Local SEO Audit: Profile, Website, Reviews and Citations

A local SEO audit checks whether a business is eligible and accurately represented across its Google Business Profile, website and material listings. Google says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and prominence, so an audit should test evidence for each factor without promising a map-pack position.

A local SEO audit covers the website, Business Profile, material listings and review process. It can identify gaps and measurement needs; it cannot determine how many enquiries a business will receive.

What Is a Local SEO Audit

Google describes local ranking through relevance, distance and prominence in its official local ranking guidance. Map each check below to one of those factors and record the evidence available to the business.

The audit covers three interconnected areas. First, your Google Business Profile — the listing that appears in map packs, Google Maps, and the knowledge panel. This profile often drives more phone calls and direction requests than your website does. Second, your off-site presence — directory listings, citations, review platforms, and social profiles that collectively validate your business's name, address, phone number, and legitimacy. Third, your website's local relevance — how well your on-site content, schema markup, and technical setup support local ranking signals.

Most businesses dramatically underinvest in the first two areas. They spend months optimising their website for keywords while their Google Business Profile has an incorrect phone number, their Yelp listing shows an old address, and their only reviews are three years old. A local SEO audit identifies exactly where these gaps exist and prioritises fixes by their impact on local visibility.

The businesses that dominate local search are not always the ones with the best websites. They are the ones with the most complete, consistent, and actively managed local search presence. This audit ensures you are competing on all the factors that actually matter.

Google Business Profile Check

A Google Business Profile is a central asset for eligible local businesses. Audit the fields and evidence that apply to the business and follow Google's representation rules.

Audit your GBP against every available field:

Business name accuracy — your GBP name must match your real-world business name exactly. Do not stuff keywords into the business name (e.g., "Smith Plumbing - Emergency Plumber London 24/7"). Google's guidelines prohibit this, and competitors will report it. Check that your name matches your signage, business registration, and website.
Primary and secondary categories — choose the most specific primary category that describes the core real-world business and add relevant secondary categories. Category influence varies by query and competition, so do not present it as a universal top factor.
Business description — describe what the business does and who it serves without promotions, links or irrelevant keywords. Confirm the current field rules in Business Profile Help.
Photos and media — publish accurate and useful images of premises, staff, products or completed work where appropriate. Compare profile interactions before and after changes instead of applying a third-party correlation as a forecast.
Service areas and address — represent the location or service area accurately under Google's eligibility and representation rules. A service area does not override distance or create eligibility outside the real operation.
Hours of operation — verify that regular hours, special hours, and holiday hours are all correct. Incorrect hours lead to customers arriving at a closed business, resulting in negative reviews and lost trust.
Attributes — complete every applicable attribute (wheelchair accessible, free Wi-Fi, LGBTQ+ friendly, appointment required, etc.). Attributes appear in your listing and can be used as filters in Google Maps.
Products and services — add your products or services with descriptions and prices. This content appears directly in your GBP listing and gives potential customers a reason to choose you before clicking through to your website.

NAP Consistency Audit

Business identity data includes the name, address or service area, phone number, hours and website. Verify material differences that could send customers to the wrong place or split profiles.

Prioritise incorrect or obsolete data over cosmetic punctuation and abbreviation differences. Record the source, correction route and owner for each material inconsistency.

Conduct your NAP audit in three steps:

Define your canonical NAP — establish the exact business name, address, and phone number that should appear everywhere. Write it down exactly as it should appear, including punctuation, abbreviations, and formatting. This becomes your reference standard.
Audit owned properties — check the website, Business Profile and controlled social profiles. Correct wrong addresses, numbers, hours and URLs; harmless formatting differences need not become urgent SEO findings.
Audit third-party citations — search for your business name in Google, Bing, and across major directories. Check Yell, Thomson Local, Yelp, TripAdvisor (if applicable), industry-specific directories, local chambers of commerce, and any other platforms where your business appears. Catalogue every inconsistency.

Listing tools can help discover profiles but their directory coverage varies. Verify each important correction in the source and measure customer or search outcomes without promising a ranking timescale.

Local Landing Pages

Create a location page only when it helps a real user complete a local task. Google's spam policies prohibit doorway abuse; repeated city-name substitutions are a warning sign rather than an automatic penalty finding.

Audit your existing local landing pages against these criteria:

Real local task and evidence — create a location page only for an office or service area the business can substantiate and only when the page helps a user complete a distinct local task. Use accurate first-party details such as the actual offer, staff, access, availability and contact route; never invent landmarks, testimonials, directions or local considerations to make a city substitution look unique.
Title and meta structure — describe the real service and location accurately when local intent is central to the page. Avoid a city modifier when the page has no distinct local offer, and write the description for the task rather than a fixed keyword pattern.
Internal linking — location pages should link to your main service pages and to adjacent location pages where relevant. They should be linked from your site navigation, footer, or a dedicated "areas we serve" hub page — not hidden in the body text of a blog post.
Contact information — show the address only for a real customer-facing location and the phone or booking route the business actually uses. A remote or service-area business should explain coverage truthfully rather than imply a local office.
Map usefulness — embed a map when it helps a visitor reach a real location. A map does not prove geographic relevance and should not be added to a remote-service page merely for SEO.

