Fourteen checks, in the order that matters.

Your listing first

• 1. The map pin. Open the map and look at where the pin actually sits. A pin in the wrong place, or dropped in the middle of a service area instead of at your address, is the single most common reason a business is missing from the pack.
• 2. Your primary category. One category does most of the work. If yours is vague, you are competing in the wrong race.
• 3. Service areas. List the places you genuinely serve. A list of forty towns tells the platform you serve none of them properly.
• 4. Hours, including the holidays. Wrong hours cost a job the day they are wrong, and they damage trust for months.
• 5. The phone number. One number, the same everywhere, and it should ring where you can answer it.

Then your website

• 6. One page per real service. Not one page listing nine services, and not nine pages that are the same page.
• 7. The service and the place on the same page. Say what you do and where, in the words a customer types.
• 8. Titles that read like a person wrote them. The title is the first line of your advertisement, not a keyword bin.
• 9. The phone number as a link. Tapping it on a phone should start the call, not select text.
• 10. Speed on a phone. Test on mobile, not on your desktop. A page that takes six seconds has already lost most of the people who clicked.

Then the signals around you

• 11. Reviews answered. All of them, including the old ones. An unanswered review reads as an unattended business.
• 12. Your details consistent elsewhere. Wherever your business is listed, the name, address and phone should match exactly.
• 13. One mention that is not yours. A directory, a supplier page, a local association. Corroboration matters more than volume.
• 14. Something measured. Pick five keywords and a handful of points on a map, write down where you are today, and check again next month. Without a baseline every claim about improvement is unfalsifiable.

If you only do three

Check the pin, fix the primary category, and answer every review. In our experience those three account for more missing map visibility than everything else on the list combined.

See how RankSteer runs this for you →