Lead-gen playbook
The local SEO checklist for 2026
Google says it ranks local results on three things: relevance, distance and prominence. You can't move your shop, but you can make your Google Business Profile complete and verified, give each service a clear page, earn steady reviews, and keep every listing saying the same facts. That's most of local SEO.
Published · 8 min read · 14 sources · By the AOS Sites team
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The local SEO checklist
8 steps, in order. The detail behind each one is below.
- Claim and verify your Google Business ProfileClaim your profile and finish verification. Until it's verified, you can't fully control your details, and some changes and photos won't show.
- Pick the right primary category and fill every fieldChoose the category that completes "this business is a…", then add hours, service area or address, services, photos and your website.
- Make your name, address and phone match everywhereUse the exact same business name, address or service area and phone number on your site, your profile and every other listing.
- Give each main service its own pageOne page per service people search for, saying what it is, the towns you do it in, how pricing works and how to reach you.
- Write a unique, descriptive title for every pageEach page's title says what's on it and where: "Water heater repair in Cedar Rapids | Riverbend Plumbing", not "Home".
- Add LocalBusiness structured data that matches the pageMark up your name, address, phone, hours and type, and only facts a visitor can also see on the page.
- Ask every customer for a review and reply to all of themSend every customer the same short ask with your review link, never only the happy ones, and answer each review, good or bad.
- Check Search Console and your profile once a monthLook for crawl errors, pages Google can't index and outdated details on your profile. Fix one thing each month.
How does Google rank local businesses?
Google's own help center names three factors. Relevance is how well your profile matches what someone searched. Distance is how far you are from the person searching. Prominence is how well known your business is, based in part on how many websites link to you and how many reviews you have.[1]
Google is also clear about what doesn't work: there's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Anyone selling a shortcut is selling something Google says doesn't exist. What you can do is make relevance obvious, make prominence real, and make sure nothing confuses Google about who and where you are.[1]
What should you fix first on your Google Business Profile?
Verification first. Google says that to edit your business information and interact with customers, you need to verify, and that the verification methods available depend on your business type, public info and region. Photos and videos you add show only after the profile is verified.[2][3]
- Business name: your real-world name, as on your sign and invoices. No keywords or town names stuffed in.
- Primary category: the one that completes "this business is a…". Add secondary categories only if they're truly separate services.
- Address or service area: a storefront shows its address; a business that travels to customers sets a service area and hides its address.
- Hours, including special hours for holidays.
- Services, a short description, photos of your work and team, and your website link.
Sources: [4]
Google's guidelines warn that unnecessary information in a business name isn't permitted and can lead to suspension. "Riverbend Plumbing" is right; "Riverbend Plumbing Best Emergency Plumber Cedar Rapids" risks the whole profile.[4]
The full walk-through is in the Google Business Profile playbook.
What does your website need for local SEO?
Your website is where Google and the AI assistants learn the details your profile can't hold: every service, the towns you cover, how pricing works, your answers to common questions. Google's SEO starter guide recommends descriptive URLs and content written for people; its title-link guidance asks for a unique, descriptive, concise title on every page.[5][6]
| Page | What it must say |
|---|---|
| Home | What it must say: What you do, for whom, where, and your number, in the first screen. |
| One page per main service | What it must say: What the service is, signs you need it, how it's priced, the towns you do it in. |
| Service area | What it must say: The towns or neighborhoods you cover, in words (not only a map image). |
| About | What it must say: Who you are: real names, photos, licenses, years in business. |
| Contact | What it must say: Phone, form, hours, address or service area, matching your profile. |
Build and check it for phones. Google uses the mobile version of a page for indexing and ranking, and its Core Web Vitals targets (main content loaded within 2.5 seconds, a response to taps within 200 milliseconds, no layout shifts) describe a page that's pleasant to use on a phone.[7][8]
Does structured data (schema) still matter in 2026?
Yes, as a way to state your facts clearly, not as a ranking trick. Google documents LocalBusiness structured data for your name, address, phone, hours and business type, and it can feed the business details people see in Search and Maps.[9]
Two rules keep it honest. First, Google's general guidelines say not to mark up content that isn't visible to readers of the page. Second, structured data isn't required for Google's AI features, and there's no special markup for them; Google calls it a good idea as part of your overall SEO, not a requirement.[10][11]
Every AOS Sites site carries a connected schema.org graph typed to your trade (Plumber, Dentist, HairSalon and so on), with only facts that are also on the page. More on how that works in how AOS gets you found in AI search.
How many reviews do you need?
Enough, and recent. Google's help center says more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking. Customers set the bar too: in BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 US consumers, 47% said they won't use a business with fewer than 20 reviews, 68% will only use one with four stars or more, and 74% care only about reviews from the last three months.[1][12]
That makes reviews a habit, not a campaign. Ask every customer the same way, right after the job, with a direct link. Never offer anything in return and never ask only the happy ones: both break Google's rules. The review playbook sets it up step by step.
Reply to all of them. In the same survey, 89% of consumers said they expect businesses to respond to reviews, and 42% said they're unlikely to use a business that never replies.[12]
Do other listings still matter?
More than they did. Google is still the leading place people read reviews, but in BrightLocal's 2026 survey the share of consumers using Google for reviews fell from 83% to 71%, Apple Maps nearly doubled from 14% to 27%, and consumers used an average of six review sites. People find you in more places now, and each one needs the same facts.[12]
- Apple Maps, through Apple Business.
- Bing Places for Business.
- Yelp, Facebook and any directory that matters in your trade.
- The same name, address or service area, phone, hours and website on every one.
You don't need hundreds of directory listings. You need the important ones claimed, correct and matching your website.
What changes with AI search?
Less than the hype suggests. Google's own guide to its generative AI features says SEO best practices still apply because those features are rooted in its core ranking systems, and that from Google's perspective optimizing for generative AI search is still SEO. It also says you can ignore tactics like chunking content or creating AI text files for Google.[11]
What does change is where people ask. In BrightLocal's 2026 survey, 45% of consumers said they had used ChatGPT or other AI tools for local business recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier. Those tools read your website, your listings and your reviews, so everything above helps there too.[12]
The one technical extra: let the AI search crawlers in. OpenAI, for example, uses OAI-SearchBot to surface websites in ChatGPT search, separately from the crawler it uses for training. The AI search playbook covers the rest.[13]
What should you do every month?
- Open Google Search Console: check for pages Google can't index and for search terms you didn't expect.
- Check your Business Profile: hours, holiday hours, photos, and any edits Google or the public suggested.
- Reply to every new review.
- Add one thing customers keep asking about to your site: a service detail, a price explanation, a new town.
- Search for your main service and town on your phone and in an AI assistant, and note who shows up.
Sources: [14]
AOS Sites tells Bing and the other IndexNow engines when you publish changes, guides you through connecting Google Search Console, and its Site Health page rechecks your site's search basics. Growth adds four fresh pages or posts a month, written for you. See what each plan includes.