Do These Five First
If you only get to five things, make it these. Each is quick and affects everything else on the list. The two BMo Ventures finds missing most often are the last two: business details that don't match across the web, and reviews nobody replies to, good or bad.
Claim and verify your Business Profile
At business.google.com. Only verified profiles show on Maps and Search.
Choose the most specific primary category
"Personal injury attorney" over "lawyer." "Tax preparation service" over "accountant."
Fill in every field
Hours, services, description, attributes and real photos. Google says complete, accurate information helps you show up.
Fix your name, address and phone everywhere
Your site, your profile, Bing Places, Apple Business, Yelp and your industry's directories should all match.
Ask your last ten customers for a review
Send your direct review link from your profile. Then make asking a habit.
Google Business Profile
- Use your real business name, exactly as customers see it. Adding keywords to the name is against Google's guidelines and a common reason for suspension.
- If you serve customers at their location, hide your address and set a service area.
- Add each service you offer, in the words customers use.
- Add photos of your work, your team and your location, and keep adding them.
- Post updates when you have something worth saying: an offer, a new service, seasonal hours.
- Reply to every review, good and bad, and keep replies free of anything private about the customer.
- Make sure there's only one profile for your business. Claim and remove old duplicates.
Your Website
- Name your city or service area in your home page title, main heading and opening lines.
- Give each main service its own page. "Tax preparation" and "bookkeeping" shouldn't share one.
- If you serve several nearby cities, add a page for a city only when you have something real to say about working there. Near-identical city pages can hurt more than help.
- Answer the questions customers ask before they call: cost, timeline, what to expect.
- Put your name, address and phone in the footer so it's on every page.
- Give every page its own title and description.
BMo Ventures' content work plans these pages so none of them compete with each other.
Listings and Directories
- Get listed on the basics: Google, Bing Places, Apple Business, Yelp, Facebook and the Better Business Bureau.
- Add the directories for your field: Avvo, FindLaw or Justia for lawyers; your state CPA society for accountants; Zillow and Realtor.com for agents.
- Keep your name, address and phone identical on every one, down to "Street" versus "St."
- After a move or a new phone number, find and fix the old listings. They hang around for years.
Listings matter beyond Google, too. In the AI visibility checks BMo Ventures has run for local businesses, more than four in ten AI answers cited at least one directory or review site.
Local Links and Mentions
Google says prominence, one of its three local factors, is based partly on how many websites link to your business. For a local business, the useful links are local:
- Your chamber of commerce and any business associations you belong to.
- Local sponsorships, events and charities you already support, where they list their sponsors.
- Local news, when you have something worth covering.
- Suppliers, partners and professional bodies that list the businesses they work with.
Skip anything that sells links. Buying them is against Google's spam policies, and a handful of real local mentions is worth more.
Reviews
- Ask every customer after a good experience, the same way each time.
- Send the direct link, so leaving a review takes one tap.
- Never pay for reviews or offer something only for good ones. The FTC's rule on fake reviews carries civil penalties.
- Reply to every review. A calm, helpful reply to a bad one often says more than the review.
- Aim for a steady few each month rather than a burst.
Technical Basics
- Set up Google Search Console and submit your sitemap, so you can see what Google has indexed. Do the same in Bing Webmaster Tools, since Bing runs its own index.
- Set up Google Analytics and track calls and form fills, so you know what's working.
- Check your site at pagespeed.web.dev and fix what it flags, usually oversized images and extra scripts.
- Make sure your site is easy to use on a phone.
- Add LocalBusiness structured data to your home page with your name, address, phone and hours.
Tip
Check yourself the way customers do
Search your main service and your city from a phone, signed out, near where your customers are. That's the map they see, and it's the one to judge your progress by.
Keep It Up
Local SEO isn't a one-time project. Once a month, check your profile for changes someone else suggested, reply to new reviews, add a photo or an update, and search your main services to see where you stand. Twice a year, check your listings for anything that's drifted.
If you'd like someone to run this checklist against your business and tell you what to fix first, that's what a BMo Ventures SEO audit does.
Common Questions
Can I do local SEO myself?
Yes. Most of this checklist is work an owner can do: the profile, reviews, listings and a few clear pages. The technical items and the research are where owners most often bring in help.
What's the most important part of local SEO?
Google says local results come down to relevance, distance and prominence. Your Business Profile touches all three, which is why it comes first on this list.
How long does local SEO take to work?
Early movement usually shows in two to three months and steadier results around six. A new profile can take up to a month to show in rankings at all.
Do I need a page for every city I serve?
Only where you have something real to say about working there. BMo Ventures builds a city page when there's local detail to put on it, not to repeat the same page with a new name.