Need advice on local SEO for a small business

If you were building a brand new website for a client (small, local company), what would your first steps be to get the ball rolling as quickly as possible for their visibility?

Thankfully, for this particular business there isn't a lot of local competition, so I expect to get the site visible in search fairly quickly, but other than GMB (which we've done), what are some essential steps you'd recommend?

I thought about writing out 10 to 20 local keyword-focused articles (did competitor analysis with Ahrefs), and ensuring that every page on the site mentions the location throughout. It does get a little complicated because they have 3 locations in 3 different towns of one state, so not sure if I should structure this with a landing page for each town or what. Not sure how best to signal to Google that this business is relevant to town A, B and C.

Any advice?