Local SEO is one of those services that many business owners pay for without fully understanding what they are paying for.

That is a problem. If you cannot describe what your agency does each month, you cannot evaluate whether they are doing it well.

This guide breaks down exactly what a local SEO agency does (the tasks, the tools, the reporting, and the timeline) so you can hold any agency accountable and understand the value you are getting.

The Monthly Work Breakdown
Google Business Profile Management
Citation Building and Maintenance
On-Page SEO
Review Strategy
Local Link Building
Reporting and Strategy
What Good Reporting Looks Like
FAQ

The Monthly Work Breakdown {#monthly-breakdown}

A local SEO agency runs a recurring set of activities each month, not a one-time project. The compounding effect of consistent work over time is what produces Map Pack rankings.

Here is what a typical month looks like at the standard service level:

Week	Primary Activities
1	GBP audit, post schedule, citation checks
2	Content creation or on-page updates
3	Link outreach or review generation follow-up
4	Performance reporting and strategy review

Every month builds on the previous one. Citations accumulate authority. Review count grows. Content builds relevance signals. This compounding is why local SEO takes three to six months to produce visible results, and why businesses that stop at month two never see the return.

Google Business Profile Management {#gbp-management}

GBP management is the core of any local SEO campaign. Whitespark’s annual ranking factors research consistently shows that GBP signals are the dominant factor in Map Pack rankings, outweighing website authority, citations, and backlinks.

What an agency does with your GBP every month:

Category monitoring: Google occasionally updates its category list. Agencies check for new categories that may be more specific or better-matched to your business, and update accordingly.

Post publishing: A minimum of four to eight posts per month, with images and calls to action. Post frequency is a ranking signal; agencies maintain the rhythm your calendar would not.

Photo uploads: Three to five new photos per month. Photo activity signals an engaged, active profile.

Q&A management: Monitoring for new questions, seeding commonly asked questions with accurate answers.

GBP performance tracking: Monthly review of profile impressions, search queries used to find you, call volume, direction requests, and website clicks from your GBP.

Full GBP optimisation guide →

Citation Building and Maintenance {#citations}

Citations are mentions of your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) on other websites: directories, review platforms, and industry-specific sites.

Google uses citation consistency and volume as a trust signal. A business listed consistently across 80 authoritative directories sends a stronger location signal than one listed in 10.

What an agency does:

In the early months of a campaign, an agency audits your existing citations, checking for inconsistencies in your NAP across every listing, and corrects them. Inconsistent NAP (even minor variations like “St” vs “Street”) weakens your ranking signals.

Once your existing citations are cleaned up, the agency builds new citations on authoritative directories relevant to your business and location. For a Leicestershire business, this includes national directories (Yell, Thomson Local, Bing Places, Apple Maps), local sources (Leicester Chamber of Commerce, local business directories), and industry-specific directories (Checkatrade for trades, NHS Choices for health, SRA for solicitors).

Citation building in the early months is intensive. Ongoing maintenance involves checking for new inconsistencies, monitoring for duplicate listings, and adding citations to newly relevant directories.

What citations are and why they matter →

On-Page SEO {#on-page-seo}

Your website sends signals to Google that support or undermine your GBP rankings. An agency manages both.

What is included in on-page work:

Title tag and meta description optimisation: Ensuring every page, particularly service pages, has a title that includes your service and location. “Emergency Plumber in Leicester | Available 24/7 | Dave’s Plumbing” outperforms “Home” or “Plumbing Services.”

Location page creation: If you serve multiple towns (Leicester, Loughborough, Hinckley), each town deserves a dedicated service area page with unique content. Generic pages that mention only the county are weaker than town-specific pages.

LocalBusiness schema markup: Structured data that tells Google your business name, address, phone number, hours, and category in a machine-readable format. This reinforces your GBP data and can trigger enhanced search features.

NAP consistency: Verifying that the name, address, and phone number on your website exactly matches your GBP listing.

Internal linking: Connecting service pages and blog content to improve both user navigation and Google’s ability to understand your site structure.

