Local SEO Starter

---
name: local-seo-starter
description: >
  Audit a local business's online presence for the ten most common local SEO problems a solo
  operator can fix without hiring anyone. Takes a business name, category, address, and website URL
  and produces a prioritized checklist with specific, concrete fixes for each issue.
usage: Provide the business name, category, address, and website URL. The skill walks through the ten-point audit in order and returns a checklist with fixes.
triggers:
  - "audit my Google Business profile"
  - "why don't I show up in local search"
  - "my competitor ranks higher than me"
  - "local SEO checklist"
  - "help me fix my business listing"
---

# Local SEO Starter

This skill audits a local business against ten common, fixable problems that hurt visibility in local search. It is a starter skill — intentionally not advanced — because most struggling local businesses are missing the basics, and the basics are free to fix.

## Scope

This skill handles businesses with a physical address or a defined service area that takes local customers: restaurants, shops, salons, home service providers, gyms, clinics, tutors, tradespeople, consultants who meet clients locally. It does not handle national e-commerce, pure online SaaS, or businesses that don't care about local search. If the user's business isn't local, say so in the first response and stop: "This skill is for businesses that want to show up in local search. If that isn't you, the generic-SEO skill is the right tool."

## What to collect first

Before running the audit, ask the user for exactly these four things, in one message, one question at a time is not necessary — ask for all four together:

1. Business name (exactly as it appears on the storefront or invoices)
2. Primary category (e.g., "vintage clothing store," "family dentistry," "residential electrician")
3. Street address (or service area cities if they don't have a storefront)
4. Website URL

If the user does not have a website, note it and continue — the audit still works, and one of the ten items becomes specifically about the website situation.

## The ten checks

Run through these in order. For each one, report: what the issue is in plain words, why it matters for local search, and the specific next action — concrete enough that the user could do it in the next fifteen minutes. Do not batch them into one response. Go one at a time, or at most two, and confirm the user is following along before continuing.

### 1. Google Business Profile completeness

Ask the user to open their Google Business Profile. Walk through the fields that are typically blank or wrong: business description, services list, attributes, year established, appointment URL. Tell them which ones matter most for their category. A "family dentistry" listing with no services list is invisible for anyone searching "teeth cleaning near me." Fix: list every service they actually provide, in the user's own words, not a template.

### 2. Business hours — every day, including edge cases

Most listings have weekday hours and miss: holiday hours, special Thursday-only hours, seasonal hours. Google penalizes listings with hours marked "unknown" on any day. Fix: fill in every day of the week, and set holiday hours twelve months out for the major holidays relevant to their category.

### 3. Primary category — is it the right one

This is the single highest-leverage fix on the list. Many businesses pick a category that is too generic ("Store") or too niche ("Antique Restoration Specialist") when the category with the most search volume for them is something obvious they missed. Walk them through how to check their primary category, explain that the primary category is weighted much more heavily than secondary categories, and help them decide whether to change it. Baseline: if a user searches for their service in plain words ("haircut," "tax preparation," "brake repair") and the user's category doesn't match that phrasing, the category is probably wrong.

### 4. Photos — inside, outside, and the work

A listing with three exterior photos and nothing else loses to a listing with twenty photos including interior shots, staff, products, and finished work. Google's algorithm favors listings with fresh photos, and customers click them. Fix: upload at least fifteen photos, grouped into: exterior (3), interior (5), team or owner (2), products or finished work (5). Take them on a phone, in good light, today.

### 5. Reviews — volume and recency, not just rating

Four stars with 80 recent reviews beats five stars with 3 reviews from 2021. Most solo operators have never explicitly asked a happy customer for a written review. Fix: write one short message the user can text or email to their last ten happy customers. Do not draft a "review farm" — draft one honest, specific ask. Example: "Hi Janet — I really appreciated the chance to work on the kitchen. If you have two minutes, a short Google review would mean a lot to me. Here's the direct link: [link]. No pressure if the timing's off."

### 6. Local keywords on the website

The user's homepage probably doesn't say the name of their city or neighborhood anywhere natural. Open the site and look. If "Asheville" or "Queen Anne" or "the East End" doesn't appear in the first visible paragraph, that's the fix. Not stuffed — one natural sentence. "We've been cutting hair in the Queen Anne neighborhood since 2019." Done.

### 7. Schema markup — LocalBusiness

If the site is on WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or any modern platform, LocalBusiness schema markup is a box the user can check in an SEO plugin settings page. It adds structured data Google reads to understand the business. Fix: point the user at the exact plugin or setting for their platform, or — if they're on a custom site — give them the exact JSON-LD block to paste into the homepage, with their real business name, address, phone, and hours substituted in.

### 8. Internal linking from the homepage

Most small-business sites have a homepage and an about page and a contact page, and the homepage never links to any internal pages. Every link helps Google understand the structure. Fix: add one sentence on the homepage that links to at least two internal pages with keyword-rich anchor text — "see our wedding catering menu" or "read about our approach to residential wiring." Not "click here."

### 9. NAP consistency (Name, Address, Phone)

The business name, address, and phone number should be identical across: the website contact page, the Google Business Profile, Yelp, Facebook, any industry-specific directories. "Suite 2B" on one and "#2B" on another is a consistency problem. Walk the user through checking the top five places their business is listed and correcting anything that doesn't match exactly.

### 10. Location or service page

If the business serves multiple neighborhoods or cities, the site probably has no dedicated page for any of them. A one-page site with a single "Contact" address loses to a site with a proper page for each area served. Fix: create one location page for the primary area, with unique content (not a template), a map embed, and a few sentences about the specific neighborhood. If the user only serves one location, skip this and use the homepage itself as the location page — but make sure the location is unmistakably clear in the first 150 words.

## How to handle the fixes the user can't do alone

Some items will hit a wall — the user doesn't have access to the website, doesn't know how to edit schema markup, doesn't want to ask for reviews because it feels awkward. For each wall, offer a practical next step:

- **No website access:** Identify who does have access (usually the person who built the site) and help draft a one-paragraph email to them listing the exact changes.
- **Schema markup is scary:** Provide the exact code block with their details filled in, plus instructions for the three most common platforms (WordPress + Yoast, Squarespace, plain HTML).
- **Review-ask feels awkward:** Draft the one-line message for them to send. Remind them that most happy customers are happy to help — they just need to be asked with low friction.

## Things this skill will not do

- **It will not promise rankings.** Say so plainly if asked: "I can't promise you'll rank in the top three. I can promise that fixing these ten things will put you in a noticeably better position within 30–60 days for most categories."
- **It will not recommend link-buying, review-buying, or any black-hat tactic.** These get listings suspended. If the user asks about them, explain the risk and decline.
- **It will not handle technical website performance.** Page speed, Core Web Vitals, hosting, and crawl issues are a different skill. If that's the user's real problem, say so and hand off.
- **It will not handle paid search.** Google Ads is a different tool. This skill is about organic local visibility only.

## How to close the session

At the end of the ten checks, give the user a short prioritized list: the top three fixes to do today, the next three for this week, and the final four for this month. Not all ten at once. Ten is too many. Three, three, and four. Tell them explicitly: do the three for today before anything else, then come back.

## Known baseline

For a typical solo operator in a common category (hair salon, electrician, café, tutor, dentist, accountant), three weeks after fixing items 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 from this list, most listings see a noticeable bump in "profile views" and "direction requests" in the Google Business Profile dashboard. That's the anchor metric for whether the work is paying off. Tell the user to look for that — not for ranking position, which is noisy and misleading week-to-week.