AI visibility checklist for local businesses.

How to run this checklist

Block off an afternoon. Grab a laptop, your phone and a list of every service you sell and every town you work in. Go down the table on this page and mark each line yes or no. No partial credit.

Then search like a customer. Ask ChatGPT and Google the three questions you hear most, with a city in them. "Who does emergency tree removal in Cedar Park?" Write down who gets named. That's your baseline.

Every "no" is a fix. Most cost nothing but time. The checks near the top of each area matter most, so work top down.

Website checks

Your website is what the AI reads most closely. It's also the one thing you fully control.

• One page per service. Roof repair, roof replacement and storm damage are three pages, not three bullets. Each gets its own title, its own answer and its own photos.
• One page per city served. A page for Round Rock, one for Georgetown, one for Hutto. Say what you do there, the neighborhoods you work in and anything local, like HOA rules or the permit office. A footer list of town names doesn't count.
• An FAQ from real questions. Pull them from calls, texts and emails, not from your imagination. Our guide on turning customer questions into pages covers where to find them.
• Phone on every page. Tap to call in the header on mobile, plus a text option if you take texts.
• Hours and address. The same hours as your Google profile. Your address or service area in the footer.
• Photos of real work. Your jobs, your crew, your trucks. Stock photos tell the AI and the customer nothing.
• Schema markup. LocalBusiness markup (or the specific type, like RoofingContractor) plus FAQ markup on question pages. Run your pages through Google's Rich Results Test.
• Speed. Open your site on your phone on cellular, not Wi-Fi. If you're waiting, so is everyone else.
• Answer first. Each page answers its question in the first paragraph. No long welcome message.

Google Business Profile checks

Your profile is often the first thing an assistant reads about you. It's free, and most owners set it up once and never touch it again.

• Primary category. Pick the most specific one for your main service. "Roofing contractor," not "Contractor." Add secondary categories only for services you really offer.
• Hours. Regular hours, plus holiday hours before every holiday. Wrong hours are the fastest way to lose a customer's trust.
• Services. List every service with a short, plain description. Use the same names as your website pages.
• Photos. Add real job photos every month. Before and after shots work well.
• Posts. A short post every week or two: a finished job, a seasonal tip, an offer.
• Questions. If customer questions show up on your profile, answer them yourself. Put the same answers on your FAQ page.
• Review replies. Reply to every review within a few days, good or bad.

Reviews and proof

Reviews do two jobs. They tell customers you're real, and they give the AI specific evidence. A review that says "they replaced our roof in Hutto and handled the insurance claim" answers a question for you.

• Ask after every job. Send a text with a direct review link the day the job closes. Make it a habit, not a campaign.
• Ask for specifics. It's fine to say "if you can, mention what we did and where." Never write reviews for customers, and never pay for them.
• Show proof on the site. Reviews, license numbers, insurance, warranties and certifications belong near the call button, where people decide.

Listings and consistency

Your business name, address and phone show up on dozens of sites you never set up: Yelp, Facebook, Apple Maps, Bing, the BBB, Angi, Nextdoor, trade directories and the chamber of commerce. The AI reads them all.

When they disagree, the AI gets less sure you're one business. An old suite number, an old phone number, or "Co." on one site and "Company" on another all add doubt.

• Pick one exact version of your name, address and phone. Write it down and use it everywhere.
• Search your business name and your old phone numbers. Fix every listing that doesn't match.
• Claim duplicate listings and merge or remove them.

Tracking: knowing where calls come from

If you can't tell which calls came from Google, which came from ads and which came from a yard sign, you can't tell what's working. Most owners guess. The guess is usually off.

• Call tracking. Tracking numbers that swap on your site by source, plus their own numbers on print, so every call carries where it came from.
• One inbox. Forms, calls, texts and chats land in one CRM, each with its source attached.
• Basic analytics. GA4 and Google Search Console set up and actually checked. Search Console also shows what people searched before they found you, which is a free list of questions to answer.

This is the plumbing we build on websites and systems jobs, from the first click to the closed sale.

The print layer

Yard signs, truck wraps, door hangers and uniforms get seen every day. Most can't be measured. A QR code on each one, pointing to its own tracked page, changes that. The scan, the call or the form lands in the same CRM as your Google leads, tagged with the sign that started it.

• Give every sign batch and every truck its own code, so you can compare them.
• Point codes at a short link on your own website, not a third party link you don't control.
• Size the code so it scans from where people actually stand, and test it on two phones before the print run.

We print the signs in Hutto and build the tracked pages, so the code and the page come off the same ticket. See signs and banners for sign sizes and materials. Our guide on QR codes on yard signs and trucks covers sizing, testing and setup.

What to fix first

1. Google Business Profile category, hours and services. It's the fastest fix.
2. Name, address and phone on your top listings.
3. Phone and hours on every page of your site.
4. Five question pages from your most common calls.
5. Review replies, then a review ask after every job.
6. Tracking, so you can see what the rest of the work produces.

If you'd rather have someone run it for you, our free AI Visibility Check scores your business out of 100 and lists the fixes that matter most. The FPI Growth plans work the whole list every month, starting at $3,500 a month with no contract.