Did your web developer have a local SEO checklist? 50% of consumers who do a local search on mobile devices for a business, visit that store within a day. It is essential that your website ranks highly on the search engine results page and Google’s ‘Snack Pack’. I bet you would like to know.
Below is a smiple list of items that we review for each new customer, independent of who build the website. We are committed to our clients success and review the sites to ensure long term growth for our clients.
Keywords 
- Target keywords are present in these key locations:
- Website pages are optimized with targeted keywords
- Listings
- Reviews
- Social sites
- Site is connected with:
- Google Analytics
- Search Console
Competitor Research
- Make a list of competitors in the area and compare these SEO stats with your client:
- GMB ranking for top keywords
- Organic rankings for top keywords
- Review quantity and quality across top relevant review sites like GMB, Facebook, Yelp, etc.
- Number of links
- Number of citations
- Site Speed
- Social Stats
Google My Business Listing
- Has a GMB listing?
- If so, is it claimed and verified?
- All business information present and correct?
- Has multiple reviews and a high cumulative rating?
- Responding to reviews?
- Has proper GMB categories?
- Has multiple images of the business?
- Have created any GMB posts?
- Has Questions & Answers section?
Reviews
- Has positive ratings and reviews on core review sites?
- Google My Business
- Yelp
- Has positive ratings and reviews on vertical-specific sites?
- Houzz
- Tripadvisor
- Healthgrades
Links
- Has multiple relevant local links?
- Has links with industry or vertical topic clusters?
- Has links with high domain authority?
- No spammy, off-topic links
- No links from resource pages that contains hundreds of links
- No links from guestbooks that contains hundreds of links
Citations
- Name/Address/Phone (NAP) is correct for structured citations
- Always - Often
- Seldom - Never
- Name/Address/Phone (NAP) is correct for UNstructured citations
- Always - Often
- Seldom – Never
Schema-Markup for Local 
- Has correct schema markup on website?
- Has correct JSON-LD on website?
- Has correct schema markup on website pages-posts?
Main Pages
Keywords optimization
- Has keywords in meta tags (title and description)?
- Title lengths are about 65 characters (512 pixel)?
- Meta description lengths are 225-300 characters?
- Has keywords in page titles?
- Has keywords in URL? (It’s okay to have stop words, or break up long tail keywords as long as all words are contained)
- Has brand name at the end of SERP title?
- Keyword density is 2-3% (combined all keywords)?
- Content Length is at least 570 words
Image SEO
- Has alt tags on images? (Tags should contain keywords, but no keyword stuffing. Alt tags should be succinct—like you were describing the image in a caption)
- Has keywords in image title and description? (Most of the people leave this option but it can certainly boost keyword rank)
Website Speed
- Site loading time is less than 3 seconds?
- Has Google PageSpeed Insights Score of at least 80 on mobile?
- Has Google PageSpeed Insights Score of at least 70 on desktop?
Site Engagement 
- Check analytics for:
- Time spent on site
- Pages per session
- Bounce rate
Social Engagement
- Check number of people that like your client’s page on Facebook
- Check Facebook shares & likes per post
- Compare to local competitors
- Check number of Twitter followers
- Check Twitter retweets & likes per tweet
- Check Tweets mentioning your brand name
- Compare to local competitors
- Check number of LinkedIn company followers
- Check Linkedin shares per post
- Compare to local competitors
We at Preferred Digital Solutions would like to provide you with a few helpful tools on your quest to conquer Local SEO, take a look at OnSite SOE and Local SEO Pro or inquire about a local SEO checklist review. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
