Are you still clinging to the traditional marketing channels when most of your consumers are making their buying decisions online?
About 46% of the overall Google searches are related to local businesses and 97% of internet users make an online research on local companies to learn more before making a purchasing decision. With that said, ‘local SEO’ is a crucial part of every marketing strategy and is essential both for offline and online businesses.
Nevertheless, your local SEO strategy requires calculated efforts. It demands the right set of SEO tools to make your efforts count. Local search engine optimization is a branch of SEO that focuses on optimizing a website performance to be found in local search results. It’s part of the SEO effort used to promote and market your services or products when local consumers search for them online.
So, we bring you all-in-one local SEO and listing management tools to help you draw stellar results from your SEO investments. But before that, let’s look at some eye-opening stats that shed light on the importance of local SEO.
Eye-Opening Statistics:
- 46% of Google searches are for local businesses.
- “Near me” searches have increased more than 500% in the past few years.
- 50% of users visit a store within a day of a local search.
Local SEO is crucial for many reasons. It helps potential customers discover your business, provides prospects with all the information they need to locate, and contact your business. Moreover, they can get it anytime they want it. Local SEO provides your potential customers with the power to take action. It can help your business find local customers, increase your website traffic, generate more leads, and close more sales. You can combine it with a startup platform for better results.
The Most Commonly Used Local SEO Techniques:
- Local SEO Audit – This includes auditing links and authority, local listings, search rankings, and setting up a Google My Business (GMB)
- GMB Management – Optimization of Google My Business account to drive more exposure
- Rating and Review Management – Gather more positive reviews from customers in order to boost rankings on SERPs.
- Content Creation – Optimise website content with local keywords and phrases.
- Local Citation Building & Management – Make sure that business information on the web is consistent and correct.
- Оn-Page Optimization – Keep track of all the local SEO optimization work and provide a detailed report at regular intervals.
- Local Maps Optimization – Make your local maps optimized for local businesses.
- Local SEO Link Building – Nothing beats good old organic traffic.
- Local Keyword Research – An in-depth analysis of your competitors and keyword research.
- Paid Advertisements – Paid local SEO ads to drive more business.
- Monthly Local SEO Reporting – Measure and track websites using the Google Analytics tool
To help you improve your digital presence, we’ve listed 8 local SEO and listings management tools you can use to increase the awareness of your business.
1. Yext
Yext armors you with an extensive set of SEO tools and offers over hundreds of directories to help your business find the right exposure online and keep your business information up-to-date.
Some of the Essential SEO Tools That Yext Provides:
- Knowledge Manager: It manages answers to all the common customer queries like store hours, location, promotions, etc. Some data is automated based on your listing, while you can add other information manually.Yext Listings: This tool allows you to update your listings information that is shared with search engines and platforms like Facebook and Yelp. You can schedule or update information in real-time, find optimization suggestions, and integrate Yext App Directory with Zendesk, HubSpot, or Zapier.
- Yext Review: It is a system that helps you generate reviews from your customers and display them on your website. This tool makes it easy for you to manage these reviews on-the-go.Yext also offers SEO Analytics and GMB listings management tools.
2. Whitespark
A popular tool used by many local SEO services companies is Whitespark. It offers you an extensive list of features and tools that can guide your local SEO strategy.
Some recognized tools from Whitespark are:
- Citation Finder: The widely-used Citation Finder tool tracks all the citation opportunities you might miss and need to include for your local SEO strategy. The free version of the tool allows 3 searches/day with limited search results. Simultaneously, the paid version costs $17/month with 20 searches/day and unlimited search results.Local rank tracker: This tool gives you insights about your local SEO performance based on your location. It also keeps you informed about your social activity.Reputation Builder: It offers an easy way to reach out to your customers (via SMS or email) for reviews on your preferred review site. It also calculates your Net Promoter Score (NPS), reflecting the score of your customers’ experiences with your brand.
3. Moz Local
A popular trailblazer in the SEO world, Moz Local tool offers you some of the most reliable and efficient features to boost your local SEO performance and brand awareness.
The Moz Local tool simplifies your listing process, where you just need to update your listing once, and the tool sends the listings data to all the popular search engines and directories. In case you wish to make some changes in your listings, you can directly switch to the Moz Local interface and make the change.
The tool notifies you about any new reviews on any significant platform, and you can respond to these reviews directly through the tool. Integrate Moz Local with your GMB account, and you can stay updated with any Google reviews.
Moz Local tool can be accessed at the cost of $99/year, and this package excludes all the other SEO tools from Moz.
4. Synup
Another popular tool that offers a simplified local SEO solution is Synup. The software suite helps you create and manage listings, create SEO reports, and track analytics.
The tool notifies you about any new review that you receive across your listing platforms.
Synup costs $30 per location for the first 25 locations, and then the pricing scales down as you add on more locations.
The analytics offered by the tool is detailed and you might need assistance from a local SEO services company to give the right direction to your SEO strategy.
5. ReviewTrackers
ReviewTrackers is a comprehensive customer review tool that notifies you about every customer feedback on review platforms. It provides an all-inclusive dashboard to manage these reviews.
It is leveraged by brands like Subaru and American Family Insurance. The tool helps you draw reviews from your customers and manage reviews from various sources.
ReviewTrackers also offers the functionality to track your location performance. The tool costs $59/month for a single location plan at the time of publication, while multiple location plans range from $10-$50/month per location.
Besides review tracking, you would need to look at the analytics to remove any inconsistencies in your listings and see how you can optimize your overall SEO performance.
6. SEMrush
SEMrush offers different marketing solutions for search engine optimization, paid ads, content generation, social media marketing and competitive research. It is one of the most used tools by marketers all around the globe including brands such as eBay, HP and Quora. SEMRush provides several tools that can assist you in improving your local SEO, these include:
Features:
- Keyword Magic Tool
- SERP Feature Filter
- Keyword Gap Tool
- CPC Map Tool
- Backlink Checker
Recently SEMrush has introduced its own listing management tool, in collaboration with Yext to provide more options for local businesses to improve their listings and digital presence.
7. Advice Local
Advice Local is another listing management tool assisting business owners in achieving total local domination. It allows you to manually build out local citations which is an advantage of this tool over Yext. Advice Local boasts supporting 55+ directories with each and every one of its packages.
Features :
- Real-Time Data Syndication
- Ongoing Citation Management
- Search Engine Listing & Optimization for Google & Bing
8. BrightLocal
BrightLocal is an all-in-one platform to monitor, audit and improve local SEO.
It is one of the most widely used local SEO tools with 62,000 agencies, freelancers and businesses making the best use of it. This tool can help you boost local rankings, increase online visibility, build citations and build an excellent online reputation.
Its features include:
- Local Search Rank Checker
- SEO citations and audits
- Google My Business Audit
- Customized location dashboard
- Alerts for new online reviews
Summing Up
‘Local SEO’ isn’t a one-time practice and would require consistent efforts and monitoring from your side. With this, it is a competitive route where you might need expert guidance from a local SEO services company. With the continued rise in mobile searches, local SEO is becoming more important than ever.
The tools listed above will surely help you pave a credible way to the SEO world. You can always ask your SEO partner to help you leverage these tools up to their best potential.