- Google ranks local results mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. You cannot change distance, so the checklist works on the other two.
- Your Google Business Profile comes first: claim and verify it, choose an accurate primary category, keep hours and special hours current, add real photos and answer reviews.
- Keep your name, address and phone identical on your site, your Business Profile, Bing Places and every directory.
- Build one page per real service and per real location. Near-identical city pages are doorway pages under Google's spam policies.
- There is no way to pay Google for a better local ranking, and fake reviews or self-awarded star ratings in schema only add risk.
How Google ranks local results
Google says local results are based mainly on three things: relevance, distance and prominence (Google Business Profile Help).
- Relevance is how well your profile matches what someone searched for. Complete, detailed business information helps Google understand what you do.
- Distance is how far you are from the searcher, or from the location in their search. You cannot change it.
- Prominence is how well known your business is. Google says it draws on information from across the web, such as links, articles and directories, on your review count and rating, and on your position in normal web results, so ordinary SEO helps here too.
The same page says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Everything below is about making relevance and prominence as strong and as accurate as they can be.
The local SEO checklist
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Claim and verify your Google Business Profile
Search for your business on Google Maps. If a profile exists, claim it; if not, create one. Then complete verification: Google's help page lists verifying your locations as one of its tips, and an unverified profile is easy for someone else to edit. Use the real business name, the way it appears on your signage and stationery, with no extra keywords or city names added. Google's guidelines for representing your business forbid that kind of stuffing.
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Choose an accurate primary category and complete the profile
The primary category tells Google what you are (a plumber, a dental clinic, a bakery), so pick the one that describes your core business, not the one you wish ranked. Add secondary categories only for things you really offer. Then fill in everything relevant: address or service area, phone, website, services or products, and a plain description. Google ties complete information directly to relevance.
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Keep hours current, including special hours
Enter your regular opening hours and add special hours for public holidays and one-off closures before they happen. Google's tips name accurate hours, including special hours, as part of a complete profile, and wrong hours are the fastest way to lose a customer who drove to a locked door.
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Add real photos
Upload photos of your premises, your team at work and what you sell or make. Google recommends adding photos to show people your goods and services. Use your own photos, not stock images, and add new ones when something changes.
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Ask for reviews and respond to them
Ask happy customers to leave a review, for example with a link on the receipt or in a follow-up email, and reply to reviews, good and bad. Google lists managing and responding to reviews as a way to improve your local presence, and review count and rating feed into prominence. Never buy reviews, offer rewards for them or write them yourself: Google's profile guidelines and review policies prohibit it.
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Keep name, address and phone the same everywhere
Your business name, address and phone number (often shortened to NAP) should match, character for character where you can, on your website, your Business Profile, Bing Places, social profiles and directories. Put them as text in the site footer or on a contact page, not only inside an image. When you move or change number, update every listing in the same week. Conflicting details make it harder for search engines, and AI assistants, to be sure which facts are right.
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Create a Bing Places for Business listing
Bing runs its own local results, and Microsoft Copilot answers draw on Bing's index, so a Bing listing is worth the few minutes it takes. Sign in at Bing Places for Business; it can import an existing Google Business Profile, which keeps the two consistent. While you are there, add your website to Bing Webmaster Tools with our Bing Webmaster Tools guide.
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Add LocalBusiness structured data with your real address
On your home page or each location page, add
LocalBusinessJSON-LD (or a more specific type, such asDentistorPlumber) with your name, full postal address, phone, URL and opening hours, matching what the page shows. Google's local business structured data guide lists the required and recommended properties. The free schema markup generator builds the JSON-LD from a form.Do not add an
aggregateRatingor reviews of your own business to this markup. Google's review snippet guidelines say self-serving reviews of a local business are not eligible for star ratings, and made-up ratings are worse. -
Build one page per real service and per real location
If you offer drain cleaning and boiler repair, each gets its own page that explains the service, prices or how pricing works, and the area you cover. If you have two real branches, each gets a page with its own address, hours, directions, team and photos.
Do not create a page for every town you would like to rank in by swapping the city name into the same text. Google's spam policies name pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page as an example of doorway abuse. A service-area business can mention the towns it serves on its service pages instead.
