Local SEO Checklist: Setup and Audit
Both checklists sit on one page. Part 1 is the 24-step build: the Google Business Profile, NAP and citations, the local signals on your website, and the review habit underneath all of it. Part 2 is the 14-point audit for a profile you already have. Print either part or save the whole thing as a PDF, free and without handing over an email address.
Work directly with Chris, Ana, and Audrey
Meet the team →Key Takeaways
- The primary category on your Google Business Profile is the heaviest relevance lever you have, and it is the field most businesses get wrong.
- Proximity to the searcher is a real ranking factor you cannot optimise away, so never judge your visibility by searching from your own premises.
- Review velocity beats review totals. A steady weekly trickle is a stronger and safer signal than a burst followed by silence.
- Citations are a consistency signal, not a scoreboard. Fix the listings that syndicate onward first, then stop.
- The website is the supporting half. Real location pages, matching schema and a tappable phone number beat any volume of thin suburb pages.
In short: To set local SEO up, pick the primary category that matches the search rather than the business, fill out services and photos properly, agree one canonical version of your details and use it everywhere, back it with real location pages and matching schema, then build a review habit you can sustain. To audit an existing profile, compare your category against whoever out-ranks you, check rankings from a grid rather than your own desk, hunt duplicate listings, and read the performance report for calls and direction requests rather than views.
Which half of this checklist do you need?
No Google Business Profile yet, or one you created and abandoned? Work through Part 1 in order. Already have a profile that ranks somewhere but not where you want? Go straight to Part 2, the audit, then come back to whichever Part 1 stages it exposes. Every item carries a specific reason or a stated threshold rather than a vague nudge.
This is a checklist, not a pitch. If you want the service side instead, that lives on our local SEO services page. If you are weighing local SEO against paid search, read SEO vs Google Ads first.
The local SEO setup checklist: 24 steps to build a local presence properly.
In order. Stages 1 and 2 are the Google Business Profile, which is where nearly all the early movement comes from. Stages 3 to 5 are what keeps it there.
Stage 1: The profile foundations
5 fields that decide most of your local ranking before you touch anything else.
- 1
Set the primary category to the thing you most want to be found for
The heaviest relevance lever on the profile, and the field most businesses get wrong. A workshop filed under Car wash competes in a different result set to one filed under Car detailing service. Match the search, not the business.
- 2
Add secondary categories only where you genuinely deliver
Each one broadens the queries you can appear for, and each one invites an accuracy complaint. Add the 2 to 5 you really do. A category you cannot back with a service page is a liability.
- 3
Use your real-world business name in the name field
The most commonly abused field on the profile and the easiest for a competitor to report. Use what is on your signage and registration. Keyword-stuffed names rank until somebody submits an edit, then the listing is under review.
- 4
Choose storefront or service area, and choose honestly
If customers come to you, show the address. If you go to them, hide it and set service areas. A virtual office listed as a storefront is the fastest route to a suspension, and reinstatement takes longer than the ranking was worth.
- 5
Set hours, special hours and the opening date
Hours feed the open-now filter, which quietly drops you out of searches when they are wrong. Load public holidays as special hours ahead of time. Fill in the opening date too: almost nobody competing with you bothers.
Stage 2: Fill the profile out so it earns the click
Ranking gets you shown. These 5 decide whether the person shown taps you or the business under you.
- 6
Add every service as its own item with its own description
Services are a structured field, not decoration. List each separately with specific wording rather than 1 catch-all entry. It is a relevance signal, and it is what a customer skims to check you do their exact job.
- 7
Load real photos of real work, and keep adding them
Interiors, exteriors, team and finished jobs. Stock imagery reads as stock imagery to somebody choosing between 3 listings. Geotagging does nothing measurable, so put the effort into quantity and quality instead.
- 8
Post regularly, and treat it as a freshness habit
Not a ranking silver bullet, but a profile with recent activity looks alive to both Google and a customer. A short update every week or 2, tied to a real job or a seasonal reminder, is enough. Consistency beats length.
- 9
Seed and answer the Q&A section yourself
Q&A is public and anyone can answer, including a competitor. Post the 5 questions you field on the phone every week and answer them from the business account, so the useful answers are already sitting there.
- 10
Set the website and booking links, and tag them
Point the website field at the page matching the profile, not always the homepage. Tag the links so profile traffic reports separately in analytics, otherwise it lands in direct and you can never prove the channel works.
Stage 3: NAP consistency and citations
4 items on the same problem: Google cross-checks your details against the rest of the web and loses confidence when they disagree.
- 11
Write the canonical NAP once and never deviate
One agreed format for name, address and phone, down to Road or Rd. Put it in a document and use that exact string everywhere. Most inconsistency comes from nobody having decided what the right version is.
- 12
Fix the listings that feed other listings first
The major Australian directories and data aggregators syndicate onward, so a wrong address in 1 reappears in places you never signed up for. Correct those before building anything new.
- 13
Find and merge duplicate profiles
Duplicates come from an old office, a previous owner, or a listing Google generated itself, and they split your reviews across 2 records. Search your name, your number and every old address on Maps, then claim and merge.