Review Strategy {#reviews}

Reviews are not just for customer trust. They are a direct local ranking signal. Google’s own guidance explicitly lists reviews as a key component of “prominence”, one of the three core local ranking factors. Google’s algorithm weights review quantity, recency, and average rating as part of that calculation.

What a review strategy looks like in practice:

An agency does not just “encourage” you to ask for reviews. They build a system:

A templated message or email sequence for requesting reviews after service completion
A direct review link (from your GBP dashboard) included in follow-up communications
A process for identifying which customers are most likely to leave positive reviews
Monthly tracking of review velocity and average rating
Drafted responses to every review, positive and negative, for your approval or published directly

The target is typically three to five new reviews per month, consistently. Ten reviews arriving in one month and nothing for the following six months is less effective than a steady monthly cadence.

Local Link Building {#link-building}

Backlinks from locally relevant websites are a powerful prominence signal for local rankings. An agency actively seeks these out.

Local link sources for Leicestershire businesses:

Leicester and Leicestershire Chamber of Commerce member directory
Local business improvement districts (BIDs)
Sponsorship of local sports clubs, charities, or community events
Coverage in the Leicester Mercury, Loughborough Echo, or local community publications
Industry associations and trade bodies with member directories
University departments (De Montfort or Loughborough) where a genuine connection exists

Link building is the most time-intensive component of local SEO, which is why it is typically reserved for standard and comprehensive packages rather than basic tiers. The results, when earned through genuine relationships and content, are durable and difficult for competitors to replicate.

Reporting and Strategy {#reporting}

A local SEO agency should provide a monthly report that tells you exactly what happened, what moved, and what is planned next.

What good reporting includes:

Ranking data: Where your business now appears in search results for your primary keywords. Not just “positions improved” but specific keyword-by-keyword movement.

GBP insights: Calls, website clicks, and direction requests generated through your Google Business Profile. This is the most direct measure of GBP performance.

Citation progress: How many new citations were built, and the current health score of your citation footprint.

Traffic data: Organic search traffic to your website from Google Analytics, segmented by location to show local visitor trends.

Review summary: New reviews received, your average rating movement, and the response record.

Next month plan: Specific tasks planned for the following month, not vague commitments.

What Good Reporting Looks Like {#good-reporting}

The difference between a high-quality agency and a mediocre one is often visible in their reporting.

Good report: “Your Map Pack position for ‘plumber Hinckley’ moved from position 7 to position 4 this month. We built 12 new citations, published 6 GBP posts, and generated 4 new reviews. Your GBP call volume increased by 23% month-on-month. Next month we will focus on Loughborough location page content and outreach to the local Chamber of Commerce for a member link.”

Poor report: “We have been working on improving your online presence this month. Rankings are moving in the right direction. We expect to see continued improvements in the coming weeks.”

If your current agency produces reports that read like the second example, that is a problem worth addressing.

FAQ

How do I know if my agency is actually doing the work?

Ask for evidence against specific deliverables. If you are paying for citation building, ask for a spreadsheet of citations built this month with links to each live listing. If you are paying for GBP posts, check your GBP directly: every post should be visible. If you are paying for on-page changes, ask for a before/after comparison of the specific pages edited.

Should I have access to my own accounts?

Yes, always. You should have login access to your own Google Business Profile, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console, whether you manage day-to-day or an agency does. An agency that controls your accounts rather than managing within your accounts is not acting in your interest.

What happens if I am unhappy with the work?

A reputable agency will have a clear escalation process. Monthly check-in calls, direct access to a named account manager, and a process for raising concerns are all standard. If deliverables specified in your contract are not being met, that is grounds for contract review. How to evaluate and choose an agency properly →

How long until I see results from what the agency does?

Early indicators (improved GBP engagement, profile views, and call volume) often appear within 30 to 60 days. Ranking improvements take longer. Map Pack movement for most Leicestershire niches becomes visible at months three to four. Full timeline breakdown →

Hold Your Agency to This Standard

A good local SEO agency does consistent, measurable work every month and shows you exactly what they have done and what it has produced.

If you cannot answer the question “what did my agency do last month?” based on the report you received, that is the first thing to fix, before worrying about rankings.

See how AssistBDA structures our local SEO campaigns →

What Does a Local SEO Agency Do?

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