Local SEO advice usually arrives as a list of 50 or 65 tips, each one stated as if it were certain. Some are backed by evidence. Many are habits passed from one checklist to the next.
This checklist is shorter, and every item names its source: Google's own Business Profile guidelines, Whitespark's 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey or BrightLocal's 2026 consumer review survey. Where we've covered an area in depth, we link to it.
A thread on r/localseo showed why sources matter. A member shared a 65-point local SEO checklist. Commenters soon pointed out an item for a Google Business Profile feature they said had been discontinued months earlier, and the poster replied that they'd forgotten to remove it, because the list was about a year old.
65 Point Local SEO Checklist
Local SEO is stupid easy right now, and that’s because it’s one of the last places AI hasn’t touched. Google Business Profile Optimization [ ] Claim and Verify Your Google Business Profile (GBP). [ ] Provide a “Real” Address. Make sure it c...
Long checklists collect items like that. Print this one, tick it off, and come back to it every quarter.
The sources
| Source | What it is | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile guidelines | Google's rules for profiles | Live page, checked October 19, 2026 |
| Whitespark Local Search Ranking Factors | Survey of local search experts scoring factors | Published November 6, 2025 |
| BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey | Survey of 1,002 US consumers | Published February 11, 2026 |
Whitespark's scores are expert opinion, not measurements. They're still the most detailed public ranking of local factors, and the 2026 edition was the first to score factors for AI search visibility separately.
1. Google Business Profile
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Claim and verify your profile. Without it, you can't control what Google shows.
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Use your real-world business name. Google says it "should reflect your business's real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront, website, stationery, and as known to customers." No taglines or keyword stuffing.
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Pick the most specific primary category. It was the top-scored local pack factor in Whitespark's survey. Google says to "choose the fewest number of categories it takes to describe your overall core business."
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Add secondary categories only where they're real. Additional categories scored eighth in Whitespark's local pack list. Then the location and the details.
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Use a precise, real address. Google says "P.O. boxes or mailboxes located at remote locations aren't acceptable."
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Check the map pin sits on your door. Proper pin placement made Whitespark's local pack top ten.
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Keep hours current, including holiday hours. Being open at the time of search scored fifth.
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Fill in services, attributes, description and photos. Completeness of the profile scored 16th.
Our guide to getting into the Google local pack walks through these steps in order.
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2. Name, address and phone
- Use one exact version of your name, address and phone. Same spelling, same suite format, same number.
- Match your website to your profile. "HTML NAP matching GBP NAP" scored 15th in Whitespark's local pack list.
- Fix the major directories first, then the industry ones. Our guide to local citations covers which ones and how to audit them.
- For several locations, follow one naming rule. Our guide to naming and NAP across multiple profiles covers it.
What we found when we checked
On October 19, 2026, we pulled the top five plumbers in Google's local results for Dallas, Texas. All five had a claimed profile, a primary category, a visible street address and posted hours. Ratings ran from 4.5 to 5.0.
Then we opened each business's own website and searched the page for the phone number on its Google profile.
| Business | Phone on own site matches profile? |
|---|---|
| Anchor Plumbing Company | No |
| Milestone Electric, A/C & Plumbing | Couldn't check, site blocked us |
| Accurate Leak and Line, Dallas | No |
| All Masters Plumbing | No |
| Cody & Sons Plumbing, Heating & Air | No |
All four we could check showed a different number on their site than on their profile. The likely reason is call tracking, which swaps in a different number to measure where calls come from.
We can't confirm that for each one, and these businesses rank well anyway. But it's a mismatch on a factor experts score highly.
We call this the same-number rule. If you use call tracking, put your main number on your profile and in your site's code, and let the tracking number show only where it has to.
3. Reviews
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Ask every happy customer, steadily. Quantity of Google reviews with text scored ninth in Whitespark's local pack list, and recency 11th.
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Keep them recent. BrightLocal found "74% seek reviews written in the last three months," and 32% look for reviews from the last two weeks.
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Aim for four stars and up. BrightLocal found 68% of consumers "will only use a business with four or more stars," up from 55% in 2025. High ratings scored sixth for the local pack. Then the replies.
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Reply to every review. BrightLocal found "80% of consumers say they're likely to use a business that responds to all of its reviews."
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Reply fast. 32% want a response by the next day, and 81% within a week.
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Never buy or filter reviews. Fake reviews break Google's policies.
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4. Local pages on your site
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A dedicated page for each service. It was the top local organic factor in Whitespark's survey, and second for AI search visibility.
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Mention your city and neighborhoods naturally. Geographic relevance of content scored second for local organic results.
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Put your main keyword in the title tag and headings of the page your profile links to. Both scored in the local organic top ten. Then the structure.
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Link your pages to each other. Internal linking across the site scored sixth for local organic.
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Add your name, address and phone in plain text on the page, matching your profile.
5. Technical basics
- Mobile-friendly design. Scored 16th for local organic results.
- HTTPS by default. Scored 18th.
- Fast pages. Not in Whitespark's top ranks, but a slow phone page loses the visitor.
- Indexed in Google. Check Search Console's page indexing report for your service pages.
- LocalBusiness schema that matches your profile. If your schema lists a phone number, make it the same one.
6. AI answers
Whitespark scored AI search visibility as its own category for the first time. Its top factors look different from the local pack's.
| Rank | AI search visibility factor |
|---|---|
| 1 | Presence on expert-curated "best of" and similar lists |
| 2 | Dedicated page for each service |
| 3 | Prominence on key industry-relevant sites |
| 4 | Quality of unstructured citations, like news articles and association pages |
| 5 | Authority of the third-party sites where your reviews appear |
- Get onto local "best of" lists in your city and industry.
- Get mentioned on industry sites and in local news.
- Keep reviews on more than Google. BrightLocal found consumers use an average of six review sites, and Apple Maps use nearly doubled to 27%.
- Write pages that answer customers' questions, as well as service pages.
Whitespark's report also noted that local discovery "is still predominantly done through Google's local results because it's a much better experience for local intent queries than LLM responses." So the profile work comes first. Our guide to local SEO for AI search covers the AI side in more depth, and our guide to Google Business Profile signals for AI answers goes field by field.
How often to run it
| Area | How often |
|---|---|
| Reviews and replies | Weekly |
| Profile hours, services and photos | Monthly |
| Name, address and phone across directories | Quarterly |
| Local pages and technical basics | Quarterly |
| AI answers and "best of" lists | Quarterly |
Doing it yourself or handing it off
Most of this list is yours to do. Only you can verify your profile, ask your customers for reviews and fix your listings.
The pages are where RankControl helps. We write the articles that answer your customers' questions, against the pages already ranking for each one, and publish them on your own site. Our AI visibility tracking checks up to 50 buyer questions every week across seven AI engines, so you can see when AI answers start naming you. Expect traffic from Google first, with AI citations following more slowly as links and mentions build up.
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