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Write a clear title and description for each location page
Put the service and the place in the title, in the words people search, for example “Emergency Plumber in Leeds | Smith & Sons”, and write a description that gives a reason to call: opening hours, response time or the area covered. Keep each one unique. Check how they will be cut off with the SERP snippet preview.
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Make the site fast on a phone
People searching for a business nearby are often on a phone, sometimes on a weak mobile connection. Put the phone number and address near the top as tappable links, keep images sized for the screen and watch your Core Web Vitals. Our guide to Core Web Vitals thresholds explains what counts as good for LCP, INP and CLS.
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Earn local links and citations honestly
Prominence draws on what the rest of the web says about you. Get listed accurately on the directories that matter in your country and trade, join your local chamber of commerce or trade body, sponsor or take part in real local events, and give local news something worth writing about. Do not buy links or join link schemes; see our link building guide for methods that hold up.
What not to do. No keywords or city names stuffed into your business name, no virtual-office or fake addresses, no duplicate profiles for the same location, no bought or self-written reviews, no star ratings added to your own schema and no copy-paste city pages. Google can suspend a Business Profile that breaks its guidelines, which removes you from Maps entirely.
How to measure local SEO
Track local queries in Search Console
Google Search Console shows the queries your website appears for, including ones that name a town or say “near me”. Filter the Performance report by queries containing your city or service to see impressions, clicks and average position over time. The free rank tracker pulls the same Search Console data so you can follow a set of local keywords week by week. Business Profile clicks and calls are reported separately, in the profile's own performance view.
Check AI answers for local questions
People also ask assistants things like “best dentist open on Saturday in Leeds”. Ask a few of those questions in a clean session each week and note whether you are named and which sites are cited, using our method to check if ChatGPT mentions your brand. Consistent business details across your site and listings help here too.
What MrKeyword does and does not do for local SEO
MrKeyword does not manage Google Business Profiles: it cannot post updates, answer reviews or change your hours. It also does not track map-pack or Google Maps positions. What it does is show your own Search Console queries, including local ones, and audit your website for the on-site parts of this checklist: titles and descriptions, structured data, broken links and page speed. For profile and map-pack work, use Google Business Profile and Bing Places directly.
Questions and answers
Local SEO checklist questions
What is the most important local ranking factor?
Google says local results are based mainly on three things together: relevance (how well your profile matches the search), distance (how far you are from the searcher or the searched location) and prominence (how well known your business is, including reviews, links and your web rankings). Google does not rank them by importance, and there is no way to pay for a better local ranking.
How do I rank in the Google Maps local pack?
Claim and verify your Google Business Profile, choose an accurate primary category, fill in every relevant detail, keep hours current, add photos and answer reviews. Then keep your name, address and phone consistent across the web and build a useful page for each real service and location on your site.
Do I need a separate page for every city I serve?
Only for real locations, such as a branch with its own address and staff. Pages that swap a city name into the same text are doorway pages under Google's spam policies. A service-area business can list the towns it covers on its service pages instead.
Should I add star ratings to my LocalBusiness schema?
No. Google's review snippet guidelines say self-serving reviews of a local business are not eligible for star ratings in results. Use LocalBusiness markup for your real name, address, phone and hours, and collect reviews on your Business Profile.
Does Bing Places matter for local SEO?
Yes. Bing shows its own local results and Microsoft Copilot draws on Bing, so a verified Bing Places listing extends your reach. It can import your Google Business Profile, which keeps the details consistent.
Sources
- Tips to improve your local ranking on Google — Google Business Profile Help, on relevance, distance and prominence, verification, hours, photos and reviews
- Guidelines for representing your business on Google — Google Business Profile Help, on business names, addresses, categories and prohibited practices
- Bing Places for Business — Microsoft, the sign-up for Bing's local business listings
- Local business structured data — Google Search Central, on LocalBusiness JSON-LD properties
- Review snippet structured data — Google Search Central, on self-serving reviews for local businesses
- Spam policies for Google web search — Google Search Central, on doorway abuse
