Sample layout. Not a real client.
Trade, city: the problem in one line
- Starting point
- Rank grid before any change
- What changed
- The one or two changes that moved it
- Result
- Rank grid after, and the change in calls
A local SEO audit shows where you appear on the map, and where you stop.
Searching your own trade from your own office tells you very little. A local SEO audit measures your map position from points across your service area and looks for the reasons it falls away.
No long contracts. You talk to Simon.
Map pack: water heater replacement Oceanside
A
B
C
- 17 years in SEO
- Engineering degrees
- 85% of clients in San Diego County
- No long contracts
What one search from your office hides
- You rank first at the shop and nowhere in Carlsbad
- A competitor farther away shows up in your neighborhoods
- Nobody has checked the profile against Google's rules
How a local audit runs
Scientific SEO
- 1 Measure I map each main service on a rank grid laid over your service area.
- 2 Change one thing You correct one problem, such as the primary category or one missing page.
- 3 Measure again I run the same grid again about two weeks after the change.
- 4 Keep what works You reverse or drop any change the grid ignored, and the others stay.
What a local SEO audit measures, and what it can explain
A local SEO audit measures where a business appears in Google’s map results across its whole service area, then examines the profile, listings, reviews and website signals that explain the pattern. It’s the part of a Scientific SEO Audit that matters most to a company whose customers search for a trade and a place.
Why the audit starts with a map
Local rankings change from one neighborhood to the next. Google says it ranks local results on relevance, distance and prominence, and it judges distance from the person searching, so a plumbing company based in Oceanside can hold first position near its shop and be absent in Carlsbad for the identical search.
A rank grid, the measurement used in local rank tracking, records this: the same search run from a set of points laid over your service area. I run one for each main service, because the pattern for drain cleaning can differ from the pattern for water heaters.
What the grid is compared against
The grid shows where you drop out, and the rest of the audit looks for the reason.
| Area | What I check | What a problem looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | Categories, listed services, service area, hours, and whether the profile follows Google’s rules | A primary category that describes a sideline and not the main trade |
| Listings | Whether your name, address and phone number match across the directories that carry them | An old phone number still published on several sites |
| Reviews | Count, recency and what customers mention, set beside the companies that outrank you | Plenty of reviews, with few written in the last year |
| Website | Whether there’s a page for each service and for the places you most want work from | One services page covering everything, with no place named |
The largest of the four is the profile check, in effect a Google Business Profile audit.
Telling distance from weakness
If visibility fades evenly as the grid moves away from your address, and the companies that replace you’re simply closer, that is mostly distance, the usual reason for ranking near your office and not across town. If you vanish in one direction only, or a competitor based farther away appears where you don’t, something else is at work, and that is what I test. Separating the two is the main judgment in a local audit.
What a local audit can’t change
No legitimate tactic makes Google treat you as nearer to a customer than you are, and an audit can’t move your address. Tricks that try, such as a profile registered at an address where nobody works, break Google’s rules and can get a profile suspended.
I mark which parts of the county look within reach from your current location. For the parts that don’t, you can aim search ads at a place regardless of where your office is.
What comes out of it
You get the grids, each with its date because map results shift, and the problems found, then an ordered list of single changes to test. Each change names the grid that should move if the idea is right. For example, I measure a category change on the grid for the service that category describes. Problems with a known cause, such as a wrong phone number on a listing, go in as plain corrections that need no test.
Also in Scientific SEO Audits
What a result looks like
Every engagement starts and ends with the same measurement.
Local SEO audits across San Diego County
I searched on my phone and I am number one. Why would I need an audit?
Because that search was run from one place, most likely your own office or home. Distance between the searcher and the business is one of the things Google ranks map results on, so you're seeing something close to your best position. A customer eight miles away sees a different list, and you can be first near your shop and absent in the next city. A rank grid shows the result from many points at once, which is a fairer picture of a service area.
We have no storefront and hide our address. Can a local audit still be done?
Yes. A service-area business with a hidden address still has map rankings, and I can measure them on a grid in the same way. The audit also checks that the service area on the profile is set up within Google's rules, since a company that works from a home or a yard has different requirements from one with a shop customers visit.
Does a local audit cover my website as well?
It covers the parts of the site that feed local rankings: whether each service has its own page and the places you want work from are named, and whether the business facts on the site match the profile. It doesn't inspect how Google crawls and indexes the site. That's the technical SEO audit, which I can add if the grids point to a site problem.
How many searches do you measure?
One per distinct service, since AC repair and furnace installation can bring up different competitors. I prefer a few searches that lead to booked jobs over a long list few people type, and we agree on the list first.
See your map visibility across your service area.
Once I know your trade, where you're based and the cities you want work from, I can tell you what a local audit would measure.
- A rank grid showing where you appear, and where you don't
- The technical and Google Business Profile issues that matter most
- What I'd change first, in plain English
Prefer to talk? Call (619) 675-7678, 9am to 6pm.