The 30-Day GEO Checklist for Local Businesses
You don't need a big budget to start GEO — you need consistency and the right order of operations. This is the 30-day checklist we use to take a local business from invisible to cite-able. Work through it week by week.
Week 1: Audit and baseline
Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity the ten questions your customers actually ask ("best [your service] in [your city]", "who should I go to for…"). Record every business named and every source cited. This is your baseline Share of Model — screenshot it, because you'll want the before/after. Then audit your own entity: is your business name, address, category and description identical across your website, Google Business Profile, and major directories? Inconsistency is the most common reason AI engines hesitate to name a business.
Week 2: Fix your entity foundation
Make your website answer the buying question on page one — who you serve, where, and why you're the credible choice, in plain language an AI can quote. Add Organization, LocalBusiness and Service schema. Create or clean up your Google Business Profile, ensure your categories are precise, and fill every field. Standardize your name-address-phone everywhere it appears. None of this is glamorous; all of it is load-bearing.
Week 3: Build the citations AI trusts
From your Week 1 audit, you know which directories, review platforms and publications the engines cite in your category. Get listed on every one that's relevant. Start a steady review cadence — ask every happy customer, and respond to every review, because review volume and recency are strong signals for local recommendations. If you have any press-worthy angle (data, a story, a local award), pitch it now: one local news citation outweighs ten directory listings.
Week 4: Publish answer-shaped content
Write three pages that directly answer your highest-intent questions — "How much does [service] cost in [city]", "How to choose a [service] in [city]", and a detailed services page. Put the answer in the first paragraph, use question-shaped headings, add FAQ schema. These are the pages retrieval engines pull when someone asks the question with money behind it.
Day 30: Re-measure
Re-run your Week 1 queries. Most local businesses see movement within one cycle: new citations of their site, their name appearing in longer answers, sources they now control entering the mix. Full "recommended by name" status typically takes 60–90 days — but the gap between businesses that started and those that didn't widens every month.
Want it done for you?
This checklist is exactly what our team executes — with the tooling to track Share of Model across every engine and the citation relationships to move faster. Book a free AI visibility audit and we'll run your Week 1 baseline live on the call.