A free Claude skill that runs a real local SEO audit — map-pack baseline, citations, reviews, on-page, service pages — scored against the competitors actually outranking you, with a 30-day plan.
Local SEO is a comparison contest. This skill audits every area against the actual top three in your results and turns the gaps into a week-by-week plan.
Local businesses losing searches they should win: the plumber outranked by a two-truck shop, the dentist invisible outside a one-mile radius, the restaurant that only ranks for its own name.
Pairs with the GBP Optimizer skill for the deep listing audit — this one covers the whole battlefield.
“My competitor outranks me on Google.” · “Audit my local SEO.” · “How do I show up in the map pack?”
You tell Claude your services, your city, and what you see when you search “electrician ankeny.” Here's the heart of the report:
Baseline: “electrician ankeny” → not in the pack, organic #7
| Area | Score | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | 4/10 | HIGH |
| Reviews | 3/10 | HIGH |
| Citations / NAP | 5/10 | MED |
| On-page | 6/10 | MED |
| Service & city pages | 2/10 | HIGH |
| Local links | 4/10 | LOW |
The gap: The #1 competitor has 212 reviews gaining ~6/month against your 34 gaining ~1, and a dedicated panel-upgrade page that ranks on its own. Your services live as bullets on one page, and your old Grimes phone number is still on 4 of 8 citations.
Week 1: fix the four bad citations; set up the post-job review text with the direct link; brief the panel-upgrade service page (it's your highest-margin query).
Every score is relative to the businesses actually above you — and the plan starts with the two gaps costing the most calls.
Option 1 · Claude Code
In your terminal, run:
npx skills add buildwithreef/claude-skills
Pick local-seo-audit from the list (or install the whole set). Done.
Option 2 · Claude.ai
Download the .zip below, then in Claude.ai go to Settings → Capabilities → Skills and upload it.
Download local-seo-audit.zipOption 3 · Manual
Copy the SKILL.md below into ~/.claude/skills/local-seo-audit/SKILL.md. The zip also includes the itemized audit checklist the skill works through.
---
name: local-seo-audit
description: Runs a step-by-step local SEO audit covering Google Business Profile, citations and NAP consistency, reviews, on-page signals, and service-area pages, producing a scored report with a prioritized 30-day fix plan. Use when the user asks why they don't rank locally, wants a local SEO audit, or says things like "my competitor outranks me on Google", "audit my local SEO", or "how do I show up in the map pack".
---
# Local SEO Audit
Local SEO is a comparison contest: you don't need a perfect listing, you need a better one than the three businesses above you. Every step below is measured against the actual competitors in the results, not an abstract ideal.
## Step 0 — Define the money queries
Ask the user for their services and city/service area. Build the query list: every `[service] + [city]` combination that brings revenue ("water heater replacement des moines", "emergency plumber ankeny"). Cap at the 5–10 that matter. Everything gets audited against these.
## Step 1 — SERP reality check
Have the user search each money query (or search it yourself if you have web access) and record:
- [ ] Who holds the 3 map-pack spots? (name, review count, rating)
- [ ] Where does the user's business appear — pack, organic, or nowhere?
- [ ] What page of theirs ranks (homepage vs. service page)?
- [ ] Who holds organic #1–3, and what kind of page is it?
This table is the baseline the whole audit reports against.
## Step 2 — Google Business Profile (the heaviest lever)
Run the quick pass: correct primary category, review count/velocity vs. the pack, photos fresh, services filled, posts alive. For the full 100-point GBP audit, use the companion **google-business-profile-optimizer** skill — don't duplicate it here; note the score and move on.
## Step 3 — Citations & NAP consistency
NAP = Name, Address, Phone — identical everywhere, character for character ("Ste 200" vs "Suite 200" counts).
1. Record the canonical NAP (what's on the GBP and website footer).
2. Check the core citations in order: Google, Apple Business Connect, Bing Places, Yelp, Facebook, Nextdoor, BBB, plus the 2–3 directories specific to the industry (Angi/Houzz for trades, Healthgrades/Zocdoc for medical, TripAdvisor/OpenTable for restaurants).
