The Quarterly Local SEO Tune-Up (A Half-Day Checklist)

Why every quarter

The monthly routine is small on purpose: posts, a page, reviews, your numbers. Some checks don't need doing every month, but they quietly break if you never do them. A listing gets an old phone number. A form stops sending. A competitor moves up.

So once a quarter, block a morning. The six checks below take about half a day by our estimate. Put the next four dates in your calendar now.

1. Your listings match everywhere (1 hour)

Search your business name and check the big sites: Google, Apple, Bing, Facebook, Yelp, BBB and the directories for your industry. Same name, same address, same phone, same hours.

Why bother? BrightLocal says "citation signals play a role in Local Pack rankings." (BrightLocal) In Whitespark's 2026 report, Dani Owens called them "still critical to building foundational citations and being eligible to rank in the Local Pack." And Darren Shaw warned that if your details are wrong on prominent sites, "Google is very likely to automatically update your GBP with that inaccurate data, and it can cause problems with verification as well." (Whitespark)

Two of the big ones moved recently:

• Bing Places moved "from www.bingplaces.com to www.bing.com/forbusiness," and it can import your Google profile. (Bing blog)
• Apple Business Connect is now Apple Business. "Apple is discontinuing Apple Business Essentials, Apple Business Manager, and Apple Business Connect," and the new Apple Business is free. (MacRumors)

Skip the services that submit you to hundreds of directories. Brian Barwig, in the same report: "Most other citations are still worthless." (Whitespark) A few accurate, important listings beat a pile of junk.

2. Really update your three busiest pages (1 to 2 hours)

Find your three busiest pages in Analytics. Here's where to look. Then make real changes: new facts, new prices, new photos of recent jobs, answers to questions customers asked this quarter.

Real changes only. Moving the date without changing the page is something Google's own checklist warns about. More on that here.

3. Test your site on your phone (20 minutes)

Open your site on your own phone. Google's "good" targets: the main content shows "within the first 2.5 seconds," the page responds to a tap in "less than 200 milliseconds," and the layout doesn't jump around (a shift score "less than 0.1"). (Google Search Central)

Our recommendation: test on mobile data, not Wi-Fi. If a page feels slow, shrink the big images first.

4. Click every button, send a test form (20 minutes)

Tap your phone number. Send yourself the contact form. Make a test booking, then cancel it. Check that each one reaches you, and fast.

This is our recommendation, and it's the check most owners skip. A form that quietly stopped sending costs you leads every day until someone notices.

5. Check who's above you (30 minutes)

Search your main service and your town, on your phone. Look at the businesses above you in the map and below it. Note what their profile and site have that yours doesn't: more recent reviews, more photos, a page for the service you searched.

Then add the missing pieces to your own plan. Our recommendation: copy the idea, never the words.

One warning. You may see a competitor with keywords stuffed into their business name. It can work, but it breaks Google's rules and can get a profile suspended. Here's why. And remember that others watch you too: Phil Rozek told Whitespark, "Competitors' scrutiny of your GBP page is the #1 suspension risk." (Whitespark) Keep your own profile clean.

6. Earn one mention (1 hour)

Get your business named somewhere real: a local news story, your chamber of commerce or trade association, a sponsorship, a "best of" list.

Whitespark's experts ranked the quality of the sites linking to you #3 for regular local results, and links from sites in your industry #5. For showing up in AI answers, they put "best of" lists #1 and mentions in news, blogs, government and association sites #4. (Whitespark) Those are expert opinion scores, not measured data, but they all point the same way: real mentions on real sites.

Our recommendation: one a quarter is plenty. Sponsor the youth team, give a quote to the local paper, join the association for your trade. Four a year adds up.

While you're in there

Coming up on a holiday? Set your holiday hours now. Google's rules are here.

Drop 08 has this tune-up as a checklist you can tick off, with our time estimate for each check.