Start the year-end local SEO checklist with holiday hours
Holiday hours belong in the special hours field of your Google Business Profile, not in your regular hours. Google's special hours documentation says special hours exist so that "your regular hours don't change," and on a date with special hours set, the regular hours for that day are ignored.
Google also recommends confirming hours for official holidays even when they match your regular schedule, because a confirmed holiday tells customers the hours are accurate. Special hours cover a closure of up to 6 days in a row, which fits the week between Christmas and New Year's that a lot of Austin-area trades take off.
This matters beyond courtesy. Google's local ranking guide lists "Your business hours, including special store hours" among the information to keep current, and says complete, accurate profiles are more likely to show in local results. Google ranks local results on relevance, distance and prominence, and wrong hours hand a customer to the next plumber on the map.
Match your Local Services Ads hours to your real schedule
Local Services Ads hours need the same holiday attention as your Business Profile, whether you run the ads yourself or through an ads management partner. Google's Local Services lead documentation says a lead is not credited back if "A valid lead was received outside of your business hours." If your ad hours say you are open the day after Christmas and nobody answers, that is a paid lead you cannot dispute. We covered how these ads charge and rank in our guide to Google Local Services Ads for Austin trades.
Export this year's Search Console data before it ages out
Search Console does not keep your data forever. Google's Analytics help states plainly: "Search Console keeps data for the last 16 months." Anything older is gone, so a year-over-year comparison next winter depends on what you save this winter.
Open the Performance report, set the date range to this calendar year, and use the export button. Search Console defines clicks as the number of times someone clicked your site from Google Search, and impressions as how many times your site appeared in the results. Save both, by query and by page. That file is the baseline every honest conversation about next year starts from.
Clean up reviews the way Google allows
A year-end review push is fine as long as it follows Google's rules. Google's review documentation says you can share a review request link or QR code, and that "Helpful and positive replies to reviews can show that you're responsive to your customers." Go back through the year and reply to every review you missed, including the bad ones.
Two things will get a profile in trouble. Google Maps' content policy prohibits offering "incentives – such as payment, discounts, free goods and/or services - in exchange for posting any review." It also prohibits asking only happy customers, which the policy calls selectively soliciting positive reviews. A holiday discount for a five-star review breaks both rules at once. Ask every customer the same way.
Refresh posts and photos
Business Profile posts go stale on a schedule. Google's posts documentation says "Posts older than 6 months are archived unless a date range is set," so a profile whose last post was in spring has nothing showing now. Posts can share announcements, offers, updates and events on Search and Maps. A post with your holiday schedule and your emergency line does real work in December.
Photos are the other quick win. Google asks for photos that are "in focus and well lit" and that represent reality, so skip the stock images and the heavy filters. Add a few real jobs from this year: the finished roof, the new panel, the crew on site.
Check your sitemap in Search Console
If you added service pages or city pages this year, confirm Google can read the sitemap that lists them. Search Console's Sitemaps report shows your submission history and any errors Google hit while parsing the file. A sitemap error that has been sitting there since summer is a five-minute fix in November and a mystery in March.
Plan next year's pages from your own work
The last item on a year-end local SEO checklist is a short list of pages to write next year. Google Search Central says its ranking systems "prioritize helpful, reliable information that's created to benefit people," and one of Google's own self-assessment questions asks whether content shows "first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge."
A service business has that expertise sitting in its job history. Pull the queries from your Search Console export that show impressions but no page answering them, and match them to the jobs your crews actually did this year. That is a better content plan than any keyword tool. If you would rather hand it off, that list is the starting point for our local SEO work.
What a year-end local SEO checklist will not do
A year-end local SEO checklist keeps your profile accurate and your data intact. It does not buy a position. Google's local ranking guide says "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google," and anyone selling a December ranking bump is selling something Google says does not exist.
Frequently Asked Questions
When should I set holiday hours on Google Business Profile?
Set them before the holiday, in the special hours field. Google recommends confirming hours for official holidays even when they match your regular hours, and special hours cover a closure of up to 6 days in a row.
How long does Search Console keep my data?
Search Console keeps data for the last 16 months, according to Google's Analytics help. Export the Performance report for the full year before the older months drop off.
Can I offer a discount for Google reviews over the holidays?
No. Google Maps' content policy prohibits offering incentives, including discounts, in exchange for posting a review. Share a review link with every customer instead.