The Local SEO Checklist
The Exact Audit I Run Before I Take On A New Client
Five sections covering Google Business Profile, website platform limitations, keyword targeting, on page fundamentals, and content strategy, built from fifteen years of ranking businesses across every industry I serve. Work through it yourself before you spend a dollar on SEO.
Your Website Is Beautiful. Google Can't Find It.
A well built website and a website Google can rank are not the same thing. Most local businesses lose clients every day to a competitor who simply showed up on page one first. Here is why, and what the checklist helps you fix.
Showit, Wix, and Squarespace all build stunning sites, but each one has its own way of rendering text that Google struggles to read. Your service pages and location copy can be invisible to search engines even though they look perfect to visitors. The checklist shows you where to check.
Most businesses optimize for broad terms like their own name or industry title. Neither books clients. The searches that convert are hyper local and service specific, the phrases with real buyer intent behind them.
Local SEO lives and dies by the Google Business Profile. An incomplete or unclaimed profile means you are invisible in the map pack, the three results that appear above everything else in local searches. This is the fastest win available and it costs nothing to fix.
The checklist walks through all three of these, plus two more sections most businesses never touch, on page fundamentals and content strategy.
Six Sections, Every Section A Fix
Each section is a set of specific checks, not vague advice. Go through it once and you will know exactly where your site is losing visibility.
Google Business Profile
The fastest win most local businesses skip entirely. What a complete profile needs and what most owners never touch after day one.
Website Platform Limitations
Showit, Wix, and Squarespace each hide text from Google differently. Exactly how to check your platform and where to place crawlable copy.
Keyword Targeting
How to find and use the searches your actual clients type into Google, instead of the broad terms that never book anyone.
On Page Fundamentals
Titles, meta descriptions, schema, and alt text, done right and checked page by page across your site.
Content Strategy
What to publish, and how often, so your rankings compound over time instead of flatlining after the first few pages.
AI Search Readiness
Whether your site is structured to be named and cited inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, the new front door customers check first.
The Checklist Works Whatever You Do
The same five sections apply no matter your industry. Here is deeper SEO guidance built for the specific businesses I work with most.
Don't see your industry? Tell me about your business and I'll show you exactly where the checklist applies.
The Full SEO Program
The checklist covers what to fix. These are the services I run when a business wants it done for them, start to finish.
Every service runs as one connected system through SEO Consulting Services, not separate add ons.
Self Audit With The Rest Of The Free Tools
The checklist is one of several free tools built for site owners who want to check their own SEO before hiring anyone, including me.
Checklist FAQs
Straight answers about the checklist, whatever your industry or where your business is located.
Is the checklist actually free?+
Does this work if I'm not a photographer?+
What if my site is built on Wix or Squarespace, not Showit?+
How is this different from paying for an SEO audit?+
What do I do after I go through the checklist?+
Get The Checklist, Then Get An Audit
The checklist shows you what to fix. An audit shows you exactly how, page by page, for your specific site and market.
Book Your SEO Audit