Local SEO Tools I Swear By

Table of Content

• Introduction
• Local SEO Definition
•  Local SEO vs List Management
• The Use of Local SEO
• Why it’s so important
• List of Tools for Local SEO I Swear by.

We are living in an era of modernization, and no one can deny the importance of having an online presence in this current age to get ahead of your competition and drive more customers. Businesses that may seem developing websites and online marketing counterintuitive are now getting to it after seeing the growth potential and a large customer base.

However, if you are still not sure, here are a few stats that might change your narrative

• Google is now processing over 2 trillion searches per year.
• 93% of the customers start their journey with an online search.
• Mobile searches are now around 50.7%, and 45% of users are online from their desktops.
• More than 50% of the users visit a brand if it appears multiple times in their session.

So, as you can see, most customers are now making their buying decision online, and it is the need of the hour to have a strong online appearance and compete for a spot at the top.

And as the competition is heating up and SEO is becoming more evident than ever, google made a significant update in 2014 to help searchers get what they want in a more precise and easy way. They introduced map packs in 2014, and since then, Local SEO has kept evolving, and now, if any brick-and-mortar business wants to gain customers through organic search, Local SEO is the answer.

Here are a few more stats to stamp the authority Local SEO possess in this current age

• 50% of customers who search for a local business online on their mobile phones visit it in the coming day or two.
• The number slightly decreases for people who search on their computers; stats tell that 34% of desktop or tablet searchers also visit their locally searched store in a day.
• 88% of the consumers trust what people say about your business online, and they take it as a personal recommendation.
• 50% of people search for local businesses on their mobile to gather information about that business-like telephone number or address.
• 18% of mobile searches lead to a successful sale within 24 hours of the search.

The list goes on and on, but I believe it is enough for you to be convinced that if you want to grow your business and beat your competitors, Local SEO is your most prominent chance.

This article will help you understand what local SEO is, why it is so important, and the best available tools you can use to boost your local ranking and get ahead of your competition.

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is basically a process of optimizing a business, a product, or a service on the basics of location for a specific search query. Google has made an update in their system called Google Penguin Update and introduced Map Packs. Now, Google uses geolocation and IP Address to determine the user’s location and then decides what results to show to their users.

For example, if you search for a dentist, carwash, or locksmith, google will show you the business near you as per your IP address’s location.

MOZ defines local SEO as follows:

“Local SEO is a type of specialized online marketing that increases visibility for businesses interested in ranking for geographically related keywords. A large component of local SEO is ranking well in the local algorithms. It is also important to rank well in the organic results for local keywords.”

One of the key differences between local and traditional SEO is how you target your audience and how you want to rank your website. In Local SEO, location plays the role of the pivot, and if you want good results, it should be your primary focus while trying to optimize your business.

Here are a complete checklist you can keep in mind to successfully do the Local SEO  

1. Your Website
2. Content
3. Customer Reviews and Ratings
4. Citations
5. Social Media

 

Why Local SEO is so important

46% of all the searches on Google are local. This clearly illustrates that if you own a local business and it is not yet ranked on the local searches, it is a big loss, and you are losing potential sales every time someone searches for your product or service online.

As stated earlier, almost 73% of people who search online for a local business tend to visit if it lands within a 5 miles radius. And stats show that 89% of the people search about local businesses once a week, and 58% of them search daily.

So, this shows that if your SEO isn’t in order, you’re missing out on a lot of orders as these searches have no chance to find you. It is high time for you to start working on the Local SEO and improve your ranking to get more local reach.

Here is a list of factors that help you rank locally and increase your chance of making it to Google’s Map Pack.

Before getting to the tools, I did like to highlight a common mistake people usually make after starting SEO for their business is completely and solely focusing on Google.

Yes, optimizing for Google is important, and most of the online space is covered by GMB listing, but there is a lot more real estate that you can’t ignore. For instance, places like Apple Maps, MapQuest, Bing, and many others can’t be ignored if you want to give Local SEO a go and make the most out of it.

Now, if you consider all the factors that play an important role in ranking your budget and bandwidth of work goes from Local SEO of “GMB Listing” to much more complex and time-consuming.

