The complete local SEO audit checklist for a single-location SMB

Most local SEO audits show you a number and call it done. Ours shows you six numbers, tells you which of them are measured vs. waiting on a data source, and tells you what the rollup actually means. Here is the full checklist.

What we measure

A local audit lives or dies on the dimensions you include and the dimensions you exclude. The six we run are these.

1. Google rankings

We pull your tracked keyword set, count how many terms rank in the top 3, and how many rank anywhere in the top 10. Green needs at least one term in the top 3; yellow needs at least one in the top 10. Anything less is red because nobody clicks past page one.

A subtle point: we mark this dimension skipped if no keyword has a measured rank yet. That happens for fresh tenants between signup and the first SERP polling cycle. Skipped does not drag the rollup red — it just shows pending.

2. AI visibility

Ranking on Google is not the only game in town anymore. We probe ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Copilot to see whether they mention your brand when asked relevant questions. Four or more engines mentioning you is green; two is yellow; fewer than two is red.

This dimension renders as a preview tile through Sprint 7. The reason is honest: we are building the queries and the probe cadence right now, and we would rather show the launch sprint than ship a half-measured number.

3. Local listings

Google Business Profile, Apple Business Connect, and Bing Places. We score completeness across the three platforms and average them. Above 80 percent is green; above 60 is yellow; below is red.

GBP is currently a preview tile while we wait on Google API approval (case 4-1933000041034, submitted 2026-05-12). Apple and Bing scraping ships in Sprint 10. So you will see the preview tile in your first audit; the live measurement lands automatically when the credentials clear.

4. On-page SEO

A site crawler walks your homepage and the first 30 internal pages. For each page we score title length, H1 presence and uniqueness, meta description length, alt-text coverage, schema markup, internal links. The score is a weighted average. Above 90 is green; above 70 is yellow.

This is the dimension that prospects fix fastest because the fixes are local to the CMS. Tier 2 ships those fixes on your behalf.

5. Citations

Citations are the directory listings (Yelp, YellowPages, HealthGrades, etc.) that mention your business name, address, and phone. We measure NAP (name, address, phone) consistency across roughly 70 high-authority directories. Above 95 percent is green; above 85 is yellow.

Citation cleanup is a Sprint 9 feature on Tier 2. Until then the dimension is read-only.

6. Reviews

Volume and average rating from Google Business Profile. Ten or more reviews with a 4.0+ rating is green; five or more is yellow. Anything less is red because fewer than five reviews tends to scare off prospects more than no reviews at all.

Reviews are sourced from the same GBP scan that powers the listings dimension, so they share the same preview-tile status until GBP API approval lands.

How the rollup works

The rollup is intentionally honest about partial data.

• Preview tiles (feature not built yet) are excluded from the rollup. Preview is not penalized.
• Skipped dimensions (feature built but no measurement yet) are also excluded. Skipped is not penalized either.
• Green requires every live dimension to be green.
• Red requires any live dimension to be red.
• Anything in between is yellow.

So a brand-new tenant whose first audit only has the on-page dimension live can come back yellow with a single yellow dimension. The number is honest; the prospect sees the path to green and the path lives in Tier 2.

What to do with the numbers

Three rules of thumb.

• Fix on-page first. It is the cheapest dimension to move and the one with the most predictable lift.
• Citation consistency is the second cheapest. Tier 2 starts the cleanup loop.
• Rankings move last because they reflect the cumulative work upstream.

That is the checklist. Run the audit. We will be here.