3. Log every mismatch, dead listing, and duplicate. Duplicates are worse than absences — they split reviews and confuse Google.
4. Fix order: Google → Apple → Bing → Yelp → Facebook → the rest. Old phone numbers and previous addresses are the most common poison.
## Step 4 — Reviews vs. the top 3
For the user and each pack competitor: total count, average rating, reviews in the last 90 days, owner response rate. The gap analysis tells you the ask-rate needed: if the leader gains 6/month and the user gains 1, the user needs a systematic ask (text after every completed job with the direct review link). Velocity compounds; bursts don't.
## Step 5 — On-page signals
For the homepage and each service page:
- [ ] Title tag: `[Service] in [City] | [Business]` — the money query, natural, under ~60 chars
- [ ] One H1, contains service + city
- [ ] City and neighborhoods appear in body copy like a human wrote it
- [ ] Phone number clickable (`tel:` link) and visible without scrolling on mobile
- [ ] LocalBusiness schema (JSON-LD) with name, address, phone, hours, URL, geo — matching the NAP exactly
- [ ] Embedded Google map on the contact page
- [ ] Real photos of the actual business/work (Google increasingly matches images; users always did)
## Step 6 — Service & city pages
Rule: one page per service, and city pages only where there's something real to say (jobs done there, reviews from there, staff who live there). Ten near-identical "Plumber in [Town]" pages with swapped city names are doorway pages — they underperform and risk worse. A good city page beats five thin ones.
## Step 7 — Local links (prominence)
The realistic list: chamber of commerce, local sponsorships (teams, events, charities — they all link), suppliers and partners ("where to buy" pages), local news (one good story beats 50 directories), neighboring non-competing businesses. Skip cheap directory-blast services; the core citations from Step 3 already cover the ones that matter.
## Deliver the report
```
## Local SEO Audit — [Business], [City]
**Baseline:** [money query → current position] table
| Area | Score | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| GBP | x/10 | HIGH |
| Citations/NAP | x/10 | ... |
| Reviews | x/10 | |
| On-page | x/10 | |
| Service/city pages | x/10 | |
| Local links | x/10 | |
### The gap
[2–3 sentences: what the #1 competitor has that the user doesn't]
### 30-day plan
Week 1: [highest-impact fixes]
Week 2–3: [...]
Week 4 + ongoing: [review velocity system, content cadence]
```
The full itemized checklist is in [references/checklist.md](references/checklist.md).
## What not to do
- Don't promise ranking timelines; promise the work. Movement typically shows in 4–12 weeks.
- Don't recommend keyword-stuffed GBP names or fake addresses — suspension risks, covered in the GBP skill.
- Don't build city pages before the service pages for the home city are strong.
---
Built by Reef — AI systems for small business → https://buildwithreef.comYes — this one. Local SEO Audit is a free, open-source Claude skill that audits the six areas that decide local rankings — Google Business Profile, citations and NAP consistency, reviews, on-page signals, service and city pages, and local links — each scored against the competitors actually holding your map pack, with a 30-day fix plan.
Three ways: run npx skills add buildwithreef/claude-skills in your terminal and select local-seo-audit (Claude Code), upload the .zip from this page in Claude.ai under Settings → Capabilities → Skills, or copy the SKILL.md above into a folder at ~/.claude/skills/local-seo-audit/.
No. The audit runs on incognito searches for your money queries plus what you can see in your own dashboards — the skill tells you exactly what to search and what to record. Rank trackers are nice-to-haves later, not prerequisites.
The skill won't promise timelines, because honest local SEO can't: most fixes show movement in 4–12 weeks, and review velocity compounds over months. What it promises is the work list in the right order, measured against the businesses actually beating you.
Yes. MIT licensed, no signup, no catch. It's published by Reef, an Iowa-based studio that builds AI systems, websites, and automation for small businesses. If you'd rather have this whole workflow running done-for-you, that's the work Reef takes on.