The Michigan Local SEO and AI Workflow Checklist
Forty-six checks across six phases, written for businesses operating in Michigan markets. Each phase says plainly which steps AI can take off your hands and which it will quietly get wrong. Free to use, free to cite, no email required.
Last reviewed 29 October 2026 · Maintained quarterly
How to use this
Work top to bottom once, then revisit phases five and six monthly. Most local sites fail on phases two and three long before anything technical matters, so resist the urge to start with the technical list.
01
Foundations
The small technical set that genuinely affects local ranking. Everything else is premature.
Site serves over HTTPS with one canonical domain version
Genuinely usable on a phone, tested on a real device
Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds on mobile
XML sitemap submitted in Search Console and free of errors
No stray noindex left over from a staging build
Every page reachable from at least one internal link
Search Console and analytics both installed and collecting
02
Michigan market mapping
The step national checklists skip, and the one that decides whether the rest works.
List the municipalities you actually serve, not an aspirational radius
Record drive time and population for each
Note which ones you have completed work in and can evidence
Check real demand per municipality in Keyword Planner
Check Search Console for places already sending impressions
Score each on demand, ability to serve, and evidence available
Build pages only where all three are present
03
Google Business Profile
For near-me and map-pack queries this often outweighs the website entirely.
Primary category is the most specific accurate option
Every service listed with a real description, not a repeated keyword
Service area matches the municipalities you actually cover
Hours correct, including holiday hours
Photos taken on site and added on a regular cadence
Every review answered, positive and negative
Q and A seeded with questions you genuinely get by phone
Profile checked monthly for unauthorised edits
04
On-page
Draft fast, verify slowly. Every item here is one AI can draft and none is one it can confirm.
One H1 per page matching the query intent
Heading hierarchy with no skipped levels
Title tag under about 60 characters with the term near the front
Meta description written, accurate, promising nothing untrue
URL slug short and readable
Internal links use descriptive anchor text, not click here
Image alt text written from what the image shows
Schema markup present and every field verified against reality
One dominant intent per page, no two pages competing
05
Content and seasonality
Michigan demand swings hard. Publishing during the season is publishing too late.
Content calendar built around your trade’s actual season
Heating and furnace content live by August
Snow and ice content live by September
Cooling content live by March
Roofing and storm content live by early spring
Tourism and seasonal retail live eight to twelve weeks ahead
Each page answers one question properly rather than three partly
Local specifics verified by a human before publishing
06
Measurement
The phase most often skipped, and the only one that tells you whether any of the rest worked.
Search Console reviewed weekly, not monthly
Queries with impressions and under two percent CTR identified
Pages ranking between position eight and twenty listed and prioritised
Queries you receive but have no page for recorded as gaps
Map-pack position tracked separately from organic position
Every change logged with its date
Results read at least six weeks after the change, not six days
What to hand to AI, and what to keep
Safe to delegate
Clustering keyword lists by intent. Drafting outlines and briefs. Writing title tags and meta descriptions in batches. Summarising a Search Console export. Grouping review text into themes. Drafting schema for you to validate.
Never delegate
Search volume estimates, which it cannot know and will invent. Neighbourhood, landmark and service-area names, which it fabricates. Prices, specifications, hours and guarantees. Anything a reader could act on and be wrong about.
The reliable test: if a mistake would be visible to a customer or expensive to undo, a person checks it before it ships.
Free to use and cite
This checklist may be used, shared, printed and quoted freely, including in training material, client work and classroom use. No permission needed and no attribution required, though a link back is appreciated if it is useful to your readers.
Suggested citation
The Michigan Local SEO and AI Workflow Checklist, Rockensuess Creative, rockensuesscreative.com/michigan-seo-ai-workflow-checklist/
If something here is wrong or has stopped working, corrections are welcome and get credited.
Why each phase is here
This checklist is the short form. The two guides it comes from explain the reasoning, the trade-offs and the worked examples behind every phase above.