- 14
Stop chasing citation volume once the important ones are clean
Citations are a consistency signal, not a scoreboard. A few dozen accurate listings on directories people use beats 300 auto-submitted ones. Past the majors, the return flattens fast.
Stage 4: The website underneath the profile
5 on-site signals. The profile does the heavy lifting in the map pack, and the site is what backs it up.
- 15
Build 1 page per service per real location
Not a page for every postcode in the state. A page for a place you genuinely work, carrying detail only somebody working there could write. Thin duplicated suburb pages are a liability under current quality guidelines.
- 16
Add LocalBusiness schema that matches the profile exactly
Name, address, phone, hours and geo coordinates in structured data, identical to the profile, with sameAs pointing at your Business Profile. Schema does not rank you: it removes ambiguity about which business the page describes.
- 17
Embed the map and link the profile from the site
An embedded map on the contact page plus a link to the Business Profile gives Google and the customer an explicit connection between site and listing, and puts directions 1 tap away.
- 18
Put the NAP in the footer as selectable text
Site-wide, in HTML, not baked into an image or rendered by a script a crawler may not run. Use a tel: link so a phone can dial it. A 10-minute job half the sites we audit have skipped.
- 19
Write local content only a local could have written
The suburb name repeated 14 times is not local content. Naming the streets where parking is impossible, or the housing stock you deal with, is. That material also survives an AI Overview, because it is not on 40 other sites.
Stage 5: The review flywheel
5 habits, not a campaign. Reviews compound, and the compounding is the point.
- 20
Ask at the moment of relief, every single time
Ask when the job is finished and the customer is visibly happy, not 3 days later by email. Build it into the invoice handover or the sign-off text. A process that runs every job beats a campaign that runs once.
- 21
Use the short review link and hand them the phone
Every extra step loses people. Put the short link in your job-completion text and on a card, and where you can, open it on your own phone and pass it over. Friction, not willingness, kills most review requests.
- 22
Optimise for velocity, not for a total
A steady trickle week after week is stronger and safer than 30 arriving in a fortnight and then nothing for a year. A burst also looks exactly like a business that bought them. Set a weekly target you can sustain.
- 23
Reply to every review, briefly, in service language
Replies are public, they show the profile is managed, and they are 1 of the few places the words describing the job appear naturally. On a bad review, answer the factual point calmly for the reader who has not decided yet.
- 24
Never gate, never buy, never bulk-import
Screening so only happy customers get the link breaches Google's policy. Bought reviews get removed in waves, taking real ones with them. Migrating reviews from another platform is not possible. No shortcut here is worth the profile.
3 things worth understanding before you start ticking.
These sit underneath most of the items above. Understanding them is the difference between working the checklist and working it well.
The primary category is the heaviest lever, and most get it wrong
Businesses pick the category that describes what they are, when the job of the field is to match what people search. Change that 1 field and visible ranking can move within weeks. It is also the change most owners never try, because it feels like a labelling detail rather than a ranking decision.
Proximity is a real constraint you cannot optimise away
Where the searcher is standing is a genuine input into the local pack, and no amount of profile work overrides it. Which is why searching your own service from your own premises is the most flattering result you will ever see. Check from a spread of points instead, and set expectations against the radius you can realistically win.
Review velocity beats review totals
A steady flow week after week is a stronger signal than 30 reviews followed by 18 months of silence, and far less likely to draw scrutiny. Most profiles that stall have not run out of happy customers, they have run out of the habit of asking. Hence habits here rather than a campaign.
The local SEO audit checklist: 14 checks on a profile you already have.
Work top to bottom. Stage 1 is the profile, stage 2 is everything Google cross-references it against, and stage 3 is the website and whether you can prove any of it is working.
Stage 1: Audit the profile itself
Start here on any profile that already exists. Most of what holds a listing back was set once, years ago, and never revisited.
- 1
Compare your primary category against whoever out-ranks you
Search your main service, open the top 3 map results and check what each is categorised as. If they share a primary category and you have a different one, that gap is very often the whole story.
- 2
Check your rankings from a grid, not from your own desk
Proximity to the searcher is a genuine ranking factor you cannot optimise away, and searching from your own premises is the most flattering result you will ever get. Check a spread of points across the suburbs you want work from.
- 3
Check for suspensions, pending edits and changes you did not make
Google accepts edits from the public and applies some automatically. Confirm hours, category, name and address still say what you set. A listing quietly moved to a different category will not announce itself.
- 4
Check the recency of photos, posts and answers
A profile whose newest photo is 4 years old reads as a business that may not exist. Note the date of the newest photo, post and Q&A answer. Anything older than a few months is a habit problem.
- 5
Read the whole profile as a customer choosing between 3 options
Open it on a phone. Is the category what they searched? Do the photos look like your work? Does the newest review answer their actual worry? Most problems are visible in 60 seconds this way and invisible from the dashboard.
Stage 2: Audit everything off the profile
4 checks on the data Google cross-references. This is where an old address does quiet damage for years.
