A practical checklist for local SEO
It comes up on almost every project, usually later than it should. Run through this the next time local SEO comes up.
Search work compounds slowly, which is why it gets abandoned about two months before it would have paid off. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.
The checklist
- Consistent name, address, and phone details across the web matter
- Local intent searches convert far better than national ones
- Reviews influence both ranking and the decision to call
- Someone is named as the owner
- There is a date to review it again
Why it matters
Consistent name, address, and phone details across the web matter. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.
What this looks like day to day
Search engines are trying to answer a question, so the pages that answer questions clearly tend to do well. Three things worth confirming about local SEO before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Consistent name, address, and phone details across the web matter — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
Worth checking on your own setup before it becomes someone else's problem to fix.