A site alone does not win local search — your listings have to agree with it. This is the exact order we set up local rank for clients, using Moz Local so one verified profile feeds every directory that matters. Do it yourself in an afternoon.
Follow it top to bottom — each step depends on the one above it.
Pick one exact business name, one address format, one tracking-free phone number and one homepage URL. Write it down. Every directory has to match it character for character — this single decision decides whether the rest of the work compounds or cancels itself out.
⏱ 15 min
GBP is the map pack. Verify the listing, set the primary category precisely, add services with descriptions, hours, service areas, 15+ real photos, and turn on messaging. This outranks every directory you will touch after it.
⏱ 45 min
Go to moz.com/products/local, search your business name and city, and pick the plan that matches your locations. Moz Local pushes one verified profile out to the data aggregators, Apple, Bing, Facebook, Yelp and dozens of directories, then keeps them synced.
⏱ 20 min
Open Moz Local ↗Enter the same name, address, phone, URL, categories, hours and description you locked in step one. Add your logo, cover photo, payment methods and social profiles so directories that pull rich data get the full record.
⏱ 25 min
Run Moz's duplicate detection and resolve every flagged listing — old addresses, tracking numbers, misspelled names, listings from a previous marketer. Duplicates split your authority and are the most common reason a solid site still misses the map pack.
⏱ 30–60 min
Build a Studio page for each city or service area you claim in your listings, with the same phone and address in the footer plus LocalBusiness schema. Listings tell Google where you work; the pages prove it.
⏱ Studio does it
Once a month: re-run Moz's listing score, respond to every new review, post one GBP update, and re-scan your grid rankings. Local SEO is maintenance work — 30 focused minutes beats a frantic rebuild every quarter.
⏱ 30 min/mo
Listing consistency is one of the strongest local ranking factors — before content, before links.
One stale duplicate with an old phone number can flatten an otherwise clean profile.
Moz feeds the data sources other directories copy from, so one fix propagates instead of 40 logins.
Volume plus recency plus replies — a dead review feed reads as a dead business to searchers.
The wrong primary category makes you invisible for the searches that actually convert.
Photos, hours and services filled in fully lift conversion even when rank does not move.
We built Studio for owners and agencies who cannot hand someone $2,000 a month yet. Ship the site here, run the checklist above, and track it from your dashboard.
Once the business can afford to hand it off, our team takes the whole program — listings, citations, content, links, reporting — so you stop doing it at 11pm.