A local SEO audit doesn't need to take a week. It needs to be honest. The point isn't a pretty PDF — it's finding the three or four things that are actually costing you customers and fixing them in order.

This checklist runs across the five areas Google's local algorithm cares about: your Google Business Profile, your reviews, your rankings, your competitors, and your website. Tick the boxes you've got. The empty ones are your priority list.

Google Business Profile

The single biggest input to local rankings. Half of all local businesses have a broken profile and don't know it.

Primary category is the most specific accurate option. Not "Contractor" if "Roofing contractor" exists. Not "Plumber" if you're an "Emergency plumbing service".
5+ secondary categories filled in. Each one is a query you're a candidate for.
Business name is your legal name, no keyword stuffing. "Sarah's Salon", not "Sarah's Salon - Best Hair in Manchester".
Hours accurate including holidays. "Open now" queries punish inaccuracy.
Phone, website, and address verified and consistent everywhere.
Services list filled out with descriptions and rough prices. Every service you actually offer.
Description (750 chars) mentions top 3 services + service area + licence number where relevant.
20+ photos uploaded. Recent jobs, team, premises. No stock images.
Posts published in the last 30 days. Even one weekly counts.
Q&A monitored — owner has answered questions in the last 90 days.

Reviews

Total review count above the floor for your industry and city (typically 30+ for low-competition, 100+ for major metros).
At least 1 review per month over the last 6 months. Recency is a stronger signal than total count.
Average rating 4.5 or higher. Below 4.3 is a structural problem regardless of count.
Reply rate on reviews is 100% within 7 days. Replies feed activity signal and slip keywords into the profile.
You have a system that triggers a review request after every job, not ad-hoc.
No suspicious volume spikes. 50 reviews in a week looks fake to Google and to customers.

Local Rankings

You've run a geo-grid scan in the last 90 days for your top 3 keywords.
You know which suburb you most need to rank in but currently don't.
Your top 3 keywords are tracked monthly, not just spot-checked.
Your service area in GBP matches where your customers actually come from.
You're not chasing 30 long-tail keywords before locking your top 3.

Competitor Analysis

You know your top 3 competitors per core keyword in each target suburb (the ones in the Map Pack, not the ones you assume).
You've recorded their review count, rating, and monthly velocity in the last 30 days.
You know their GBP primary category (often different from yours).
You've checked whether any new competitor has entered the top 10 in the last 90 days.

Website & Citations

NAP (Name, Address, Phone) is identical across Google, Facebook, Bing, Apple Maps, Yelp, and your industry's main directory.
LocalBusiness schema markup is on your homepage.
You have a dedicated service page for each major service (not all crammed onto the homepage).
You have a dedicated landing page for each major service area or suburb if you're a service-area business.
Your site loads under 3 seconds on mobile (PageSpeed Insights).
Internal links connect your service pages to your suburb pages.

Why this matters

Every box on this list maps to one of Google's three local ranking signals — Relevance, Distance, or Prominence. Relevance comes from your categories, services, and website content. Distance is the one signal you can't change. Prominence is everything else — reviews, citations, GBP activity, web presence. (Full breakdown of the three signals here.)

Most local businesses score 6-8 out of 30+ on this list and wonder why they're invisible. The ones in the Map Pack score 20+. The gap isn't talent or budget — it's whether they did the boring work.

If you scored under half, your fastest fix is GBP + reviews. Those two sections alone account for most ranking movement and are the cheapest to improve.

What to do next

Start with your three lowest-scoring sections. Do them in this order: GBP first (free, fastest), then reviews (builds steadily), then website and citations (longest cycle). Re-run this audit in 90 days and compare.

For the full backstory on why these signals work this way, read The Top Local SEO Ranking Factors in 2026.

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The 89-Point Local SEO Audit Checklist