If the same remote offer applies across many areas, use a clear service-area hub rather than multiplying near-identical pages. Expand only when verified local differences support a separate user task; page count is not a quality target.

Review Strategy Audit

Google says reviews and positive ratings can contribute to prominence. Review the business's actual profile and response process without predicting a map position or conversion rate from review volume.

Your review audit should assess:

Total review count — record current review patterns for eligible local peers in a dated sample, then examine service and response themes. A count gap does not quantify ranking disadvantage or justify a quota.
Average rating — compare rating patterns and read recent reviews for operational themes. There is no universal rating threshold that proves trust or search performance.
Review recency — record when genuine reviews arrive and whether service or location changes explain gaps. Do not claim a specific freshness weighting that Google has not published.
Review responses — check whether you respond to every review, both positive and negative. Responding to reviews signals active management and can positively influence potential customers reading reviews. Google's own documentation recommends responding to reviews.
Review platforms beyond Google — check only platforms customers use and the business is eligible to join. Measure referral and reputation value directly rather than assigning an unpublished map-ranking weight.
Review generation process — assess whether you have a systematic process for requesting reviews from satisfied customers. The businesses with the most reviews are not necessarily the best — they are the ones that consistently ask. Audit whether you have automated review request emails, follow-up SMS messages, or in-person prompts built into your customer journey.

Citation Audit

Citations are external references to business identity data. Audit sources that customers or major platforms use and prioritise correctness, eligibility and duplicate resolution; Google does not publish a universal citation score.

Your citation audit should cover:

Core platform presence — verify appropriate profiles on Google, Bing, Apple and relevant local or industry services. Claim only profiles the business is eligible to manage and judge value beyond citation count.
Industry-specific directories — identify directories that appear for relevant queries or send qualified referrals and verify eligibility, accuracy and duplicate handling. Do not infer value from an authority score or assume an industry directory carries a fixed ranking weight.
Duplicate listings — search for duplicate listings of your business on each directory. Duplicates split your review count, create NAP inconsistencies, and confuse both users and search engines. Merge or delete duplicates wherever the platform allows it.
Competitor citation gap — use a tool like Whitespark's citation finder to discover where your competitors are listed that you are not. These represent opportunities to match and exceed their citation profile.
Citation quality — not all citations carry equal weight. A listing on a high-authority, well-maintained directory is worth more than dozens of listings on spam directories. Focus your efforts on quality directories with real traffic and proper editorial standards.

Local Schema Markup

LocalBusiness structured data can describe visible business details in machine-readable form. It does not create Business Profile eligibility or guarantee knowledge-panel, map or rich-result visibility.

Your schema audit should verify these elements on your homepage and contact page at minimum:

LocalBusiness type specificity — use the most specific Schema.org type that applies. Instead of generic "LocalBusiness," use "Plumber," "Restaurant," "LegalService," "Dentist," or whatever subtype matches your business. Specificity helps Google understand exactly what you do.
Complete address markup — include streetAddress, addressLocality, addressRegion, postalCode, and addressCountry as separate fields within the PostalAddress object. This granularity helps Google match your business to specific geographic queries.
Opening hours — mark up your hours using the OpeningHoursSpecification type. Include special hours for holidays. This data can appear directly in search results and voice search answers.
GeoCoordinates — include accurate latitude and longitude only when they describe a visible eligible location. Coordinates do not override Google's distance calculation.
Reviews and ratings — keep visible reviews genuine, attributable and compliant with the platform and governing rules. Google does not show self-serving review snippets for LocalBusiness, Organization or their subtypes when the reviewed entity controls the site, including third-party widgets; do not promise a rich result from that markup.
SameAs references — include sameAs properties linking to your Google Business Profile, social media profiles, and directory listings. This helps search engines connect your various online presences as belonging to the same entity.

Validate your schema using Google's Rich Results Test and check Search Console for any structured data errors. Even small formatting issues — a missing closing bracket, an incorrect data type — can invalidate your entire schema block.

Competitor Local Analysis

Competitive review shows how result composition and visible business evidence differ for sampled queries. Record location, device, date and result types because local results vary.

Analyse your top five local competitors across these dimensions:

GBP completeness comparison — review each competitor's Google Business Profile. Note their categories, photo count, review count and average rating, posting frequency, and how completely they have filled out their profile. Identify areas where you can match or exceed their profile completeness.
Review velocity — track how many new reviews each competitor receives per month. This tells you the pace you need to maintain to close the review gap. If a competitor gains 15 reviews per month and you gain 3, the gap will widen even if you are improving.
Citation profile — use Whitespark or BrightLocal to compare your citation count and quality against competitors. Identify directories where competitors are listed that you are not, and prioritise claiming those listings.
Website local signals — review competitor websites for local content quality. Do they have detailed service area pages? Do they publish local blog content? Is their schema markup more complete than yours? These observations reveal the content investment required to compete.
Backlink comparison — local backlinks from regional news sites, local business associations, community organisations, and event sponsorships carry particular weight in local search. Use Ahrefs or Semrush to identify local backlinks your competitors have earned and develop a strategy to earn similar links.

Use a comparison matrix to identify accurate information, helpful local content or relevant relationships the business is missing. Refresh it when the market or business changes and avoid treating competitor counts as targets by themselves.