Free Local SEO Audit: Nitro Local Visibility Score

Local visibility is its own discipline. When someone searches “emergency plumber Dapto”, Google Search, Google Maps and AI assistants all read the same on-page signals to decide whether your website deserves the click, and they are not the signals generic SEO audits measure. A site can score well on technical SEO and still be locally invisible because its suburb appears nowhere in a heading, its phone number is an image, and its schema says nothing about where it works.

Nitro Audit measures exactly that local layer, across six pillars.

Local identity. Is your business name on the page? Is your phone number visible as real text, and wired up as a click-to-call link for mobile visitors? Does your suburb or service area appear where customers and crawlers can read it? This is NAP (name, address, phone) visibility, the foundation every local ranking factor builds on.

Local relevance. Does your primary service appear in your page title, your main heading and your content? Does your target suburb? Google matches searches to pages, not to good intentions, and a homepage that never mentions “pool builder” or “Wollongong” is telling Google it is not a result for that search.

Structured data. A valid LocalBusiness schema block (with your name, phone and address or service area) is machine-readable proof of who you are and where you work. The audit detects it, validates the essentials, and checks whether it names your suburb.

Conversion path. Visibility without a next step is wasted. The audit checks for a Google Maps link or embed, a review link, a reachable contact page, and an obvious call-to-action near the top of the page.

Trust. HTTPS, and a proper redirect from the insecure version of your site. Basic, binary, and still missing on a surprising number of local business sites.

AI readiness. More customers ask ChatGPT, Claude and Google’s AI for recommendations every month. The audit checks whether AI crawlers are allowed to read your site and whether an llms.txt file is present, then links to our full AI Visibility tool for the complete matrix.

How the score works. Every check returns pass, warn or fail with the evidence quoted from your actual page. Checks you cannot be judged on (say, you did not provide a phone number) are set aside and their weight redistributes, so the score stays fair and always reads out of 100. The grade bands match the rest of the NitroSites tools: 90 and above is an A. At the end you get the three highest-priority problems, ranked by how much score they cost you, each with a plain-English fix.

Then go deeper. Every pillar links into the specialist tool with your URL prefilled: SEO Analyzer for on-page depth, Speed Test for real PageSpeed data, Schema Studio to build or fix your LocalBusiness markup, Security Scanner for the trust layer, and AI Visibility for the full AI-crawler matrix.

For AI agents

This tool exposes a plain-text endpoint designed for language models and agents:

GET https://nitrosites.com/tools/nitro-audit/scan.php?url=<website>&service=<service>&suburb=<suburb>&format=agent

It returns a token-cheap digest: the score and grade, one line per pillar, and the top three recommended fixes. Soft rate limits apply; results are cached briefly. No key or login required.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Nitro Local Visibility Score?

A single 0 to 100 score, graded A to F, for how well your website supports local search. It weighs six pillars: local identity, local relevance, structured data, conversion path, trust, and AI readiness.

Is this the same as a normal SEO checker?

No. Generic SEO tools skip the local layer entirely. Nitro Audit checks whether your business name, phone and suburb actually appear on your pages, whether your LocalBusiness schema is valid, and whether your maps link, review link and click-to-call are in place.

Do I need to enter my business name and phone?

No, both are optional. If you skip them, those checks are set aside and the score re-balances so it stays fair and still comes out of 100.

Will this improve my Google Maps ranking?

It finds the on-site signals that support local ranking. Your Google Business Profile, reviews and citations matter too, and the results link you to the specialist checks for each of those.

Is it free and private?

Yes. No login, no email, no cost. It reads only your public pages, the same way Google does.

Can AI assistants use this tool?

Yes. Add format=agent to the scan URL for a plain-text digest an AI can read and cite directly.