Guide · Local search
A local SEO checklist
in the right order.
Most local SEO checklists are alphabetical, which is useless — the items are not equally valuable and doing them out of order wastes months. This one is in the order we work through it, with the reason each item is where it is.
Published 2026-09-08 · Formory Group
1. The Google Business Profile, completely.
Primary category exactly right, secondary categories only where they are true, service area set if you travel to customers, hours published, services listed with descriptions, and at least ten photographs that are not stock. 11,503 of the 49,994 GTA listings we surveyed publish no hours at all, which is a solved problem sitting unsolved.
This is first because it is free, takes an afternoon, and affects the map pack, which is where most local searches end.
2. Name, address and phone, identical everywhere.
The listing, the website footer, the contact page and any directory that mentions you must carry the same string. "Suite 4" in one place and "#4" in another is enough to weaken the association. This is dull work and it is why most businesses skip it.
3. A page for each service.
One page cannot rank for everything you do. Each service gets its own page, titled the way people search rather than the way the trade talks. 11,566 of the 34,180 sites we opened have page titles that never name the city they work in — which is the single most common local SEO fault in our data.
4. The technical floor.
HTTPS, a mobile layout, a page title and description on every page, one H1, and structured data for the business. 2,594 GTA sites are still served without HTTPS and 9,386 have no structured data at all. None of this makes you rank on its own; all of it is required to compete.
5. Reviews, steadily.
Ask at completion, ask everyone, reply to all of them. See the review medians by trade for what a realistic target looks like in your field, because the honest number varies by an order of magnitude between trades.
6. Measurement, before anything else changes.
11,594 of the sites we opened have no analytics at all, which means their owners cannot tell whether anything they do works. Put measurement in before the work, not after, or the next twelve months of effort will be unaccountable.
7. Links, last and slowly.
Local links from suppliers, associations, sponsorships and genuine local press. Not directories bought in bulk. This is last because it is the slowest and because a site failing items 3 and 4 will not convert the traffic anyway.
Questions
Asked often.
How long before any of this shows?
The map pack can move in weeks once the listing is fixed. Regular search results for competitive terms take three to six months of consistent work.
Do I need to blog?
Only if you have something specific to say that a customer would search for. Publishing thin posts on a schedule does nothing and costs time you could spend on service pages.
Is this different outside the GTA?
The order is the same anywhere. What changes is the competition on each item — a trade with forty competitors in one suburb needs the reviews step far more than one with four.
Your turn
Same check,
run on your site.
The check behind this page is the one we ran on every business above. Put your own address in and it will load your site on a phone screen, look at the certificate and the page age, and tell you what a visitor meets. No email, nothing stored.
Want the same for
your business?
Tell us what you do and where you work. We will look at what you have now and say plainly whether it is worth rebuilding — including when it is not.