The Local SEO Audit Checklist Agencies Actually Use

Browsers actively flag non-HTTPS sites as "Not Secure," and Google has used HTTPS as a ranking signal since 2014. A site still on plain HTTP is both a trust problem and an SEO problem at the same time.

Fix: Most hosts now issue a free TLS certificate (Let's Encrypt or equivalent) in a couple of clicks - this is usually the single fastest win on the whole list.

The title tag is the clickable headline in search results and the browser tab label. No title tag means Google has to guess what the page is about, and often shows something worse than what the business would have written itself.

Fix: Every page needs a unique, descriptive <title> - typically "Primary service - location - business name."

Search results truncate titles past roughly 60 characters, and titles under 30 usually waste an opportunity to say more. Both ends leave value on the table.

Fix: Aim for the 30-60 character range - room for a service, a location, and a brand name without truncation.

The meta description is the preview text under the title in search results. Without one, Google pulls a snippet from wherever on the page it thinks is relevant - usually a worse pitch than the business would write for itself.

Fix: Write one or two sentences describing what the business does and where, written for a person deciding whether to click, not for a search engine.

Same truncation problem as the title, on a longer budget - Google generally shows up to about 160 characters before cutting off with an ellipsis.

Fix: Keep it in the 50-160 character range, front-loaded with the most persuasive detail in case of truncation on mobile.

The H1 tells both visitors and search engines the single main topic of the page. Pages that skip straight to smaller headings or plain paragraphs give up a strong, cheap relevance signal.

Fix: One clear H1 per page, matching what the page is actually about - typically the main service or the business name plus location.

Several competing H1s dilute the "what is this page about" signal instead of strengthening it, and usually point at a template issue rather than a deliberate choice.

Fix: One H1 per page; demote the rest to H2/H3 in the document outline.

A homepage that's just a logo, a phone number, and a contact form gives search engines almost nothing to match against real search queries - even a great business can be invisible for this reason alone.

Fix: A genuine paragraph or two about the business, its services, and its location covers this - it doesn't need to be a blog.

Without a viewport tag, mobile browsers render the page at desktop width and shrink it to fit - tiny, unreadable text on the device most local searches actually happen on.

Fix: Add <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> to the page head. Nearly every modern site template already includes this by default, which is exactly why its absence is a useful red flag for how old a site's build really is.

Alt text is how screen readers describe images to visually impaired visitors, and it's a real (if secondary) relevance signal for image search. A site where most images have none is usually a broader accessibility gap, not just an SEO one.

Fix: Describe what's actually in each meaningful image in a few words - what it shows, not "image123.jpg."

JSON-LD or microdata markup (LocalBusiness schema, in most cases) is how a business tells Google specifics - hours, address, review rating - directly, rather than hoping it's inferred correctly from page text. It's what unlocks rich results like star ratings in search.

Fix: Add LocalBusiness JSON-LD markup with name, address, phone, and hours - most site builders have a plugin or built-in field for this.

Without a canonical tag, sites that are reachable at multiple URLs (with and without "www," with tracking parameters, and so on) risk having their relevance signals split across what Google sees as duplicate pages.

Fix: Add <link rel="canonical" href="..."> pointing at the one preferred URL for each page.

Open Graph tags control how a page looks when shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, and most messaging apps. Without them, a shared link often renders with no image and a blank or wrong description - it costs the business every time someone tries to share it.

Fix: Add og:title, og:description, and og:image tags - most of this content already exists in the title and meta description and just needs duplicating into the Open Graph namespace.

robots.txt is one of the first things a crawler checks, and its absence is a small but real signal that a site was never properly finished or maintained.

Fix: A minimal robots.txt allowing full crawl access, with a pointer to the sitemap, takes minutes to add.

A sitemap gives search engines a direct list of every page worth indexing, instead of relying entirely on discovering links by crawling. For small sites it's not critical, but its absence often correlates with other neglected basics - as with several checks on this list.

Fix: Most CMSs generate one automatically; for a hand-built site, a simple static XML file listing each real page is enough.