git:20261006.2c6b624 to git:20261006.ff44a3b

---

name: wp-audit-local-standards

description: Local SEO audit reference — business-type and vertical detection, NAP consistency sources, LocalBusiness subtype selection, location-page quality gates and citation tiers, with the WordPress option and meta keys each check reads. Use when the wp-audit-seo agent audits a business with a physical location or service area.

user-invocable: false

---

# Local SEO Audit Standards

The `SEO-055` through `SEO-063` checks in `agents/wp-audit-seo.md` are the *what*. This

file is the *how* and the *why*: which signals decide a business type, which schema

subtype a vertical requires, and where a WordPress site actually stores each value.

Local SEO differs from the rest of the SEO audit in one structural way: **most of the

ranking surface is off-site** — the business profile, the reviews, the directory

listings. A code-only audit cannot see any of it. Everything below is scoped to what a

theme, its options and its rendered head can prove, and the checks say so explicitly

rather than reporting an absence as a pass.

---

## Applicability Gate

Run the local checks only when the site is a local business. Otherwise every check

reports `not_applicable` and none of them count toward the score.

A site is local when **any two** of these hold:

- A `LocalBusiness` node (or a subtype of it) exists in the rendered JSON-LD.

- A street address appears in the footer, the contact template or an options-page field.

- A `tel:` link exists outside a generic "call us" placeholder.

- Rank Math's local SEO module is active (`rank_math_modules` contains `local-seo`).

- The theme registers a location post type or an ACF location field group.

One signal alone is not enough: a `tel:` link in a footer is as common on a SaaS

brochure site as on a dentist's site.

---

## Business Type Detection

The type decides which checks apply. Getting it wrong produces false criticals — a

service-area business has no street address *by design*.

| Type | Signals | Checks that do NOT apply |

|------|---------|--------------------------|

| **Brick-and-mortar** | Street address in content, footer or schema; map embed with a pin; "visit us", "located at" | — (full set applies) |

| **Hybrid** | Both a physical address and service-area language | — (full set applies, plus `areaServed`) |

When signals are contradictory, report the type as `undetermined`, run only the checks

---

## Industry Vertical Detection

The vertical decides the required schema subtype. Detect from template and content

signals; never from the client's name.

| Vertical | Detection signals | Required subtype |

|----------|-------------------|------------------|

| Restaurant | menu template or post type, dish names, reservations, "dine-in", "takeout" | `Restaurant` |

| Healthcare | "patients", appointments, insurance accepted, practitioner bios, HIPAA notice | `MedicalClinic`, `Dentist` or `Hospital` |

| Legal | "attorney", practice areas, bar admission, case results, "free consultation" | `LegalService` |

| Home services | service-area language, "free estimate", licensed/insured/bonded, 24/7 | subtype + `areaServed` |

| Real estate | listings, MLS references, agent bios, brokerage, "open house" | `RealEstateAgent` |

| Automotive | inventory, VIN, test drive, service department, "new/used/certified" | `AutoDealer` |

No vertical detected → generic `LocalBusiness` is correct, not a finding.

**Deprecated subtypes that still appear in older themes:** `Attorney` (use

`LegalService`), `VehicleListing` as a business type (use `AutoDealer`), bare

`MedicalBusiness` for a clinic (use the specific subtype). Flag these under SEO-058.

---

## Where WordPress Stores Each Value

stale in the other is a real NAP discrepancy, not a translation artifact.

---

## NAP Consistency

NAP is Name, Address, Phone. The check compares the three sources above pairwise and

reports each disagreement separately — a phone that differs between schema and footer is

a different defect from an address that differs between two languages.

Normalize before comparing, or the check reports noise:

- Address: collapse whitespace, lowercase, strip trailing punctuation; treat common

abbreviations as equal (`St.` / `Street`, `Ave` / `Avenue`).

- Name: strip legal suffixes (`S.L.`, `Inc.`, `Ltd.`) before comparing; report a bare

suffix difference as INFO, not WARNING.

---

## Citation Tiers

Off-site, so the audit can only detect *references* to these from the site itself —

badges, links and `sameAs` entries. Report what is present; never assert that a missing

reference means a missing listing.

- **Tier 1 (general):** the business profile itself, Yelp, the Better Business Bureau,

Facebook, Apple Maps, Bing Places.

- **Tier 2 (authority):** chamber of commerce, local press, industry associations.

- **Vertical directories:** per-industry listing sites appropriate to the vertical

detected above.

The `sameAs` array in the Organization or LocalBusiness node is the one citation signal

a code-only audit *can* verify, which is why SEO-060 anchors on it.

---

## Location-Page Quality

Multi-location sites fail in one characteristic way: templated pages that differ only in

the city name. Search engines treat these as doorway pages.

**The swap test.** Take two location pages, exchange the city names, and read them. If

both still make sense, the pages carry no location-specific content and SEO-062 fires at

WARNING. This is a judgment call the agent makes by reading, not a ratio it computes.

Quality gates by page count, applied before the audit spends effort:

| Location pages | Action |

|----------------|--------|

| 1–29 | Audit each one |

| 30–49 | Audit a sample of 10, report the sample size in the finding |

| 50+ | Audit a sample of 10 and report the total at INFO; a full walk is manual-only |

**URL structure.** Subdirectories (`/locations/<city>/`) consolidate authority better

than subdomains. A store locator whose individual locations have no crawlable URL of

their own — rendered entirely client-side — is a CRITICAL finding: those pages do not

exist for a crawler.

**Schema per location.** Each location page carries its own `LocalBusiness` node with a

---

## Schema Properties

Required by Google for a local rich result:

- `name`

- `address` as a `PostalAddress` with `streetAddress`, `addressLocality`,

`postalCode` and `addressCountry`

- `telephone`, `url`, `image`

- `geo` with `latitude` and `longitude` — **at least five decimal places**; three

- `openingHoursSpecification`

- `priceRange` — under 100 characters

- `areaServed` for service-area and hybrid businesses

Schema is not a ranking factor. It earns rich results and gives AI systems parseable

business data. Word the findings that way; a report claiming schema lifts rankings is

wrong and the client will eventually be told so.

---

## What This Audit Cannot See

Every local report ends with this list. Omitting it implies a completeness the audit

does not have:

- Business-profile completeness, categories, posts and photos

- Review count, rating, velocity and owner responses

- Actual local-pack or map position, which varies by the searcher's location

- Citation accuracy on third-party directories

- Profile insight metrics

These need the business-profile account or a paid rank tracker. Say which, so the client

knows what the gap costs to close.

---

## Attribution

The business-type and vertical taxonomies, the swap test and the citation tiering are

adapted from the MIT-licensed `claude-seo` project by AgriciDaniel

(<https://github.com/AgricIDaniel/claude-seo>). The WordPress mapping, the i18n rules,

the severity assignments and the check codes are this plugin's own.