How to run a local SEO audit: profile, reviews, rankings and the website

For a local business, the website is often not where customers first meet it. They meet it in the map results, in the review stars, and increasingly in an answer from an AI assistant. A local SEO audit has to look at all of that, and it has to measure it in a way the owner can see for themselves.

Here is a practical order for running one.

1. The Google Business Profile

Start here, because for many local searches the profile matters more than the site.

Check:

• Is it claimed? An unclaimed profile cannot be edited by the owner, and it is the single most important fix if so.

• Is it marked as open? A profile showing "permanently closed" or "temporarily closed" by mistake is more common than you would expect, and it is catastrophic.

• Primary and secondary categories. The primary category has a large influence on which searches the business appears for. A plumber listed only as "Contractor" is leaving searches on the table.

• Hours, including holiday hours.

• Photos: how many, how recent, whether they show the actual business.

• Name, address and phone number match the website exactly.

For a business with no website at all, the profile is the only thing to audit, and getting it right is the first step before any website conversation.

2. Reviews

Stars are a headline, not a finding. Look at:

• Volume and rating against the businesses that rank above it.

• Recency. Twenty reviews from four years ago say less than five from this month.

• Owner responses. Does the business reply, particularly to negative reviews?

• Recurring complaints. Read the reviews for themes. "Four customers mention the phone going unanswered" is a finding an owner can act on; "3.9 stars" is not.

That last point is where a local audit becomes genuinely useful. A pattern in the complaints often points to an operational problem the website could help solve: an online booking form, clearer opening hours, a call-back request.

3. Rankings across the service area

The honest answer to "where do we rank?" is "it depends where the customer is standing". Map results are heavily influenced by proximity, so a business can rank first outside its own door and not at all a mile away.

A single ranking check from one location hides that. A grid of checks across the service area shows it. Plot the rank for the business's main search term at points on a grid around its location, and the picture usually tells the story on its own: strong in the middle, invisible at the edges where much of its work comes from.

Run the same grid again after three months of work to show the change. It is the same measurement, so the comparison is fair.

4. The website signals behind local rankings

Then the website, with a local lens:

• Consistent name, address and phone number on every page, usually in the footer, matching the profile.

• LocalBusiness structured data with the correct type, address, opening hours and geo coordinates.

• Location and service pages for each area and service the business genuinely covers, with real content rather than one paragraph with the town name swapped.

• Mobile speed. Local searches are overwhelmingly mobile, and a slow page loses the customer before they call. See Core Web Vitals for small business sites.

• Tap-to-call and a working contact form, tested on a phone.

The rest of the technical checks, including security, email and accessibility, are in the website audit checklist.

5. AI answers

When someone asks an assistant for a recommendation in a town, the answer draws on the business's website, its profile and its reviews. Check that AI crawlers are allowed to read the site, and that the site clearly states what the business does, where, and for whom. We covered the crawler side in how to check robots.txt for AI crawlers.

Putting it in front of the owner

A local audit report should open with the finding the owner can see for themselves. The ranking grid is ideal: "You rank first here, around your office. Two miles north, where your last three jobs were, you do not appear in the top twenty." Follow it with the review pattern and the profile fixes, then the website.

End with a plan that has a before-and-after built in: fix the profile, work on reviews and location pages for three months, then re-run the grid. That is also the natural shape of a retainer, which we cover in turning an audit into a monthly retainer.

How SiteAssay handles local audits

SiteAssay scores the Google Business Profile on its own, reads the review corpus for recurring complaints, and its Local Grid measures a rank for every point on a grid from 3x3 to 15x15 around the business. The features page shows how these fit together, and our playbook for plumbers and trades walks through a local audit for one trade in detail.