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Local SEO checklist for service businesses (2026)
Twenty-seven items. Print it, work down the list, and you'll out-rank most competitors in your city inside 90 days. No agency required.
By Richmond Agyekum
Google Business Profile (10 items)
- Primary category matches your top-money service exactly (e.g., "Plumber" not "Contractor").
- Every secondary category you legitimately serve — up to 9 more.
- Service area defined by ZIPs or cities, not a 25-mile radius blob.
- Business name matches your storefront/legal name (no keyword stuffing).
- Address matches your website, invoices, and citations exactly.
- Phone number is a local (not 800) number, matched everywhere.
- Hours set to 24/7 only if you actually answer — otherwise Google penalizes.
- At least 20 photos: 5 exterior, 5 team, 5 job-in-progress, 5 finished work.
- Products or Services listings populated with your top 10 offerings + prices.
- Q&A section seeded with the 5 questions customers actually ask.
Reviews (5 items)
- Steady flow: at least 4 new reviews per month (drives ranking more than total count).
- Owner replies within 48 hours to every review — positive AND negative.
- Review requests sent same-day via SMS (2× the response of email).
- Negative reviews get a factual, empathetic reply — never argumentative.
- Keywords appear naturally in review text ("emergency water heater install") — don't ask for them.
On-page SEO (7 items)
- Unique title tag on every page, 50–60 chars, includes service + city.
- Meta description 140–160 chars — the sales pitch, not the H1 repeated.
- One H1 per page, matches the search intent of the URL.
- Service pages per city if you legitimately serve them (not thin duplicates).
- Internal links from home + service hubs to every city/service leaf.
- NAP (name, address, phone) in the footer of every page.
- Page speed under 2.5s LCP — mobile is the ranking version.
Citations & links (3 items)
- Top-10 citations claimed and NAP-matched: Yelp, BBB, Angi, HomeAdvisor, Nextdoor, Facebook, Apple Maps, Bing, industry directory, Chamber of Commerce.
- Zero NAP conflicts (an old suite number kills ranking more than most people realize).
- 3–5 hyperlocal links per quarter: chamber, sponsorship, local blog, supplier's dealer-locator.
Schema (2 items)
- LocalBusiness JSON-LD on every service page (name, address, phone, hours, geo, priceRange).
- FAQ, Service, and Breadcrumb schema wherever they legitimately match the content.