Local SEO ranking checklist: seven steps to rank in Google's local pack

Executive overview

Most businesses treat their Google My Business listing as a one-time setup and ignore the rest. Local pack rankings depend on three variables — relevance, distance, and prominence — and prominence is where most businesses lose ground. This checklist covers the seven highest-leverage actions to improve all three.

Getting geo-targeted relevance right, in both content and backlinks, is what separates top local pack results from the rest.

Google's three local ranking factors

• Relevance: how well your profile and pages match the search query; controlled via on-page SEO and topical geo-targeted content
• Distance: Google uses your registered address to determine proximity; an address central to the target city is non-negotiable
• Prominence: how well-known your business is; driven by review count and score, backlinks, citation accuracy, and organic rankings

Optimising your Google My Business listing

• Benchmark current performance before making changes
• Respond to every existing review — good and bad; most competitors skip this
• Add at least 10 unique images (more is better)
• Create product/service listings and inject your primary keyword where natural
• Add FAQs: brainstorm questions, then have people in the target location submit them on your listing

GMB posting schedule

• Posts expire after 7 days; publish at least one new post per week
• Review Google's GMB posting guidelines before publishing
• Match post type to funnel stage: blog/video content (top), webinars/white papers (middle), reviews, testimonials, case studies, promotions, new products (bottom)

Citation cleanup

• Use SEMrush's Listing Management tool: enter your company name, run the scan
• SEMrush surfaces existing listings and gaps
• Fix NAPW (name, address, phone, website) accuracy across all directories before building new citations

Getting more reviews

• Set a target: find the average review count for the top 3 competitors and beat the highest
• Best source of reviews: do exceptional work — organic reviews follow
• For active outreach: generate a GMB review link (Share Review Form) and send it to happy clients
• Make review collection part of company culture and process

Optimising existing pages

• Primary keyword must appear in URL, title, H1, first sentence, and last sentence
• Use SEMrush's On-Page SEO Checker for strategy, content, semantic, technical, UX, and link-building recommendations
• Add your address prominently on the target page
• Use schema markup; embedding a Google Map on the page may also help

Creating geo-targeted content

• Find high-traffic national keyword questions, then localise them (e.g. "how much does a plumber cost in St. Louis")
• Only localise topics where the answer genuinely varies by location — avoid spammy location-tagged pages for universal queries
• Use SEMrush Keyword Overview → Questions filter to find localisation candidates

Acquiring local backlinks

• Content-first: create assets worth linking to, then promote
• Sponsor/donation links: search "[city] listed donors" or "[city] sponsors" to find pages that link out
• Local bloggers: search "[city] blogger" and pitch collaboration
• Ideal local backlink: topically and geo-targeted relevant; geo-only or niche-only links still build authority