This is where tools come in for the rescue. Luckily in 2022, a huge number of tools are available that are specialized in multitasking and can make your life easy.

But with the availability of so many tools that can get the job done and have competing offers, knowing which one to choose can be challenging.

But worry not!

We have done the hard yards and combined a list of Top 10 Local SEO Tools that you can use for ranking and managing your business in the online space.

Here’s a list of Tools for Local SEO I Swear by.

1 Moz Local

When it comes to SEO and Online Search, Moz is a well-known name, and its reputation speaks for itself. For the Local SEO, they have developed a specialized tool Moz Local which is now the most popular choice among users because of the functionality and reputation of the company.

Moz Local is known for its great features to boost visibility locally and ensure that the listing of your business is consistent, correct, and visible across the webspace. Its accurate location data submission feature allows you to submit your correct business listing on all the local directories and helps you to remove duplicates.

Here’s a list of the Moz Local’s key features

Dashboard of Local Listings: 

You can manage, track, and optimize your online listings in one place. It also allows you to check the health and track the performance of your listing.

Instant Submission of Directories and Data Aggregators: 

It uploads your listing information instantly on all the important directories and aggregators.

GMB Listing SYNC: 

It allows you to control and claim your Google My Business Listing and Sync any changes instantly you make in your GMB profile.

Review Management and Monitoring: 

It allows you to view and respond to all the reviews and ratings your business gets online on all the important sites.

Real-time Distribution Update: 

Moz Local automatically sends that info across the local search engines whenever you make a change in your listing or enhance it.

Distribution Reporting: 

It allows you to quickly check and keep an eye on the performance of your listing. You can get weekly PDFs of all the reports and performance metrics.

And that’s not all, Moz Local provides you with all the amazing features at a very competitive price. You can choose from their different packages as per the requirements and get the job done.

2 Listing Management Tool by SEMRUSH

Semrush is another Big name in the SEO industry, and they have developed this amazing tool, Listing Management, with the collaboration of Local SEO experts YEXT.

Listing Management by Semrush uses Yext’s knowledge and algorithms to publish data on the all-important and popular directories of the online space. Like Facebook, Google, Yelp, Bing, Amazon Alexa, Google Maps, Apple Maps, and many more.

Semrush’s Listing Management tools allow you to harness all Yext’s Digital Management capabilities and help you with Local SEO and the management of listing in a powerful way.

However, you can use this tool only for businesses based in

• United States
• Canada
• United Kingdom
• Australia
• France
• Germany

3 Yext

Yext is another top-notch platform, and when it comes to managing listings, reviews, and pages, they are second to none in the line. Businesses around the world are using Yext to manage and deal with face-to-face interactions, boost traffic, raise brand awareness, and increase their sales.

Here’s a list of features that you can enjoy by subscribing to Yext: 

Data Cleansing: 

Yext will filter out all the information present on the web about your business and gives you control to manage and make sure that you are able to provide your customers with consistent and updated information.  

Google My Business Management: 

Yext can be integrated directly with Google My Business. It allows you to update and publish any information to GMB through the platform at any time.

Listings Management: 

Yext can also be directly integrated with all the local maps, social media, and other major tools. Hence, it gives you the leverage to manage and control your presence in the searches.

Duplicate Listings Suppression: 

You can get rid of the duplicate material once and for all with the use of this powerful tool.

Local Pages: 

Yext also provides you with amazing pages that are directly optimized for search engines. Thus, any customer who wants to know about your business can find you quickly.

And the best part about Yext is that all of it comes at a very minimum price. You don’t have to pay an awful load of money to get the job done. Here’s what its packages look like.

4 Local SEO Checklist

If you are a small business or just starting and don’t want to spend a lot of money yet on the Local SEO tools. Give Local SEO Checklist a go. It is an amazing tool that is free to use and almost covers all the basic features required for your business’s Local SEO.

This amazing free Local search engine optimization tool is powered by synup, and it offers around 40 different types of options to help you optimize your site for local search rankings.

Here’s a list of a few features that you can access for free in this tool

Google Checker: 

It allows you to check if your listing is good enough for Google My Business and meets its guidelines or not.

Small Businesses Checklist: 

It provides you access to a small checklist that all the small businesses or aspiring entrepreneurs should do in order to start and thrive in the online space.

