. Neither is acceptable.
• Setting a service area as a radius. Name cities or postal codes.
• Offering rewards for reviews. Google prohibits incentives.
• Leaving old details on other sites. Customers follow the wrong number.
• Judging success from one rank number. The result depends on where the searcher is.

Next steps

• Read Google Business Profile optimization to complete each profile field.
• Read Google review management to set up a reply routine.
• Read local citations to find and fix wrong listings.
• Read SEO for small business for the general SEO work that supports local results.