In fact, maintaining an online presence is essential for all businesses, no matter how small or large and how many stores they have in which location(s).
It should show up in search results because that’s exactly where modern customers stay the most if they want to buy some product/service.
According to one report, 46% of all Google searches are for local information, and 97% of all search engine visitors search online to find local businesses.
This means that if you are not taking local SEO seriously, you are leaving a lot of money on the table for others. And I’m sure you’ll never like that.
Do not worry; This is where local SEO can help you improve your search ranking on different search engines and sites like Google, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube, Alexa, etc. You can optimize ranking factors including customer reviews, contact details, etc. to bring you more leads.
But what is local SEO anyway?
Let’s understand and see how it can help you.
What is local SEO?
Local SEO or search engine optimization is an SEO technique that you can use to improve the search engine visibility of a local business. It highlights certain best practices that businesses can adopt to optimize their organic traffic from customer searches in nearby areas.
Search engines rely on key things like social profiles, local content, citations, page links, and reviews to collect data for local search and then display relevant results to a user when they ask a question.
Local SEO helps businesses take advantage of this data and position their products/services in front of local customers.
Similarly, local SEO software works on the principle of local SEO to help businesses promote their offerings to local customers. With the software, you can list your business, crawl search engines locally, monitor customer reviews online, and optimize your Google My Business profile.
Local SEO software is great for small brick-and-mortar businesses like supermarkets, bars, restaurants, clinics, law firms, and many others.
How can local SEO help you?
Local SEO can help your business in many ways, including:
Easy business listing
With local SEO software, you can easily list your business for free, especially after the advent of Google My Business.
Increased online visibility
When someone in your area searches for something on Google or other search engines related to your products/services, they can quickly find your business. This way, you help improve your online visibility and let visitors know more about your business with a full profile, product images, reviews, and more.
Accurate metric tracking for growth
Local SEO software helps you track your SEO performance by calculating the number of clicks, leads, conversions, how many leads went through which channel, and more.
It also provides detailed reports and analytics that you can use to improve weak areas and further grow your business.
Higher conversions
With a strong online presence, you can get more leads, as most users today search online before they buy. And when they can see your store with relevant products/services, full address and other details written along with a map showing it, they can easily visit you. Therefore, with more leads, there is a higher chance of conversions.
Understanding your customers
You can read customer reviews online to understand more about your customers and their expectations. It helps you shape your products and services in a way that can address customer pain points and drive better consumer satisfaction and business growth.
Now that you know what local SEO is, check out these local SEO tools to improve your online visibility and conversion rates.
SEMrush
Build the perfect local SEO strategy with SEMRush to improve your service visibility, get more leads, drive your site traffic and track business growth. It helps in the automatic distribution of your business data to authorized directories and manages listings.
Track your local rank progress on a zip code level while monitoring your reviews in different directories. You can also track your online performance per day using their position tracking tool. It can monitor device types and keywords and also helps you track competitor domains.
Improve your SEO rankings by thoroughly analyzing industry trends and competitor strategies within your industry. Plus, you can prioritize long to-do lists to make a bigger impact in less time. SEMRush helps you improve your social media performance across different platforms, as well as schedule and post updates to various online channels such as Google My Business.
SEMRush comes with an impressive set of tools that help further boost your site’s organic reach, including:
- 3 SERP Tracking Tools That Can Improve Your Site’s Performance For Google Search Engine Results
- 6 keyword research tools to get new ideas on how to optimize your online strategy and keyword targeting
- 3 technical SEO tools to check the technical status of the site and fix errors and glitches
Moz
Moz’s robust local SEO tools and reputation management solution help you maximize your business’s online visibility so you can reach more potential customers. It does this by taking advantage of essential factors that influence search engines and visitors.
Moz can create an accurate listing for your business on Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc., and then manage and sync it effortlessly. As a result, people can quickly find your business and become your loyal customers.
The tool updates your listings across different search engines, social media platforms, online directories, data aggregators, and apps with minimal effort and time using a single, easy-to-use dashboard.