- 6
Search your phone number in quotes and see what comes back
The fastest inconsistency audit there is. Every page carrying that number with a wrong address or an old trading name is pulling against you. Repeat it for your business name and each previous address.
- 7
Look specifically for duplicate and unclaimed listings
Search Maps for your name, your number and every address you have traded from. An unclaimed duplicate collecting reviews of its own is splitting the signal, and the fix is a merge, not a new listing.
- 8
Check anything that changed when you last moved or rebranded
A move, a name change or a new number is the most common source of citation rot. Work through the places carrying your details and confirm each caught up. Something almost never did.
- 9
Check what your citations say about your categories
Directory listings carry a taxonomy of their own, set years ago by whoever created the entry. When those disagree with your current positioning, they are describing a business you no longer are.
Stage 3: Audit the site and the measurement
5 checks on the half of local SEO that is not the profile, including whether you can prove any of it is working.
- 10
Check whether your location pages are genuinely distinct
Open 2 side by side. If the only difference is the suburb name, Google is looking at the same page twice and neither earns the trust a single strong page would. Consolidate the thin ones rather than adding more.
- 11
Validate the structured data against the live profile
Run the pages through a schema validator, then read the output against the profile field by field. An old phone number in schema is a contradiction you are publishing about yourself, and it usually survives a redesign.
- 12
Load the site on a real phone, on mobile data
Local search is overwhelmingly mobile and mostly urgent. Time the load, check the number is tappable without scrolling, and try to complete an enquiry. A profile that ranks and a site that will not load hands the lead onward.
- 13
Read the performance report, not the vanity numbers
Calls, direction requests, website clicks and messages are the outcomes. Views are not. Compare against the same period last year rather than last month, because most local businesses are seasonal.
- 14
Check the review pattern for gaps and for spikes
Plot the last 24 months. Long gaps show the asking habit lapsed. A sharp spike followed by nothing is the shape that draws scrutiny. What you want is a boring, steady line.
Run this once a year at minimum, and immediately after a move, a rebrand, a change of phone number or a website rebuild. Those 4 events break more local visibility than competitors ever do. If a rebuild is what brought you here, the wider reasons a site stops ranking are worth reading alongside this.
Optional bonus
What this looks like when it works
A detailer, a 5km radius, and 2 months.
Ali runs Fine Automotive Detailing in Adelaide. On Google Maps for "car detailing Adelaide", his profile moved from position 9 to position 2 in the first month, and to position 1 in the second, measured within a 5km radius.
That radius qualifier is the honest part, and it is the same point made further up this page. Ranking 1st inside 5km is not the same as ranking 1st across Adelaide, and anybody quoting a map position without a radius is quoting a number that means very little. Inside that radius, though, it is the difference between being found and not existing.
Ali had been renting in Broadview. After about 3 months he opened his own workshop in Mile End. The work looked much like the checklist above: the profile fields first, then the review habit, then the site behind it.
4 pieces of local SEO checklist advice to ignore.
All 4 still appear on local SEO checklists being published today. All 4 are either folklore or a genuine risk to a profile you have spent years building.
✕Stuff keywords into the business name field
It works until somebody reports it, and competitors do report it. A name that does not match your signage puts the whole listing at risk of suspension. Put the keywords in categories, services and reviews instead.
✕Geotag your photos before uploading them
Folklore with no evidence behind it, and image location metadata is routinely stripped on upload anyway. The photos still matter enormously, just for the reason a customer cares about: they show whether your work looks worth paying for.
✕Blast your details to 300 directories
Citations are a consistency signal, not a volume score. Bulk submissions create listings you do not control, in formats you did not choose, which then need correcting the next time you move.
✕Build a page for every suburb in the state
Thin near-duplicate location pages are treated as exactly what they are. This is the most common reason a local site full of pages ranks for none of them.
The pattern is the same each time: a shortcut that substitutes volume or a trick for the slower work of being accurate, complete and consistently active.
Local SEO checklist questions.
Is there a PDF version of this local SEO checklist?
Can I do local SEO myself?
What is the difference between a local SEO checklist and a local SEO audit checklist?
What is the single most important thing on a Google Business Profile?
Why do I rank number 1 from my own office but nowhere else?
How many reviews do I need to rank in the map pack?
Does this local SEO checklist work outside Australia?
Related Resources
For when the checklist raises a question it does not answer.
Local SEO Services
The service side: Google Business Profile optimisation, citations and ongoing local work, with the pricing published.
SEO Pricing Guide
What SEO and local SEO actually cost in Australia, and what sits inside each price.
Google Ads Checklist
The same treatment for paid search: a setup checklist and an audit checklist, free and ungated.
Web Design
The website half of stage 4: location pages, schema and a site that converts the calls your profile earns.
Would rather not work through 38 items yourself?
The checklist is free and stays free, whether you do it yourself or hand it to whoever runs your marketing. If you would rather it was done for you, a 1-off Google Business Profile optimisation is $750+GST, and ongoing local work runs at $800+GST/month for 1 syndication a month or $1,450+GST/month for 2. Month to month, no lock-in.
130+ five-star reviews across Australia · 8 years Adelaide-based · Google Partner