Local SEO Site Audit Checklist

1. Google Guideline violations

Eligibility
Do you provide your service at a physical location?
Do you provide your service at a customers location?
Is your business only virtual / online?
Are your listing addresses actually employees homes?
Is your listing location an unstaffed virtual office?

Keyword stuffing
Name in GMB listing exactly matches legal business name?
Keyword stuffing in listing name?
Individual practitioner: Includes company name in business listing field?

No review spam
Incentives provided for reviews?
Owner or current employees generated reviews?
Company has negatively reviewed competition erroneously?

2. Google My Business (GMB) Categories

Directions:
1 . Conduct search of target keywords
2. Analyze local results that appear
3. Place category of top 3 results underneath each keyword
4. Determine best category based on competitors

Place results here:

1st position category
2nd position category
3rd position category

3. Website URL in listing

Listing page consistency

How many locations does your business have?
Does each location have it's own landing page?
Do all listings point to homepage?
 Is the URL method consistent across all listings?

4. Location choice is realistic

Directions:
1 . Google the city name of where you think your listing should show up
2. Analyze the boundaries of that city limit

When was your listing created?

Does your business show up in the boundaries of that city limit?
Did your listing appear in that city before but is missing now?

5. Listing accuracy

Are local listings complete & accurate on all majors?

Google
Facebook
Infogroup
Acxiom
Factual
Yelp
Localeze
YP

6. Review quality and quantity

Directions:
1. Review top 3 competitors showing up for your category in Google
2. Document the count and quality of their reviews
3. Look up your own business listing
4. Document your review count and quality metric
5. Repeat for Yelp

Place GOOGLE results here:

Count of reviews
Average star rating (0-5)
Count of 5-star reviews
Count of 1-star reviews
 Place YELP results here:
Count of reviews
Average star rating (0-5)
Count of 5-star reviews
Count of 1-star reviews

Responsiveness
On a scale of 1 -4, how would you rate your responsiveness to reviews?
Do you use software to assit with review management?

7. On-Site Local SEO Basics

All businesses:
Contact Us page features complete Name, Address, Phone Number?
Is your site mobile responsive?
What is your homepage load speed?

Single location busineses:

City name in Title Tags of most important pages?

Multi location businesses:

Unique landing page for each location?
<10 locations: Homepage links to location pages directly?
<10 locations: Are you using Store Locator Widget?

Sites with Store Locator Widget:

Does locator widget require zip code?
Does locator link visitor to low value / low converting pages?
Links to pages that are listed in sitemap?

8. Inbound links - Count and Quality

Count of Inbound Links to your website

Total links for domain
Links count - MoM%
Links count - V% Baseline

Domain Authority of inbound links to your website

 Avg Link Domain Authority (DA)
Avg Link DA - MoM%
Avg Link DA - V% Baseline

Link schemes
Are you paying for inbound links?

9. Content quality

Crawl errors:
Duplicate page content errors?
Crawl attempt errors?
Pages with 5XX errors?
Pages with 4XX errors?
Pages with 3XX errors?
Robots.txt file is reviewed and updated?

Page meta data:

Do you have the target keyword in your url?
Do you have the target keyword in your page title?
Do you have the target keyword in your meta description?

Featured Snippet optimization:

H2 tags include related topic to target keyword?
H2 tags are in form of question?
H2 tags are followed by Featured Snippet-ready content?
 Status Acceptance criteria Notes

Google Local Listing Guidelines

Yes
Yes
No
No
No

Google Local Listing Guidelines

Yes
No
No

Google Local Listing Guidelines

No
No
No

Blumenthal's Category Finder

keyword keyword keyword

Category
Category
Category

Acceptance criteria Notes

Moz Check Listing Tool

number
Yes
No Ideally not. Depends on business choice
 Yes

Acceptance criteria Notes

Year Older listings are viewed as more authoritative

Yes
Potentially impacted by Possum update in 2016

% complete Acceptance criteria Notes

Moz Check Listing Tool

>90%
>90%
>90%
>90%
>90%
>90%
>90%
>90%

Your name Competitor 1 Competitor 2 Competitor 3

126
4.7
35
12
Your name Competitor 1 Competitor 2 Competitor 3
126
4.7
35
12

scale
Yes

Acceptance criteria

Yes
Yes
< 2 seconds

Yes

Yes
Yes
Yes

No
No
Yes

Moz Open Site Explorer

Baseline Month 1 Month 2 Month 3
17,343,428 17,345,773 17,346,745 19000000
0.01% 0.01% 9.53%
0.01% 0.02% 9.55%

Baseline Month 1 Month 2 Month 3

56 56 57 59
0.00% 1.79% 3.51%
0.00% 1.79% 5.36%

No

Moz Pro Site Crawl

count
count
count
count
count
Yes

Moz Pro Campaign

Yes
Yes
Yes

Yes
Yes
Yes
Month 4 Month 5 Month 6 Month 7 Month 8

Month 4 Month 5 Month 6 Month 7 Month 8

Lists

Yes 1 - No responses to reviews

No 2 - Respond only to negative reviews

3 - Respond to reviews occasionally
4 - Have a system for monitoring and respons

Yes
 negative reviews
ews occasionally
or monitoring and responsing to all reviews