Local SEO Audit Checklist (40 Points)

This is the audit we run for every new client, published in full. Forty checks in six groups, in the order that finds the expensive problems fastest. You can run it yourself in an afternoon with a spreadsheet, a grid rank tracker (free tiers exist) and your Business Profile login. Or we run it for £249 and hand you the priorities — see the audit service.

A. Rankings baseline (4 checks)

1. Choose 5–10 target searches (service + implicit local, service + town).
2. Record grid rankings for each — a 7×7 grid across the service area, not a single point.
3. Note the three pack members for each search from the centre point, with their primary category, review count and rating.
4. Record organic rankings for the same searches and which page of yours ranks, if any.

B. Google Business Profile (14 checks)

5. Eligibility: real premises or genuine service area; no virtual office, PO box, mailbox.
6. Ownership: business-owned account; managers appropriate; no ex-agency owner.
7. Duplicates: search Maps for name, phone, address variants.
8. Name: real trading name only.
9. Primary category matches what pack members use.
10. Secondary categories complete and truthful.
11. Address and pin correct; SAB address hidden with realistic areas.
12. Phone: local, matches citations.
13. Website link to the most relevant page.
14. Hours accurate including special hours.
15. Services complete with descriptions; products where relevant.
16. Description written; attributes set.
17. Photos: quantity, recency, quality; no stock.
18. Posts, Q&A, messaging: active, seeded, answered.

C. Reviews (6 checks)

19. Count and rating versus each pack member.
20. Velocity: reviews in the last 90 days versus competitors.
21. Response rate and quality.
22. Policy-breaking reviews present that could be flagged.
23. Review request process exists and is used.
24. Reviews on other platforms relevant to the sector.

D. Citations and NAP (5 checks)

25. Canonical NAP defined and matches profile, website, Companies House.
26. Tier 1 sources (Apple, Bing, Facebook, aggregators) present and correct.
27. Tier 2 UK directories present and correct; duplicates and old addresses found.
28. Industry sources present and complete.
29. LocalBusiness schema on the website matches.

E. Website (7 checks)

30. Landing page targets the primary category and location in title, H1 and body.
31. A page per core service, with substance.
32. Location page(s) genuinely unique; no doorway pages.
33. NAP in the footer; tap-to-call phone.
34. Core Web Vitals pass on mobile; no interstitials.
35. Internal linking from homepage and nav to every service and location page.
36. Index hygiene: sitemap, no thin archives, canonicals correct.

F. Links and prominence (4 checks)

37. Referring domains versus pack members.
38. Local links (press, associations, sponsorships) present or absent.
39. Unlinked brand mentions that could be converted.
40. Brand search volume and social profiles associated with the business.

Turning the audit into a plan

Score each check pass / partial / fail, then sort the fails by expected impact using this rough order: eligibility and suspension risks → primary category → services → landing page → reviews → citations → links → everything else. Fix the top five. Re-run the grid in four weeks. Repeat.

Most audits we run produce the same top three: wrong or too-broad primary category, services list nearly empty, and inconsistent phone number across citations. None of them take long to fix. The difference between businesses that rank and businesses that do not is usually that somebody looked.

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