Local SEO Checklist: 35 Steps for Maps and AI Answers

Local SEO is the work of making your business show up when people nearby search for what you offer: in the map pack, in local organic results, and now in the two or three names an AI assistant gives when asked for the best option near them. This checklist covers all three in 35 steps. Work top to bottom; the first two sections underpin everything after them.

The AI side of local search, meaning why assistants name some businesses and not others, is explained in depth in local AI visibility. This page is the practical checklist that sits under it.

1. Google Business Profile

Your Business Profile is the single most influential local asset you control, and it is also the source many other platforms copy their facts from.

• 1. Claim and verify your profile. An unclaimed profile can be edited by anyone.
• 2. Choose the most specific accurate primary category. Industry surveys of local SEO practitioners consistently rank the primary category among the strongest map pack signals. “Tax preparation service” beats “Accountant” if that is what you do.
• 3. Add secondary categories only for services you genuinely offer.
• 4. Use your real business name, with no added keywords or locations. Google’s guidelines prohibit keyword stuffing in the name, and it can get a profile suspended.
• 5. Set your service area correctly. If you visit customers rather than receiving them, list your service areas and hide your address.
• 6. Complete your hours, including special and holiday hours.
• 7. List your services with short descriptions, and products if you sell them.
• 8. Write a description that says what you do, where, and for whom, in plain sentences rather than slogans.
• 9. Upload real photos of your premises, team, and work, and keep adding them over time.
• 10. Post updates regularly: offers, news, events, and recent work.

2. NAP and citations

Name, address, and phone number (NAP) must be identical everywhere. Inconsistency lowers confidence in local rankings and in how AI engines describe you.

• 11. Decide one canonical NAP format and write it down, down to “Suite” versus “Ste.” and how the phone number is punctuated.
• 12. Match it character for character in your website footer and on your contact page.
• 13. Claim Bing Places and Apple Business Connect. Bing Places feeds Bing’s index, which ChatGPT search leans on heavily.
• 14. Correct the main data aggregators and directories for your country, since many smaller sites copy from them.
• 15. Remove duplicate listings and old addresses. A former address still live on a directory is a contradicting fact.
• 16. List on the industry and local directories that actually rank for your category in your area.

3. Reviews

Reviews influence both map rankings and the businesses AI assistants choose to name.

• 17. Ask every satisfied customer, as a routine. Never filter who you ask: Google’s policies prohibit discouraging negative reviews or selectively soliciting positive ones.
• 18. Make leaving a review a single step, with a direct review link or a QR code.
• 19. Respond to every review within days, especially critical ones. Future customers read the responses.
• 20. Never buy or incentivize reviews. It breaks Google’s policies, and in the US the FTC’s rule against fake reviews took effect in October 2024.
• 21. Build reviews on the second platform your buyers check, such as Yelp, Clutch, Trustpilot, or your industry’s equivalent.
• 22. Keep a steady flow. Recency signals an active business; a burst followed by silence does not.

4. Local pages on your site

• 23. Create a page for each location or core service area with genuinely local substance: the work you do there, local context, real specifics. Templated pages with only the city name swapped add nothing. Ours are at our locations.
• 24. Show your NAP and an embedded map on contact and location pages.
• 25. Write titles and H1s that say what and where, such as “Emergency plumber in Austin”.
• 26. Show local proof: projects, clients who have agreed to be named, and case notes from that area.
• 27. Answer local questions on the page: do you serve a given neighborhood, how quickly can you start, what does it cost.
• 28. Link services to locations and back, so each location page sits inside your site structure.
• 29. Make pages fast on mobile, with tap-to-call. Most local searches happen on phones.

5. Local schema and entity

• 30. Add LocalBusiness schema, or the most specific subtype, with address, geo coordinates, opening hours, area served, and telephone, connected to your Organization @id. See Organization schema for AI search.
• 31. List your official profiles under sameAs. Guidance on what belongs there is in the sameAs guide.
• 32. Use the same category language in your Business Profile, your schema, and your page copy.

6. AI answers and measurement

• 33. Get into local “best of” roundups that rank in both Google and Bing. These are among the sources AI assistants rely on most for local recommendations. See digital PR for AI search.
• 34. Run a local prompt set monthly, city by city, across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode: “best [service] in [city]”, “who should I hire for [problem] in [city]”.
• 35. Track Business Profile performance, local pack positions, and AI mentions together: calls, direction requests, and website clicks alongside whether assistants name you.

Reading your local prompt audit

Step 34 produces a page of answers. The value is in what you do with them. Each pattern below points back to a specific part of this checklist, so a monthly prompt run turns into a short, concrete fix list instead of a vague visibility score.

Run the same prompts, in the same cities, on the same week of each month. Changes between runs only mean something when the method stays fixed.

What to do first

Where the local SEO checklist fits

Local SEO and local AI visibility are now the same job measured in two places: the map pack and the assistant’s answer. The businesses that win both are rarely the ones with the best websites; they are the ones the internet describes the same way in the most places. If you want this checklist worked for you, including monthly local prompt tracking per city, see our local SEO and local AI visibility service.