What a website can and cannot do for local rankings
Local results draw on three kinds of signals: the business profile, the website, and references to the business elsewhere. This audit covers the second. Google says local ranking is based on relevance, distance and prominence; the website contributes relevance (what you do and where) and part of prominence (links and mentions). A website cannot fix an incomplete business profile or a wrong address in a directory, so treat the audit as one of three checklists, not the whole job.
Where the website matters most is clarity. A location page that states the service, the area, the hours and the phone number in plain HTML, backed by LocalBusiness structured data, gives both search engines and AI assistants something unambiguous to cite. The audit’s content and AI visibility categories measure that directly.
What this audit looks at for local sites
The audit runs the same 60+ checks as the main tool. The items below are the ones that most often decide the outcome for this kind of site, with the fix we recommend.
- LocalBusiness structured data
- Name, address, phone, opening hours and geo coordinates in LocalBusiness JSON-LD help search engines and assistants connect the page to a real place. The audit checks for the type, parses it and flags syntax errors.
- Entity markup with sameAs
- Links to your Google Business Profile, social profiles and directory listings in sameAs help disambiguate the business. The audit checks for Organization or LocalBusiness markup with sameAs.
- Mobile viewport and performance
- Most local searches happen on phones. The audit checks the viewport tag and pulls mobile Core Web Vitals.
- Location page content
- Location pages with only an address and a map are thin. The audit measures extractable text, headings and whether service questions are answered directly.
- HTTPS and security headers
- Many small-business sites still serve mixed content or lack HSTS. The audit checks the certificate, redirects and headers.
- AI crawler access
- Assistants answer “best plumber near me” style questions from pages they can read. The audit checks robots rules and fetches the page as the main AI crawlers.
Frequently asked questions
- Does this audit check my Google Business Profile?
- No. It audits your website, which is one of the inputs to local rankings. Google Business Profile completeness, reviews and citations are covered in the local SEO audit checklist.
- Which page should I test?
- Your main location or service page, then the homepage. Multi-location businesses should test one location page as a template check.
- What is NAP consistency and does the audit check it?
- NAP is name, address and phone. The audit reads what is on the page and in structured data; it does not compare against directories. Consistency across directories is a manual or paid-tool task.
- Is the score comparable to other local SEO tools?
- Scores differ by tool because each measures different things. Ours is explained on the methodology page; use it to prioritize, not to compare with another tool’s number.