Schema Scanner: 

It gives you access to check if your content is Schema complained and also provides you with a list of pages that don’t have it installed.

5 Synup

Synup is another amazing Local SEO Tool that allows you to track and see how your business performs at the forefront of most local directories, review sites, and search engines. Over 55,000 local businesses are using Synup around the globe.

Here’s a list of features Synup provides to its users.

Niche Specification: It allows you to manage and control industry-specific sites.

Crawl all Listings: It has the ability to crawl up to 200 local directories and search engines and check for inconsistencies.

Extra Widgets: You can use different widgets to display your locations or reputation anywhere you want.

Analytics: It allows you to track website rankings, traffic, and much more.

Review Management: You can respond to the reviews within the tool easily.

Interactions Management: It allows you to check and manage whatever feedback people leave on your listings online.

Location Management: Allow you to manage and check locations amazingly well.

Instantaneous Sync: Your business data across sites get syncs instantly.

Like it’s said, every good thing comes at a price; Synup is also very expensive as they provide amazing features and premium services. Here’s what their packages look like

6 BrightLocal

BrightLocal is a top-class all-in-one Local SEO Tool. It was founded by Myles Anderson and Ed Eliot in 2009. Since then, 45,000+ agencies, businesses, and freelancers have used their services for Local SEO.

BrightLocal provides a number of amazing Local SEO features that include:

Monitor Citations and NAP: It allows you to locate and check out 1000s of existing citations across websites.

White-Label Reporting: It provides a customizable dashboard that you can use to create reports for your clients.

Google My Business Audit: Provides you with an option to get a fast audit of your current GMB Listing and helps in improving it.

Track Rankings: It has amazing built-in features that allow you to track and see different keywords rank on different search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

Monitor Reviews: You can use it to easily check out reviews on all the famous channels like Facebook, GMB, Foursquare, TripAdvisor, and Yelp.

Build and enhance citations: They have a designated team to build and improve citations on 1400+ sites.

Generate SEO Reports: BrightLocal allows you to generate brief and well-built SEO Reports for accountability.

They offer you a free 14 days trial to check out and test their amazing features; after that, you can choose a suitable plan according to your Local SEO needs.

7 GrowthBar

If you want a reputation builder Local SEO tool that can allow you to do the keyword research, PPC analysis, Reputation Management, and Backlink analysis without ever having to leave your google browser, look no further than GrowthBar.

It is a specialized feature-packed Local SEO tool that comes with a Google Chrome Extension. It is a multi-purpose SEO tool that provides a ton of other features and local SEO that can help you get to the top of the local SEO rankings. For example, it has a feature that allows you to do keyword research and see how your competitors are performing on that particular keyword search.

Here have a look at how you can make the best out of its amazing features. 

Local SEO research: 

Activate your growth bar extension in google chrome and type a search query. GrowthBar will automatically show you the complete keyword list along with their CPC and other analysis.

Keyword Difficulty

It also has the ability to show you the ranking difficulty of your main keyword and different suggestions for you to rank higher.

Keyword Tracking 

It also has a feature that allows you to plug in your local competitors’ domain and then track their performance on specific keywords.

Reporting Metrics

GrowthBar provides detailed reports of your competitors based on Keyword volume, competitor’s organic reach, domain authority, and highest performing organic keywords list.

You can also use it to check the monthly search volume and ranking position of different keywords.

It is a really powerful tool to outsmart your competition and rank higher on the SERPs. You can get hold of all these amazing features at a competitive price and use them to boost your visibility.

Conclusion

Local SEO strategy is an important factor in taking your local and global businesses to the next levels. And with the use of best local SEO tools, you can enhance your rankings, local presence, local search visibility, customer engagement, monitor online reviews, and devise a marketing strategy.

That’s why you should always pay attention to your website’s ranking overall marketing strategy and always try to remain google friendly for a better chance to gain positive customer feedback and grow your business listings.

And whenever you get in doubt about local SEO and your web rankings, always pay attention to tasks that can add value to your customers’ lives and solve their problems.

Your focus should be to encourage customer engagement as it is a well-known fact that customers seek, trust, and refer businesses that care about them.