Can you give me a good SEO tutorial for local websites with a list of actions to get started?

The short answer is yes, I can help you with a simple yet fully actionable local SEO tutorial for business websites and to-do list for you to get the right starting point from the very beginning. But before getting down to the matter, let's face it – there isn't such thing as a one-stop-shop SEO tutorial for websites or to-do list for perfect local optimization that works for all location-focused businesses with a guaranteed ranking progress in Google's local SERPs. Why? Simply because far not all precisely-targeted local ranking factors will actually increase every given website's organic positions in the relevant search. Of course, some are fully capable of giving you a measurable progress on your challenging way to the sweetest spot in Google's local search results. Nevertheless, there are still many ever-changing circumstances that will remain blurred for your own local business environment – at least before testing with the real-life case. Put simply, my basic SEO tutorial for local websites and supportive list of practical actions is intended to help you with evolving your own must-winning optimization strategy at the level of locales. So, make sure to consider at least the following basic suggestions and actionable approaches when taking your first steps paving the way to your overall business success via better online performance in a precisely-targeted local search. That being said, let's delve.

SEO Tutorial for Local Websites: List of Useful Actions & Practical Considerations

Tier One: Analyze Local Niche Competition 

Before anything else, I recommend performing a deep web analysis of the leading websites owned by your closest niche competitors. Among the other online helpers to assist you with that, I suggest trying these three top-performing broad analytical platforms, with their basic toolkits available for free: Semalt Analyzer (otherwise, Semalt Website Analyzer), Screaming Frog SEO Spider (by Screaming Frog), or Moz's Open Site Explorer (by Moz). That way, you will be able to get a full picture of everything the closest niche competition is doing so far. Ultimately, to employ the best findings already employed by the most successful business websites (and probably their supportive blog pages), which are operating within the same city/town or region served by your own commercial project. 

Tier Two: Local Link Building Considerations

Once you inspected your top performing competitors to know the ropes of the best findings of their local link building campaigns, it's time to launch your own strategy. To earn high-quality links built naturally (otherwise, organically), consider the following must-winning places:

• Top popular local business directories.
• Niche local citations and big data aggregators.
• Leading media and news sites, which are frequently visited by online users within your targeted city/town or area (i.e., those so-called editorial local links).
• Valuable links coming from the local Chambers of Commerce (if applicable), or governmental/educational sites with the highest .GOV/.EDU Domain Authority.

Tier Three: Basic Recommendations to Must-Winning Local Content

Before anything else, you MUST always avoid or instantly eliminate any existing templated (i.e., Wikipedia-like) body content. Seriously, arguably the easiest way of creating multiple local content sections or hyper-local landings – is to complete the task via Wiki-type content articles, right? I mean writing about a given city or your targeted area using templated descriptions or default informative articles found in open sources – all you need is just to change or slightly modify a few keyword-based phrases or even single local words, right? But let's face it – this would-be "content-writing approach" will never bring your website to the top of Google's search. Instead, I recommend you to invest some time and effort – to perform your own brief research and get every single landing and unique local service page re-written in a high-quality way. Try to provide something that will be enjoyed by your target audience, in line with adding a certain unique value to every user visiting your web pages – and you're done.

Of course, in real life, it may often become a really challenging (and too daunting) task to create a strong web copy. Particularly if your local business is dealing with many different locations or, for example, serves clients/buyers within the same local market niche. But I still believe that the most straightforward way of setting yourself as a qualified web source, which is actually worth being promoted to the top of highly-competitive local search – is doing a lot of donkey-labor needed to rush out with the best web copy and top steller ideas for your hyper-local on-page content sections and unique articles/posts. Yes, that would be a really time-consuming and labor-intensive task. Anyway, there is no point in coming up with a low-quality content that still looks awful in its innumerable variation count, right?

Basic SEO Tutorial for Websites: List of Key Technical Stuff

Step One: Best Practices for Custom URLs

I recommend running a double check with any of those three online analytical platforms mentioned at the beginning of this article. Doing so, make sure every page of your website is well-crawlable from the viewpoint of the relevant local search by Google itself. That way, make sure your custom URLs (i.e., those created with highly-targeted long-tail search terms based on the niche-relevant core keywords) are technically accurate. Ultimately, to be easily "read" and correctly "understood" by the search engines – for your web pages to be able to rank appropriately in Google's local SERPs. 

Step Two: Improve Local Optimization with Schema Markup

Make sure to apply Schema.org coding – it's crucial for the right way of displaying your web pages in Google's local SERPs. (their correct look in Google's Rich Snippets and the Carrousels shown up in the local search results, to be more precise). 

Step Three: Creating Hyper-Local Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Under any circumstances, every website or blog seeking for a great online performance in local search results should have everything in place with hyper-localized Title Tags and Meta Descriptions. Getting all these on-page elements "hyper-localized" means that you should remake them trying to optimize each one for its most fitting separate keyword-based phrase delivering the city/town name or your primary business area via different long-tail modifications of your core keywords. That's it.