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Downloads and Checklists
Free checklists, guides, and manuals written for owners, not marketers. Each one is something you can work through in an afternoon and be better off for.
Call (714) 823-3164 or ask a question. Clear recommendations, even if we never work together.
Our downloads page holds free checklists, guides, and short manuals for service business owners. Each file covers one job you can finish yourself. Examples include auditing a Google Business Profile, checking listing consistency, and writing review requests. Files go up as they are finished and checked. Each entry describes exactly what it contains.
How This Page Works
Every file on this page is free. Some ask for an email address, and the reason is practical rather than sales driven. Platforms change how local search works several times a year, and an email is how we send you the corrected version when a checklist goes out of date. We do not sell the list, and one email a month is the ceiling. If you would rather not give an address, call the office at (714) 823-3164 and we will send the file directly. Each entry below describes what the file contains so you can decide whether it is worth your time before downloading anything. Files publish when they are finished and checked against current guidance, not when a topic sounds good in a meeting. That means this page fills in over time rather than launching complete. If a file you want is not here yet, tell us and it moves up the list. Requests from actual owners are better input than our own guesses about what people need, and several of the files described below exist because the same question came up on three calls in a month.
The Checklists
Checklists are one page, printable, and built to be worked through in order. Each item is written so you can tell whether it is done without needing a marketer to interpret it. They cover the checks we run at the start of every engagement, which means you can do the first pass yourself and see what shape you are in. The Google Business Profile checklist walks through categories, services, hours, holiday hours, description, attributes, photos, products, and the settings people most often get wrong. The listing consistency checklist covers the major directories and data sources where your name, address, and phone need to match, plus how to spot a duplicate listing. The website conversion checklist covers the things that stop a visitor from calling: a phone number that is not tappable on mobile, a form with too many fields, a page that takes six seconds to load, missing service area information. The review request checklist covers timing, wording, and the platform rules that keep you out of trouble. The first thirty days checklist is the one we use internally, published so you can see exactly what onboarding involves.
- Google Business Profile audit checklist: every field and setting, in order
- Listing consistency checklist: where your name, address, and phone must match
- Website conversion checklist: what stops visitors from calling
- Review request checklist: timing, wording, and the rules to follow
- First thirty days checklist: what our onboarding actually covers
The Guides
Guides are longer, usually eight to twenty pages, and they explain the reasoning behind the checklists. They are for owners who want to understand why something works, either to do it themselves or to judge whether a vendor knows what they are talking about. The local SEO guide covers how the map pack picks three businesses, what relevance, distance, and prominence mean in practice, and which parts you can actually influence. The reputation guide covers building a steady flow of reviews without breaking platform rules, responding to a bad one, and what to do when a review is fake. The Google Ads guide covers account structure, match types, negative keywords, call tracking, and the settings that quietly waste budget by default. The website guide covers what a service business site needs page by page, from the home page down to city and service pages. The measurement guide covers call tracking, form tracking, and how to tell which channel produced a customer instead of guessing. Every guide states what we do not know and where results vary, because a guide that promises certainty is selling something.
- Local SEO guide: how the map pack decides who shows up
- Reputation guide: earning reviews and responding to bad ones
- Google Ads guide: structure, negatives, and the settings that waste budget
- Website guide: what each page on a service business site needs
- Measurement guide: tracking calls and forms back to a source
The Manuals and Reference Sheets
Manuals are reference documents you keep open while doing a task rather than read once. They are built for the person in your office who actually does the work, which is often not the owner. The review response manual holds sample responses for common situations: a happy customer, a fair complaint, an unfair complaint, a review from someone who was never a customer, and a review that names an employee. Each sample explains the reasoning so you can adapt it instead of pasting it. The profile posting manual holds post formats, image sizes, character limits, and a month of post ideas for common trades. The phone handling manual covers what to say in the first thirty seconds, which questions to ask, how to book on the first call, and how to follow up on a missed call before the caller phones someone else. The reporting glossary defines every term that shows up in a marketing report in plain language, so nobody nods along in a meeting without knowing what a word means. The tracking setup manual covers adding call and form tracking without breaking your existing listings.
- Review response manual: samples and the reasoning behind each one
- Profile posting manual: formats, sizes, limits, and a month of ideas
- Phone handling manual: turning calls into booked jobs
- Reporting glossary: every marketing term in plain language
- Tracking setup manual: call and form tracking without breaking listings
How to Get Real Value From These Files
A downloaded file that sits in a folder does nothing. Here is how to actually get value out of these. Pick one checklist and finish it in a single sitting rather than starting four. Most take under two hours. Write down what you find rather than fixing as you go, because a complete list of problems is more useful than a scattered set of half fixes. Then rank what you found by how close each item sits to a phone call. A wrong phone number on a directory listing costs you calls today. A missing meta description does not. Fix in that order. Give the manuals to the person who does the task. The phone handling manual belongs with whoever answers the phone, not in the owner's inbox. The review response manual belongs with whoever writes the responses. Set a date to run the checklist again, ninety days out. Local search drifts. Hours change, categories get changed by the platform, and duplicate listings reappear. A quarterly pass keeps it from piling up. If you finish a checklist and want a second opinion, call us. We will read your notes and tell you what we would fix first, whether or not you hire us.
Releases and Updates
Files publish when they are finished and checked, which means this page grows in steps rather than arriving complete. We would rather offer five files that are current than twenty that quietly went stale after the last round of platform changes. Each file carries a version date on the first page. If that date is more than a year old, treat the specifics with care and verify anything that involves a platform setting, since those change often. When we update a file, everyone who gave an email address for that file gets the new version at no cost. There is no upgrade, no paid tier, and no course waiting at the end. If a topic you need is missing, email terrysr@online-website-marketing.com with the subject line you would want on the file. We keep a running list and the requests that repeat get written first. If your request is specific to your business rather than general, say so, and we will usually just answer it in a reply instead of making you wait for a document.