Top 7 Local SEO Tools That Will Achieve Online Visibility Among Competition
As a very specific area of expertise, local SEO takes time, effort, and knowledge. Some smaller businesses don’t have a budget to hire an SEO manager, so they choose to outsource these tasks. In fact, 40% of small and medium businesses outsource a portion or all of their local SEO work. Others lean on easy-to-understand tools to help them achieve similar results.
The following list of tools provides a helpful glimpse into the world of local SEO. Depending on the business needs a robust platform such as BrightLocal or Moz Local could be the answer. In other cases, a more specific tool might be the remedy. Pingdom is an excellent local SEO on-site tool that identifies bottlenecks in website SEO.
1. BrightLocal
This white-label platform is locally focused and includes activities such as social integrations and review generation. BrightLocal provides multi-location reporting, automated reports, and tracks rankings for local search, maps, organic results, and mobile results. The competitor report helps you monitor the online performance of direct competitors.
The built-in BrightLocal tools include a local search grid, which is a rank tracker meant to uncover blind spots by enhancing visibility in local search. This grid shows “hot zones” of specific keywords where local businesses can more easily rank. The local search rank checker lets a business see how it ranks in local search and includes a rankings table that monitors keywords, ranking change, and rank standing.
The local-search audit is an automated report that shows problem areas, while also revealing the best opportunities to improve search visibility. The summary appears as below with a focus on seven different areas, each with its own separate report.
The citation tracker finds new citation sites, monitors existing citations, is capable of a full NAP data audit, and identifies duplicate citations. In the report, you will see an overall key citation score as well as a full breakdown of errors, correct listings, and listings not found.
The GMB audit details ranking factors, focusing on reviews, citations, and GMB signals.
2. Moz Local
This platform has similar features to BrightLocal and combines local SEO tactics with online reputation management. Manage and sync citations through Moz Local without having to manually update citations. An automated sync function does it for you. Moz Local also offers profile optimization and the automatic deletion of duplicate citations.
Review management services this platform offers include a single dashboard where all connected review sites compile a list of recent reviews. Alerts and notifications for new reviews are pulled into the dashboard and make it easy to answer reviews and increase response time. Moz also monitors the sentiment of reviews in its system, while taking note of commonly used keywords.
This tool provides automated reports. Show clients their listing score before and after working with you, use these reports to see which citations are missing information, and determine the SEO metrics that can tell you how the business is being found.
3. Boostability
Boostability is a platform that includes services such as keyword research, link-building, custom content writing, performance reporting, and local business directory development. It also offers on-site optimization and metadata implementation similar to other platforms. Boostability includes ongoing SEO consultation services to ensure everything is updated appropriately and frequently. 86 percent of Boostability clients get on the first page of Google within six months of signing up.
This product is available in the Vendasta Marketplace along with other tools to support SEO, online reputation management, and digital marketing. Marketgoo is another product in the Vendasta Marketplace that is an easy-to-use do-it-yourself (DIY) SEO tool created for small businesses. It automatically scans a website and generates a step-by-step SEO plan to help businesses increase their website traffic and rankings.
4. Pingdom
A website performance optimization tool that serves digital marketers, web-hosting providers, web developers, and IT/ web operations professionals. Pingdom identifies traffic bottlenecks on a website by simulating visitor interaction, then allows a user to see the impact of changes made, such as listing and website updates.
5. Semrush
The local SEO toolkit offered by Semrush includes a listing management tool that automates NAP data. Fill out one form and have data show up in a number of popular citations. It also assists in monitoring a business’s online reputation through review management.
A platform feature is the on-page SEO checker. It includes ideas for on-page strategy, backlinks, semantics, content, and user experience. It also provides an analysis of Google ranking factors for both on-page and off-page SEO elements.
The social media toolkit has functionality that helps track what the competition is doing, manage Facebook ads, and schedule and post to multiple accounts. This includes GMB as well as numerous social media platforms.
6. Ahrefs
Keyword Generator: This tool finds keywords that your client can rank for and includes a number of filters and suggestions. The overview includes keyword difficulty and estimates the number of backlinks needed to rank for that word. It also provides information about CPC or cost-per-click, search volume, paid clicks, and organic clicks.
In addition to the keyword generator, Ahrefs has tools that can automate checking backlinks and finding broken links. These can all be found in the free SEO toolbar that works as a plugin with both Chrome and Firefox browsers.
7. Alpha SEO
Ideal for businesses that want to rank higher on search engines for their local business, the Alpha SEO base package includes an all-in-one SEO dashboard, one keyword topic and one target location, seven target keywords, one piece of content writing every six months, ten or more backlinks every month, five website pages of on-page optimization, a website audit and SEO issues fixes, GMB listing advanced optimization as required, website goal conversion tracking in Google Analytics, status reporting, ongoing website SEO health checks, and SEO key performance indicator (KPI) dashboard and metrics.
The KPI’s Alpha SEO tracks include keyword tracking for both desktop and mobile rankings, Google Maps, Google Analytics, integration, and GMB integration. Their team will set and track goals in Google, and implement live chat functionality, notifications, and results tracking as well as include audit reports. Every account is assigned a project manager to assist with any questions and issues that arise.
Any one of these listed tools will help a business improve its local SEO. In some cases, a combination of tools can be used such as the keyword generator of Ahrefs and Pingdom that can identify on-site SEO bottlenecks. Regardless of how these tools are combined small businesses will be one step closer to the top of Google's page one, staying competitive online.