Visibility Framework 50
Fifty evidence-led checks make a local-business website easier to understand, discover, use, measure, and operate safely. Strong visuals still matter; they never override false facts, broken lead delivery, unsafe infrastructure, or an inaccessible experience.
The score is a control, not a forecast
Score each applicable check, then calculate earned points divided by applicable points, multiplied by 100. Every decision keeps an evidence trail, owner, and next action.
Strong foundationOnly when every applicable critical gate also passes.
Strong but incompleteResolve critical failures and material partials before launch.
Remediation requiredDo not describe the website as fully optimized.
Not readyFocused correction or rebuilding is required.
10 categories · 50 checks
Each summary is intentionally concise. The working scorecard records the URL, environment, reviewer, current evidence, score, owner, and next action behind it.
5 checks
Verify the identity, operating facts, claims, services, geography, media, and permissions before anything is published.
Use the approved public name, legal or DBA relationship, domain, and brand spelling everywhere.
Keep confirmed phone, email, address or service-area status, hours, and operating rules consistent.
Publish only real services, exclusions, boundaries, and location constraints; avoid thin city-swap claims.
Support licenses, awards, years, warranties, pricing, financing, and numerical claims with current evidence.
Record rights, source, resolution, attribution, and intended use for every photo, video, review, and testimonial.
5 checks
Give search systems a clean, intentional route through index policy, metadata, URLs, links, redirects, and errors.
Keep production pages crawlable and indexable while private, utility, and staging routes remain excluded.
Give every indexable page a unique title, description, canonical, language, viewport, favicon, and share image.
Use stable descriptive paths, correct response codes, and one canonical version of each useful page.
Align robots and the XML sitemap with real routes, then expose them through crawlable contextual links.
Map valuable legacy URLs in one hop and return a useful true 404 for unknown routes.
5 checks
Make the company, page hierarchy, visible facts, evidence, and next actions understandable without visual guesswork.
Use landmarks, headings, lists, figures, addresses, tables, and controls for their actual meaning.
Clarify who, what, where, why trust, and the primary next step in the first meaningful screen.
Validate organization, local-business, and service entities against the same approved facts people can see.
Use breadcrumb, article, organization, local business, video, image, offer, or contact markup only when the visible page supports it.
Expose key facts, constraints, contacts, evidence, and actions as text, links, forms, states, or structured data.
5 checks
Keep owned profiles, citations, areas, local context, maps, directions, and reputation pathways accurate and useful.
Match the authorized business profile to approved name, phone, hours, category, services, and website destination.
Find material contact conflicts across important directories and assign every correction an owner and due date.
Explain approved service boundaries clearly, test maps and directions, and publish only valuable location pages.
Use supported local conditions, projects, processes, or rules instead of inserting city names into generic copy.
Show faithful ratings and excerpts, honest fractional stars, working source links, and an owned response path.
5 checks
Answer real buying intent with accurate service detail, authentic evidence, useful FAQs, and responsibly refreshed facts.
Give each important commercial intent one useful destination when enough business-specific substance exists.
Write concise, professional copy without typos, AI filler, jargon, stuffing, repetition, or unsupported superlatives.
Explain scope, fit, process, exclusions, timing, preparation, pricing approach when appropriate, and next steps.
Attribute projects, comparisons, testimonials, team media, statistics, and outcomes; never invent relationships or results.
Answer supported customer questions and re-verify changeable facts without misleading frozen freshness claims.
5 checks
Treat every viewport, input method, and access need as part of the designed experience rather than an afterthought.
Keep mobile complete, readable, correctly ordered, touchable, and free of clipping, overlap, or horizontal overflow.
Verify spacing, alignment, rhythm, line length, crops, icons, headers, and actions at four required widths.
Make every action reachable in order with visible focus, meaningful labels and states, and no keyboard trap.
Target WCAG 2.2 AA contrast, lossless 200% reflow, and practical 44 by 44 pixel touch targets.
Provide useful alternatives, respect reduced motion, prevent motion from obscuring meaning, and offer controls when required.
5 checks
Make the next action obvious, functional, privacy-conscious, measurable, and verified all the way to the recipient.
Use one consistently named primary action while keeping relevant phone, email, booking, and direction paths clear.
Test every link, control, menu, map, carousel, contact action, and route for correct behavior and labels.
Ask only for needed information with real labels, clear requirements, preserved values, consent, and approved destinations.
Send a real production-equivalent submission, confirm recipient delivery and reply flow, and capture failure recovery.
Tell the prospect what happens next and give the business an owned response path without unsupported promises.
5 checks
Deliver sharp, relevant media and motion without sacrificing speed, stability, privacy, fallbacks, or device fit.
Measure LCP, INP, and CLS on main templates and document a real remediation path for missed targets.
Serve sharp, appropriately sized modern images with declared dimensions, correct priority, and no misleading upscale.
Use relevant rights-cleared video with posters, clean loops, responsive delivery, and appropriate offscreen behavior.
Delay nonessential maps, feeds, chat, booking, analytics, and embeds until useful, with stable fallbacks.
Control unused weight, keep text visible, compress and cache assets, prioritize critical resources, and clear request errors.
5 checks
Keep measurement client-owned, conversion-aware, baselined, honest, and connected to an actionable monitoring loop.
Keep analytics and webmaster properties client-owned, grant only needed access, and never exchange passwords insecurely.
Track real form success and relevant calls, emails, bookings, directions, reviews, and primary actions exactly once.
Verify the production property, submit the correct sitemap, inspect representative pages, and assign detected issues.
Date the launch baseline, separate observation from inference, compare like periods, and disclose data gaps.
Turn crawl, query, landing-page, conversion, form, performance, and approved AI-visibility signals into owned actions.
5 checks
Protect approvals, domains, email, privacy, ownership, production verification, rollback, monitoring, and durable learning.
Record operator and client approval, pass every critical gate, and disclose unresolved limitations before production.
Inventory and preserve domain and email records, prepare SSL, backup the current site, and document rollback.
Re-test the live domain, routes, forms, media, mobile, accessibility, metadata, analytics, and email continuity.
Make ownership, data flow, providers, hosting, handoff, retention, and cancellation responsibilities explicit and safe.
Maintain versioning, backups, monitoring contacts, review cadence, fingerprints, and lessons without copying client designs.
Managed cadence
The signed management plan defines which checks and intervals apply. Volatile public facts are re-verified on that schedule, and the public site never pretends stale data is current.
Protect the live experience and act on the clearest current signal.
Compare like periods, improve useful content, and report what the evidence actually says.
Re-score the complete system and preserve the evidence behind every decision.
No ranking guarantee
This framework improves implementation quality and operational reliability. It cannot guarantee a search position, an AI citation, local-pack placement, traffic, leads, sales, or revenue. Those outcomes also depend on third-party systems, competition, proximity, demand, reputation, and market conditions.
Machine-readable and agent-ready practices are treated as emerging evidence that complements established SEO, accessibility, performance, and usability. It is not proof of ranking impact.
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