Local SEO checklist: 30 steps to rank in Google's local results in 2026

Local SEO is the work of making your business show up when people nearby search for what you sell: in the map results at the top of Google, in Google Maps and in the regular results below. Google says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and prominence, and that nobody can pay for a better local ranking. The 30 points below turn those factors into tasks, ordered by impact, with a 90-day plan and the free tools to carry it out.

What is local SEO?

Local SEO (local search engine optimization) is the part of SEO that targets searches with a local intent, such as “plumber near me”, “dentist in Austin” or “bakery open now”. For those queries, Google shows a map with a short list of businesses, often called the local pack, before the classic organic links. Ranking there depends on your Google Business Profile as much as on your website.

Google's three factors frame everything: relevance (how well your information matches the search), distance (how far you are from the searcher) and prominence (how well known you are, based partly on links to your business and on your reviews). Practitioners broadly agree on what moves rankings. In Whitespark's 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey of local SEO specialists, the top five factors for the local pack and Maps were:

1. The primary Google Business Profile category
2. The proximity of the address to the point of search
3. Keywords in the Business Profile name
4. A physical address in the city of search
5. The business being open at the time of search

Number 3 is a trap. Google's guidelines say the name must reflect your real-world business name, and adding unnecessary information to it can get the profile suspended. Use your real name and put keywords where they belong: categories, services and your website.

The 30-point local SEO checklist at a glance

Start at the top. Perfect schema markup won't make up for the wrong primary category or a profile with four reviews.

1. Google Business Profile (points 1 to 6)

1. Claim and verify your profile. Google picks the verification method for you; until the profile is verified, nothing else on this list counts.
2. Choose the most specific primary category, then a few secondary ones for real departments. It's the top-ranked factor in the Whitespark survey.
3. Use your real-world business name, exactly as on your signage and website, with no keywords or city.
4. Set your address or service area correctly. Storefronts show a precise address and map pin; service-area businesses hide the address and list the areas they serve, within about 2 hours of driving, as Google's guidelines require.
5. Keep hours accurate, including special hours for holidays: being open at the time of search is a top-five factor in the Whitespark survey.
6. Complete everything else: description, services, attributes, photos, updates and a UTM-tagged website link. Our 25-point Google Business Profile checklist details every field.

2. Reviews (points 7 to 10)

7. Ask every customer with your Google review link or QR code, right after the job.
8. Keep a steady flow. In BrightLocal's 2026 consumer survey, 74% of people look for reviews written in the last three months, and 47% won't use a business with fewer than 20 reviews.
9. Reply to every review, positive or negative, with something specific: 89% of consumers in the same survey expect businesses to respond.
10. Never buy, gate or reward reviews. Google's policy forbids incentives and selective soliciting, and the FTC's rule on consumer reviews bans fake ones. Request templates, reply templates and the removal process are in our guide on how to respond to Google reviews.

3. Location and service pages (points 11 to 15)

Your website is where Google and customers check what your profile claims. Relevance is won there too.

11. One page per core service. “Water heater repair” deserves its own page with what's included, typical price ranges, your process, FAQs and photos of real jobs, not a line in a list.
12. One page per physical location if you have several, each with its own address, phone, hours, map and team. Link each Business Profile to its own page: Google's guidelines ask for a website that represents that individual location.
13. Area pages only with real substance. A page for a town you serve can help if it says something specific: jobs done there, local permits, response times. Pages that only swap the city name are what Google's spam policies describe as doorway abuse.
14. Show your name, address, phone and hours on every location page, with a map, a click-to-call number and a visible quote or booking button.
15. Write titles and headings with service plus city, for example “Water Heater Repair in Tulsa, OK”, and answer the questions customers ask on the phone.

If your current site can't support these pages, see how our web design service approaches sites built to generate inquiries.

4. Local links (points 16 to 19)

Google says prominence is based partly on how many websites link to your business. For a local business, a handful of relevant local links beats hundreds of random ones.

16. Memberships: your chamber of commerce, trade associations and certification bodies that list members with a link.
17. Community involvement: sponsoring a youth team, a charity run or a school event usually earns a link from the organizer's site.
18. Local media: offer expert comment or useful data to local news sites, blogs and podcasts, such as seasonal advice or the cost trends you see in the field.
19. Business partners: suppliers, manufacturers with dealer or installer locators, and complementary businesses you already refer work to.