Its automated identification, confirmation, and removal of duplicate listings eliminate confusion. Moz also helps streamline your profile with proper photos and data while automating local listing distribution on partner sites. Get robust review management by monitoring, reading, and responding to reviews across multiple websites using one dashboard.
Handle negative feedback quickly and ensure a better experience to retain customers. Optimize response times through instant notifications and alerts on customer reviews of your product/service on major websites. Plus, monitor trends, review sentiment, customer feedback, and keywords in reviews to improve your performance.
Easily engage with customers by posting profile updates quickly with the help of Moz. It also helps you improve your listings and conversion rates with rich content, including special offers, photos, attractive product/service descriptions, news sharing, Q&A, etc.
Integrate with Facebook and Google to post local listing data and quick updates directly. Additionally, Moz offers local reporting features like Visibility Index, Profile Completeness, and Online Presence Score to help you take appropriate action. Plus, track review performance, gauge online sentiment, and measure how users reached out to you online through phone searches, traffic generation directories, traffic, impressions, and clicks.
BrightLocal
Get high rankings, get your business noticed in local searches, and improve your reputation with BrightLocal. It is a complete solution to monitor, improve and audit your local SEO so you can make better decisions and save time.
The tool allows you to monitor your ranking at the zip code or city level and compares hundreds of locations in a single report. You can also compare your page rank to the competition and discover local search volumes to target the best keywords.
Using the Local Search Grid, see your local search visibility and find opportunities to outperform your competitors. Plus, track progress and quickly react to a crash showing a single metric like ‘Average Map Rank’. BrightLocal also identifies spam profiles on Google My Business.
Your Local SEO Audit allows you to spot site optimization opportunities immediately by analyzing over 300 data points per minute with ease. It also helps you win more clients and impress your existing clients with accurate white-label audits.
BrightLocal offers Google My Business audits to help you discover information about the competition and the categories they use at GMB. You can also compare your ranking with them with crucial ranking factors to improve. Plus, you can quickly uncover duplicate listings and make informed decisions using 3x more information.
Use your Citation Tracker to discover the scope of citation creation while tracking and managing local citations. It also helps you find harmful, inaccurate or duplicate citations that need to be corrected. Plus, keep an eye on your competitors and see where they’re not listed, but are, and track your citation growth on a weekly basis.
Reputation Manager allows you to monitor top review websites and generate reviews through SMS and email campaigns. Also, it allows you to respond to customer reviews directly on Facebook and Google and convert more visitors using the reviews widget.
BrightLocal is profitable; its pricing starts at $1.50/location per month.
Google My Business
They use Google My Business to engage with their customers for free on Google. It offers much more than a list of companies; allows you to easily connect with people through Apple Maps and Google Search.
Get more clients by displaying an excellent and informative business profile that explains what your clients can expect from you. You can upload images and offers to your profile and make it stand out while giving visitors plenty of reasons to choose you.
Provide visitors with different ways to connect with you, such as messaging, calling, or leaving comments or reviews to learn about their needs and offer appropriate solutions with your offers.
Google My Business helps you find out how many visitors contact you on Google by tracking your engagement metrics like calls, clicks, follows, bookings, and more. On top of that, it allows you to better understand your customers by keeping track of who connects with you on Google.
Whitespark
Get more customers and leads from Google with the help of white spark that helps you improve your ranking, track your growth, and drive business in local search through managed citations and valuable tools.
Whitespark’s tools can help you improve your online presence, manage local search, and win customers by driving appointments, monitoring rankings, and getting more positive reviews. Also, its Local Rank Tracker tracks your site’s SERPs accurately on Bing and Google in a city via local search, maps and local pack.
Reputation Builder helps grow your digital reviews, testimonials, and customer feedback with ease without upsetting your customers. Additionally, your Location Citation Finder can quickly uncover key citations your competitors have, which can help improve your local ranking.
Your Google My Business (GMB) experts can turn your Google listings into high-performing conversion tools and help you win more customers. So you can gain a competitive edge and stand out with Whitespark.
No need to pay a subscription fee or spend money renting local listings; instead, use your Yext replacement service to take advantage of a comprehensive cleanup and audit on leading sites. They also offer additional local, city, or industry-specific listings to further grow your business.
