Operations
Part of One named owner is what keeps local SEO operations honest
Scoring local SEO quality before sign-off
Score a local SEO deliverable on five criteria before sign-off: source traceability, ownership, technical evidence, compliance and review dates.
What to take away
- Score every deliverable from 1 to 5 on five criteria. A total under 18 blocks sign-off.
- Set the pass mark before you look at the results, or the check becomes a formality.
- Source traceability and ownership matter more than the total, so fix those first.
- Comparative claims go through the CAP Code, with Copy Advice as the pre-publication check.
- Technical evidence needs dates and thresholds, because a clean crawl in January says nothing about March.
How the five-point scoring works
Score each deliverable from 1 to 5 on five criteria: source traceability, ownership, technical evidence, compliance and review dates. A total under 18 blocks sign-off until the gaps are closed. Set the pass mark before looking at results, because choosing it afterwards turns a check into a formality.
| Criterion | 1 (fail) | 3 (adequate) | 5 (strong) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Source traceability | No sources given | Some sources, no dates | Every figure named, dated and owned |
| Ownership | No named owner | Owner named, no review | Owner and independent reviewer named |
| Technical evidence | No crawl record | Partial checks logged | Full checks with dates and thresholds |
| Compliance | No checks run | Basic CAP awareness | Copy Advice used where claims are comparative |
| Review dates | None set | Annual review only | Review dates tied to source volatility |
Use 2 for a deliverable that falls short of the adequate standard but has some supporting evidence. Use 4 when it is strong overall but still has a minor gap. Scores 2 and 4 sit between the stated fail, adequate and strong criteria.
How a team writes the rules that sit behind these scores is a separate job, set out in service standards.
Source traceability
Top marks go to a deliverable where every figure carries a publisher, a retrieval date and the person who checked it. A number that cannot be traced becomes a labelled illustrative example instead, which scores better than an unlabelled guess.
Local SEO deliverables mix official data with estimates. A ranking claim sourced to a search console export is defensible. A footfall figure invented to fill a slide is not, and a client will query it months later.
Source register entry fields
- Publisher named
- Retrieval date logged
- Checker identified
- Client consent recorded
- Untraceable numbers labelled illustrative
Client-supplied data needs the same discipline. Ask who produced the spreadsheet, when it was last refreshed and whether the client consents to its reuse in reporting. Record that answer beside the entry.
Ownership and escalation
Top marks need one named owner and one independent reviewer for each workstream, such as profile management, citation updates or location-page changes. A register without an owner decays within a quarter, so a deliverable with no name against it cannot score above a 1.
Small agencies often combine both roles, which works if the review happens on a different day from the drafting and the date is logged. The wider case for one accountable person is made in named owners for operations.
Ownership and review route
- Name one accountable owner per workstream
- Assign an independent reviewer
- Review on a different day from drafting
- Log the review date
- Escalate disputes with approver and evidence
Escalation needs a route. If a claim is disputed by a client or challenged by a regulator, the register should show who approved it, on what evidence and when.
Technical evidence
Top marks need full checks with dates and the threshold the team accepted. Confirm that crawl behaviour matches the site's capacity, especially where thousands of location pages are generated, and record the date each check ran.
Redirect chains, canonical tags and internal link depth belong on the same sheet. Google's guidance on how to reduce Google crawl rate is the reference point when server load or crawl efficiency becomes a problem.
Tools such as BrightLocal, Semrush Local and Whitespark can support citation and local ranking checks, provided the tool and report are recorded so the results can be repeated.
Compliance: CAP Code and a cyber route
Advertising claims in local SEO content fall under the CAP Code. A comparative claim about rankings or response times is where a pre-publication check helps, and the CAP Copy Advice team offers pre-publication advice on non-broadcast advertising across all sectors.
Keep the substantiation file with the draft. If a claim about speed or coverage is challenged, the evidence should be retrievable in minutes rather than reconstructed. The advertising rules article lists the sources to cite for that file.
Score the incident route too: the manual should say where to report a cyber incident before anything goes wrong. For personal data, the ICO is the UK regulator and offers a self-assessment tool for deciding whether a breach must be reported, while the team applies the UK GDPR through its data protection duties.
Review dates and what to do with the total
The best score needs review dates tied to how fast each source changes. Regulatory pages and pricing data deserve a quarterly check, while stable reference material can wait a year. If a source disappears, reclassify the claim as an illustrative example and log the change.
Two scores matter more than the total: source traceability and ownership. Fix those first, because a deliverable with dated sources and a named reviewer is usually straightforward to repair elsewhere.
- Every figure has a named source, a date and an owner
- An owner and an independent reviewer are named
- Technical checks are logged with dates and thresholds
- Comparative claims went through Copy Advice or carry a substantiation file
- Review dates are set for each source
- The total is 18 or more
Common questions
Who should score a deliverable?
The independent reviewer, not the person who drafted it. In a small agency one person can hold both roles only if the review happens on a different day from the drafting and the date is logged.
Does a scoring rubric replace judgement?
No. It makes disagreements specific. A score of 3 on traceability tells you exactly what to fix, which a general comment about quality does not.
When is a score of 2 or 4 the right one?
Use 2 when the deliverable falls short of adequate but has some supporting evidence. Use 4 when it is strong overall with a minor gap still open.
