A local SEO checklist worth starting with (sample)

This is a sample post. It exists so the blog layout, table of contents, and related-post block can be reviewed. It is not a client report, and it does not invent rankings.

Local SEO here is a subject I teach — how any business that depends on nearby customers can be found — not a pitch for one city.

Start with the listing, not a 40-page site

If a business wants nearby customers, Google Business Profile is usually the highest-leverage page they do not fully control. Rankings on the map pack change. The listing itself is still the asset.

What I would check first

1. The primary category matches how customers search, not how the owner describes the trade.
2. Hours, phone, and address match the website footer and every directory that already ranks.
3. Photos are recent enough that a stranger would trust they are walking into the same place.
4. Review replies exist. Even short, specific replies beat silence.

Then the site pages that support the listing

A location page should answer: what you do, where you do it, and how to contact you this week. It should not be a paragraph of nearby town names. Service pages can mention the area you actually serve; they should still be written for a person, not a density trick.

What I would not do in week one

• Buy citations from a bulk vendor without an audit of what already exists.
• Publish ten near-duplicate “neighborhood” pages.
• Promise a map-pack position. Nobody who has done this work for long should.

When this sample is replaced with a real piece, I will name a specific tactic, what it costs in time, and how I would measure it. Until then, treat the checklist as a tone sample: practical, local-SEO-as-a-topic, and honest about limits.