Night watch
Whether you want to optimize your search engine ranking on Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Map Pack, or YouTube, Nightshade can help. In addition to search engines, it also allows you to track rankings on desktop and mobile.
It can provide you with automatic keyword search and daily ranking updates to help you stay ahead of your competitors. Nightwatch leverages a precise approach to tracking global and local rankings within a single solution.
Their approach also allows them to access any search engine data center and from anywhere while ensuring minimal data anomalies but high accuracy for reliability. You can know when your website or business appears on maps or organic listings when someone searches for your product/service globally or locally.
Nightwatch allows you to see different aspects of how your keywords are performing at various stages of the funnel. You can find opportunities to expand your website’s search visibility, and the tool does all the hard work to show SERP placement that you can rank for locally and globally.
Nightwatch combines data from different search and SEO sources from Google Analytics, Keyword Planner, Search Console and other SEO sources. You can also use additional data, including YouTube ranking tracking and mobile ranking tracking data.
Create beautiful, easy-to-understand white-labeled reports with its drag-and-drop user interface. Plus, you can save time by automating when and how reports are sent to you or your clients.
Nightwatch allows you to discover, monitor and analyze the quality of your backlinks with the total number of backlinks, status, diversity and filter results quickly. You can also use their Site Auditor to view broken links, tags, pages, etc., and discover hundreds of rank-boosting keywords with their keyword discovery tool.
Birdeye
Rank higher with the help of bird’s eye so people can find you quickly and you can grow your business more. It helps you easily track, manage and update information for thousands of different locations by using one effortless dashboard.
Birdeye helps you improve your ranking on Google, Facebook, Alexa, Maps, Bing, Yahoo, Whereto, My Local Services, ezlocal.com, Local Stack and others to increase your web traffic and lead volume. With API integrations, push button connectivity can sync your business listing with vital websites with one click.
Birdeye also offers comprehensive dashboards and reports to display insights across different channels and locations to monitor your call volume, traffic and keyword rankings and identify red flags right away.
Birdeye has your back no matter the conditions, like a pandemic, website glitches, power outages, etc. It allows you to respond to unexpected events quickly in real time with its great features and functionality.
Whether your business is in 10k locations or just 10, Birdeye lets you effortlessly manage your listings, add locations, and update business hours with just point and click to post. Also, save time as the tool can automatically update listings across platforms and sites.
Birdeye offers a complete Experience Marketing solution, which is very useful for companies with multiple locations. Beneath this, you get CRM integrations, open APIs, the power of AWS, and GDPR and HIPAA compliance to focus on growing your business.
Yext
Get high search engine rankings and manage your online reputation seamlessly across different search engines and websites with the help of Yext. Take control of your online business using the Yext Search Experience Cloud while providing official answers when customers search and ask questions.
Create a knowledge graph for your company to answer tough questions. It can also connect you with over 175 third-party platforms like Facebook, Google, Apple Maps, Amazon Alexa, Zendesk, HubSpot, Tableau, Domo, and more.
Use Yext Answers to answer a question directly on your site and provide a conversational experience for your site or app visitors. As a result, customers or visitors can find the exact answers and you can understand their expectations, reduce support costs and increase conversion rates.
Get potential visitors using landing pages optimized for search results, driving conversions, and answering customer questions. You can use them for restaurants, stores, advisors, doctors, events, FAQs, etc.
See how and where visitors are engaging with your business by tracking total conversions, brand impressions, and clicks. This way you can understand what your visitors are looking for and compare it to your competitors.
Local SEO Best Practices
- Optimize your Google My Business profile
- Drive local SEO Audits
- Optimize citations and online directories
- Create engaging content on GMB and social media
- Make sure your online data is consistent and accurate across all channels.
- Improve internal links, URL, meta description, headers, and title tags.
- Establish relationships with other companies in your domain
- Earn incoming links with high authority and relevance
Conclution
Online presence is crucial for every business, whether you are online or have a physical store. Use these local SEO tools to improve your business visibility, track metrics, and gain more leads and conversions.