5. NAP consistency and citations (points 20 to 24)

NAP stands for name, address and phone number. A citation is any mention of your business with those details on another website: directories, maps apps, review sites, social profiles. Google says the information in Business Profiles is compiled from several sources, including publicly available web content, licensed data from third parties and user contributions, so conflicting details elsewhere can work against your own.

20. Fix one canonical NAP and use it character for character everywhere: the exact business name, one address format (Suite 200, not Ste 200 on one site and #200 on another) and one main phone number. Google's guidelines already ask you to represent the business the way it is consistently represented in the real world.
21. Claim the core platforms: Bing Places for Business (free, and it can import your Google profile), Apple Maps through Apple Business, Yelp and Facebook.
22. Add the directories of your trade, the ones customers in your industry actually use, plus your local chamber listing.
23. Clean up old data after a move, a rebrand or a phone change: search for your old address and old number, and correct every listing you find.
24. Remove duplicates on Google and elsewhere. Google's guidelines allow only one profile per business.

6. LocalBusiness structured data (points 25 to 27)

Structured data is code that describes your business in a standard vocabulary (schema.org), so Google doesn't have to guess. Google's Search Central documentation for LocalBusiness requires two properties, name and address, and recommends others such as telephone, url, geo, openingHoursSpecification and priceRange. It also notes that search results may then display a knowledge panel with your business details.

25. Add LocalBusiness markup in JSON-LD, the format Google recommends when your setup allows it, using the most specific subtype available (Plumber, Dentist, AutoRepair and so on).
26. Don't mark up your own reviews for stars. Google's review snippet guidelines say pages where a business controls the reviews about itself are ineligible for the star review feature.
27. Validate with the Rich Results Test, fix critical errors, then check the live page with the URL Inspection tool in Search Console. Google is clear that it doesn't guarantee features based on structured data will show.

A minimal example for a service business, to adapt:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Plumber",
  "name": "Example Plumbing Co.",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/",
  "telephone": "+1-918-555-0142",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "120 Main St, Suite 200",
    "addressLocality": "Tulsa",
    "addressRegion": "OK",
    "postalCode": "74103",
    "addressCountry": "US"
  },
  "geo": {
    "@type": "GeoCoordinates",
    "latitude": 36.154,
    "longitude": -95.9928
  },
  "openingHoursSpecification": [
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "dayOfWeek": ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday"],
      "opens": "08:00",
      "closes": "18:00"
    }
  ],
  "priceRange": "$$"
}
</script>

7. Speed and mobile (points 28 to 30)

28. Meet Core Web Vitals on mobile. Google's targets: Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds and Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1. Test key pages in PageSpeed Insights and watch the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console.
29. Design for the thumb: a tap-to-call number, a visible quote or booking button, text readable without zooming and forms with as few fields as possible.
30. Cut the weight: compress photos, load maps and review widgets only where they're needed, and remove scripts nobody uses.

Google presents good Core Web Vitals as aligned with what its core ranking systems seek to reward, alongside other page experience aspects, not as a ranking switch. Treat them as conversion hygiene: a fast page turns more of your local clicks into calls.

A 90-day local SEO plan

On day 90, compare against day 1: Business Profile calls, direction requests and website clicks, Search Console impressions for “service plus city” queries, and the number of quote requests. Local SEO compounds slowly. If you need calls this month, ads can fill the gap while organic visibility builds; here is what Google Ads really costs a small business.

Free local SEO tools

Common local SEO mistakes

• Stuffing keywords into the business name. It may correlate with rankings, but it breaks Google's guidelines and puts the whole profile at risk of suspension.
• Using a virtual office or P.O. box to appear in another city. Google's guidelines say those locations aren't eligible for a Business Profile.
• Creating several profiles for the same business, or leaving old duplicates live after a move.
• Linking every location to the homepage instead of each location's own page.
• Publishing city pages that are copies with only the name swapped.
• Forgetting holiday hours, which sends customers to a closed door and costs you the open-now searches.
• Gating, buying or rewarding reviews, which can get reviews removed and the profile restricted.
• Expecting ads to lift organic rankings. Google says there's no way to pay for a better local ranking. Ads and local SEO are two separate channels that work best together.
• Measuring nothing. Without UTM tags and call tracking, nobody can tell which part of the work produced customers.