Local SEO Checklist (Nepal)

How to use this checklist

Local search has two halves: the Google Business Profile, which decides whether you appear in the map pack, and the website, which decides whether you appear in the results below it and whether the click turns into a visit. Do the profile first, because it moves fastest and costs nothing. Then the website. Then reviews and citations, which are slow and continuous.

If you have more than one branch, run sections 1 to 5 for every location separately, then read section 8.

1. Claim and control the profile

1. The Google Business Profile is claimed and verified for the business, using an account the owner controls.
2. You have admin access, not just manager access, and no former agency or ex-employee is still the primary owner.
3. There is exactly one profile per physical location. Search your business name and address in Maps and report duplicates, which split reviews and confuse ranking.
4. If the business moved, the existing profile has been updated rather than a new one created, so its review history and history in Maps survive.
5. A service-area business without a walk-in address has its address hidden and its service areas set, rather than publishing a home address.

2. Profile information

1. The business name matches the signboard and the legal registration. No keywords stuffed into the name; it is against the guidelines and competitors report it.
2. The primary category is the most specific accurate one available. This single field influences map pack ranking more than anything else on the profile.
3. Secondary categories cover everything else you genuinely do, and nothing you do not.
4. The address is written the way Nepal Post and Google Maps understand it, with the ward, tole and city, and the map pin sits on the actual door rather than the main road.
5. The phone number is a number a person answers during listed hours, and it is the same number shown on the website.
6. Opening hours are correct, including the days you close, and special hours are set for Dashain, Tihar and public holidays rather than leaving customers to guess.
7. The website link points to the location page for that branch, not always to the homepage.
8. The description says what you do, for whom and where, in plain language, without a keyword list.
9. Attributes are filled in: parking, wheelchair access, languages spoken, online appointments, women-led, payment methods accepted.
10. Services or products are listed individually with short descriptions and prices where you are willing to publish them.
11. The opening date is set, because it appears in the profile and in some listings.

3. Photos, posts and messaging

1. Logo and cover photo are set and legible on a phone.
2. Real photographs of the exterior with the signboard, the interior, the team and the work, taken on a phone in daylight. Stock photography does not help anyone find your door.
3. New photos added regularly rather than once at setup.
4. Posts used for actual news: offers, events, new services, festival hours. A dead posts feed is not a ranking disaster, but an active one wins clicks.
5. The question and answer section seeded with the questions you are asked on the phone every day, answered by you.
6. Messaging turned on only if someone will reply quickly; a slow reply is worse than no messaging button.
7. Booking or appointment links added where you use a booking system.

4. Reviews

1. There is a routine for asking: a card with a QR code at the counter, a message after the job, a link in the invoice.
2. The short review link from the profile is saved somewhere the whole team can reach it.
3. Reviews arrive steadily rather than twenty in one week and none for six months.
4. Every review gets a reply, including the one-star ones. Reply calmly, state the facts, offer to fix it offline.
5. Nobody buys reviews or writes them from staff accounts. Removals and suspensions follow, and customers can tell.
6. Reviews mention the service and the place naturally because you asked about a specific job, not because you scripted them.
7. The best reviews are quoted on the website with the reviewer’s first name, matching what is publicly visible on the profile.

If review management is the bottleneck, that is the Google reviews management service.

5. Website signals

1. The full name, address and phone number appear as text in the footer of every page, not inside an image.
2. There is a contact page with the address, an embedded map, directions from a landmark people know, parking notes and the hours.
3. Each branch has its own page with its own address, phone, staff, photographs and content that is genuinely different.
4. Service pages exist for each service, and where you serve distinct areas, area pages that say something true about serving that area rather than swapping the place name.
5. Title tags include the place where people search with it: “Dental clinic in Lalitpur” beats “Welcome to our clinic”.
6. The site is fast on mobile data and the phone number is click-to-call.
7. A WhatsApp link is present if that is how your customers prefer to contact you, and it opens with a prefilled message.
8. The page is readable in the language your customers use; where you publish in both Nepali and English, each version has its own URL rather than two languages on one page.

6. Citations and consistency

1. Name, address and phone are written identically everywhere: website, Google profile, Facebook page, directories, invoices.
2. The Facebook page carries the same address, hours and phone as the Google profile, since many Nepali customers check it first.
3. Listings exist on the Nepali business directories and the industry-specific portals your customers actually use, and each one is verified as correct rather than submitted and forgotten.
4. Old listings from a previous address or phone number have been found and corrected or removed.
5. Association, chamber, supplier and partner pages that could list you, do.
6. Nothing is paid to a bulk citation service that submits to hundreds of directories nobody visits.

7. Local schema and technical basics

1. LocalBusiness markup, or the more specific type that fits (Dentist, Restaurant, AutoRepair, School), on the contact or location page.
2. The markup carries the same name, address, phone, hours, geo coordinates and URL as the profile.
3. Each branch page carries its own markup with its own address.
4. Markup validates in the Rich Results Test with no errors.
5. The site is indexed, fast and crawlable; the general checks are in the SEO audit checklist.

Implementation help is the schema markup service.

8. If you have more than one location

1. One profile, one location page and one phone number per branch.
2. Location pages are linked from a locations index and from the main navigation.
3. Branch content is genuinely different: the staff, the services offered there, the parking, the landmarks.
4. Reviews are requested per branch, since they do not transfer between profiles.
5. Reporting is per branch, because an average across five locations hides the one that is failing.

At scale this becomes multi-location SEO.

9. Measurement

1. Profile performance is reviewed monthly: searches, calls, direction requests, website clicks, and the queries people used.
2. Calls from the profile are counted somewhere you can compare them with calls from the website.
3. You search your main terms from a phone near the business and note where you appear in the map pack, then repeat monthly from the same place. Local results vary by where the searcher stands, so a single rank number means little.
4. The number you actually report on is enquiries, split into calls, WhatsApp messages, forms and walk-ins who say they found you on Google.

Where this usually fails

In Nepal the recurring pattern is a profile created years ago by someone who has left, with the wrong category, an old phone number, three photos from 2021 and twelve unanswered reviews, pointing at a homepage that says “Welcome”. Fixing exactly those five things, in that order, is usually a month’s work and produces the visible movement, before any content or link building is needed.

The reasoning behind each item is in the local SEO guide for Nepal. If you want it done for you, the services are local SEO and Google Business Profile optimization, and you can start with a free SEO audit. The other checklists are on the resources page.

Last updated 2026-09-03.

Updated September 26, 2026