LLMs are Bringing Citation Consistency Back

catch up on your local SEO reading

October 20, 2025

Hello,

Here’s your weekly local SEO recap 👇️

1. Create your Google Business Profile 90 days before you open

Business owners often build buzz on social media before opening their business, but they forget about Google, which is a big mistake.

Here’s why:

When potential customers google your new business, they should find information about it on Google. And your Google Business Profile has a ton of features to help you build buzz and excitement about your soon-to-open business.

Here’s what to do:

  1. Create a Google Business Profile for your new business.

  2. When asked to verify, choose “Verify later”.

  3. Edit the Profile and set an official grand opening date on your Google Business Profile.

  4. Create Google Posts with information about your business, promoting the grand opening.

  5. Add photos and videos.

  6. Optimize your Google Business Profile completely: add business hours, social links, etc. Basically, fill out every section on your GBP!

  7. Finally, you'll need to verify the business if you want it to appear in search results.

And here’s a nice bonus you get when you follow this process: Once your business opens, Google will display a "Recently opened" tag on your Profile and in search results for 90 days.

If you follow these steps, you'll hit the ground running the day you open and have a huge head start toward building your rankings. Your competitors won’t even know what hit them.

Oh, and Sam Knight shares some crucial advice in the LinkedIn comments that your local SEO team will thank you for 😅

2. Six website elements every local business should have

You know how I complain about businesses not listing their pricing online at least once a month? Well, a study on consumer behavior by Krystal Taing shows I’m not the only one.

According to her research, absence of pricing information on your business’s site is among the top reasons customers will choose a competitor over you.

Miriam Ellis talks about this and 5 more elements that are often overlooked, but that your local business website absolutely needs to convert searchers successfully.

I made the brief checklist below for you to keep, but head over to our blog to understand each point in detail and see examples of what to do and what not to do 👇️

3. Catch up on the pod

Is citation consistency making a comeback? I know I’ve said it doesn’t matter much anymore, but what if it does for LLMs?

If your business details aren’t consistent online, LLMs will learn from that, and that could impact your AI visibility.

A simple way to check is to ask ChatGPT questions like:

  • What addresses and phone numbers do you have for [Business Name] in [City]?

  • Where did you get that information from? Show me your sources.

And if you find anything wrong, you need to clean up your listings.

But that’s not all Claire and I covered on the pod last week. Here’s the rest:

  • New Bing Places for Business

  • Why Local SEO is Thriving in the AI-first Search Era (Rob Tindula)

  • What Google’s num=100 Change Means for SEO Data (Noah Learner)

  • Ranking in Local SEO: The One Signal Google Trusts Most (Claudia Tomina)

  • SEO is Not Dead Webinar (Seer Interactive)

Watch last week’s episode here 👇️

🎧 Or if you prefer listening, you can find it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Darren

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