Local SEO: The 5 Things to Do This Week (A Real Business Owner's Checklist)

I have run a cleaning business for over 11 years. For most of that time, our website brought in more work than word of mouth. Not because we spent money on ads. Not because we had some clever marketing strategy. Because we did the boring local SEO basics, and we did them properly.

Most guides to local SEO read like a textbook. They throw around terms like "citations" and "backlink profile" and "E-E-A-T signals" without ever telling you what to actually do on a Tuesday afternoon. This is not one of those guides. This is a checklist. Five things. One week. All free.

Monday: Claim and fill out your Google Business Profile properly

Google Business Profile is the panel that shows up on the right of Google when someone searches for your type of business locally. It is also what populates Google Maps. And it is completely free. If you do nothing else this week, do this.

Go to google.com/business and claim your profile if you have not already. Then fill in every single field: your exact business name, your full address written the same way it appears on your website, your phone number, your opening hours, the areas you serve. Upload at least ten real photos, your van, your shopfront, your team, your work. Do not use stock photos. Real photos of real work tell Google and your customers that you are a genuine local business.

One thing I learned the hard way: set your opening hours accurately and keep them accurate. If Google thinks you are open on a Sunday and someone turns up to a closed shop, they leave a one-star review. That one star costs you enquiries for months.

Tuesday: Fix your page titles so they actually say what you do

The title tag is the blue clickable link in Google search results. It is the single most important bit of text on any page of your website. Most small business homepages have a title like "Home | Company Name." That tells Google roughly nothing.

Open your website. Look at the browser tab at the top of the screen. That text is your title tag. Now ask yourself: if a stranger read that, would they know what you do and where you do it? If the answer is no, change it.

A plumber in Blackburn should have something like "Emergency Plumber Blackburn | 24-Hour Callouts | Company Name." A roofer in Clitheroe might use "Roofing Services Clitheroe | Flat Roofs, Repairs & New Roofs | Company Name." Put your main service and your location first. Keep it under 60 characters so it does not get chopped off in search results. Do not list every town you have ever worked in, one or two is enough.

Wednesday: Write proper descriptions for your five most important pages

The meta description is the two lines of grey text under the blue title in Google results. It does not directly affect your ranking, but real people read it before deciding whether to click on your listing. A good one gets the click. A bad one sends them to your competitor.

Go through your homepage, your main service page, your about page, your contact page, and one other page that matters to your business. For each one, write a description that says: what this page is about, where you are based, and why someone should pick you. Keep it under 155 characters. No marketing fluff, just facts.

Instead of "We are a family-run business offering high-quality roofing services at competitive prices" (which says absolutely nothing), try "Roofing services in Clitheroe and the Ribble Valley. Flat roofs, repairs, and new roofs. Free quotes, 20 years of local trade, call 01200 XXX XXX." That tells a customer everything they need to know in three seconds.

Thursday: Make your NAP consistent everywhere it appears online

NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone number. Google checks whether your business details match across your website, your Google Business Profile, your Facebook page, and any directory you appear on (Yell, Checkatrade, TrustATrader, and dozens of others you probably never signed up for). If your address is "12 High Street" on your website but "12 High St" on a directory listing, Google gets a little less confident that you are a real business at a real location. Your rankings drop.

The fix is boring but it works. Pick one exact format for your address and phone number and use it everywhere. "12 High Street, Clitheroe, BB7 1AB", that exact wording, with that exact punctuation, on every platform. Google your own business name and phone number. You will almost certainly find directory listings you did not create. Spend an hour checking them. Fix any that are wrong. It is tedious work, but it is one of the few local SEO tasks where the effort-to-results ratio is genuinely good.

Friday: Ask three happy customers for a Google review

Reviews are the thing that tips someone from "I might call these people" to "I am calling them now." They also directly affect where you appear in Google's local results. A business with 15 genuine reviews will almost always outrank one with 2 reviews, even if the second business has a better website.

You do not need fifty reviews overnight. Aim for three this week. Pick three customers you did good work for recently. Send them a short, personal message, not a template, not a marketing email. Something like: "Hi Dave, thanks again for the work last month. If you have got two minutes, a Google review would really help us out. Here is the link: [your review link]." Most people are happy to help. They just need the prompt and the link.

Do not be tempted by fake reviews. Google is surprisingly good at spotting them, and the penalty is worse than having no reviews at all. Real reviews from real customers, even short ones, even ones with a few typos, are worth more than a hundred polished fakes.

What you will have by Saturday

A properly filled-out Google Business Profile with real photos. Page titles that actually tell Google what you do and where. Meta descriptions that get people clicking instead of scrolling past. Matching business details across the web. And three new genuine reviews.

That is five things. All free. All doable in a week. And together they make more difference to your local search visibility than anything you could pay an agency to do.

If you want a website that has all of this built in properly from day one, page titles, meta descriptions, schema markup, the lot, that is what we do at Fehu. But honestly? You can make a real difference yourself just by working through this list. Start Monday.