the #1 ranking tips & tools of 20 local seo experts revealed!
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matthewwoodward.co.uk http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tips/local-seo-expert-strategies-tools/
20 Local SEO Experts Reveal Their #1 Ranking Tips & Tools
A lot of people struggle with local SEO because there are a few extra things to consider compared to traditionalSEO.
Not so long ago I shared a complete local SEO ranking strategy to help you out.
Even though that answered a lot of Local SEO question it wasn’t enough.
So I decided to invite a range of local SEO experts to share their number 1 local ranking tip along with any localSEO tools that they use to get the job done.
Let’s get stuck straight in!
WARNING: Get Instant Access To My #1 Personal SEO Strategy Now!
Andrew WebberSeoMaverick.com.au
Most our of local SEO clients are from Australia so the tools from the big players like Yextand Moz Local aren’t that useful for us, as they don’t cover off Australian businesses at thetime of writing.
As such, our most effective local SEO tools come from the Whitespark tool set; in particular,we use the Local Citation Finder tool and occasionally, their citation building services.
How To Use Local Citation Finder Tool
This epic guide by Powered By Search covers off exactly how to use the tool to it’s maximum potential.
Basically we follow this guide and plug our client’s information into the tool, analyse their citations, compare themwith their local competitors, and see whether there are any additional opportunities they’re missing out on.
Once we’ve got the list of new citation opportunities, we then go out and build them unfortunately this is a verytedious and time consuming task as Matthew outlined in his post.
Fortunately, once you have your target list generated from the Local Citation Finder, you can then use a couple ofVA’s to build these citations for you, for an extremely low hourly rate.
The key is in the list and having clear and detailed instructions but the good news is that you only need to write theinstructions once and they can be used for all future clients!
Most of the time we use our VA’s, but occasionally we’ll utilise the citation building services offered by Whitesparkas the reporting is excellent, and often they find a few opportunities that we didn’t initially find (which we then addto our master citation list for use with other clients).
Because our clients are mostly Australian business, our lists of citations are quite different than what you see inthe US and abroad – you can see some of the most important Australian citations here on the Local VisbilitySystem citation guide.
Andy Beaumont
SeoSscarborough.co.ukTwitter
I’m not sure if it’s my favourite, but the tool I use everyday is SEOptimer Chrome Extension.
Just go to the website you want to and press test. Alternatively, go to the homepage and putin the URL.
It gives you a branded PDF but it’s amazing how many local business owners are getting thebasics wrong and they appreciate that you’ve shown value.
As with all tools it’s not always 100% accurate but like I say there is always some actionable data.
Ben WynkoopBenWynkoop.com
The most effective SEO tool I use is the Local Citation Finder by Whitespark. I use the LocalCitation Finder to perform a competitive analysis of each client’s top ranked competitors andtheir citations.
Here is an example showing exactly how I use the tool for a martial arts school namedGracie Barra Garden Grove:
Step 1 – Make a list that contains exactly how many citations your client and their top 5 rankedcompetitors have
The screenshot below shows a report that contains the number of citation sources for Gracie Barra Garden Groveand the top 2 competitors ranked in local search for the keyword phrase “Jiu Jitsu Orange County.”
Step 2 – Decide exactly how many citations to build for your client
After analyzing the report I decided to build 109 citations, which is difference between Gracie Barra GardenGrove’s 62 citations and Art of Jiu Jitsu’s 151 citations, plus 20 additional citations.
Step 3 – Select which citation sources to target
Now that I have decided to build 109 citations I ensure Gracie Barra Garden Grove is listed on the top local andindustry-specific directories. For this example, lets say I was able to find 20 local/industry-specific opportunities,which leaves 89 remaining generic citations to build.
This is where I use Local Citation Finder’s compare feature to identify 89 websites where competitors havecitations from and Gracie Barra Garden Grove does not.
Step 4 – Build new citations from your selected targets
To speed up the process of building citations, tools that automatically fill forms such as LastPass or RoboForm arepart of the standard operating procedures used by many local SEO professionals.
To build citations, I pre-save Gracie Barra Garden Grove’s information such as: name, address, phone number,website, links to social media profiles, etc… to quickly submit the business to directories.
David JenynsDavidJenyns.com
Most people fail in their local SEO strategy by simply not doing the basics. They jumpstraight to the tools and more complex tactics without laying the foundation.
Just by getting the basics right, you’ll be ahead of 80% of your competition. It’s all aboutgetting these steps done first.
#1. Ensure your website follows Google’s best practice.
The first thing that you want to do is just make sure that on your website you’re following Google’s best practice.So go have a look at Google’s Webmaster Tools guidelines. You want to make sure you’ve got a good, quickloading website
You want to make sure it’s mobile responsive. You want to make sure that you’re not doing any SEO manipulation,so you don’t have thin pages or pages that are very specifically and purposefully created to try to game the searchengines.
You also want to make sure you’ve got good, clear contact information on your contact us page. I’d have yourphone number for the business, your business hours and also your mailing address as well.
As part of this, you want to look to set it up using microdata. You can head over to schema.org and just chat toyour web developer about getting the local business codes on the site.
You’d be looking for things like opening times, address, phone number and correctly tagging things using themicrodata format. This is all outlined over at schema.org and a good web developer should be able to help youwith that.
#2. Claim and fill out completely your Google Maps listing.
Next you want to move on to your Google Maps listing. We need to make sure that our website is submitted or thatwe have claimed the listing. Then you want to make sure that you fill it out fully and completely.
You want to match the data that we’ve also loaded onto our website. That would include opening times,addresses, phone numbers and anything you can fill out.
I’d go so far as to make sure you populate all of the photos. If you’ve got some videos on YouTube, then look toembed those as well through the Google Maps listing. You just want to make sure that anything Google gives youthe opportunity to fill out, that you go ahead and do that.
You can t, once you’ve got the listings up and running, chat to some past clients, clients you’ve already had a goodexperience with. Perhaps ask whether or not they would be happy to review you over on your Google Maps listing.
The good thing about that is often times a lot of your competitors aren’t doing this. You can get a few reviews andthen when someone does a Local search and the little pack of local businesses pop up, your business will standout because you’ve got a star rating underneath.
So it is a good way to stand out from the competition.
As part of this stage, we like to make sure that we link all the Google properties together. So if you’ve set up aYouTube channel, you can go ahead and link that into your Google + page and Google Maps. That way,everything is linked together.
#3. Build some relevant citations.
At this point, you want to go out and submit your website to the most relevant local directories. So that would be,here in Australia, things like TrueLocal and the Yellow Pages and even Yelp. There is a series of local directoriesthat are relevant.
This is actually very different from one of those mass submission services that will submit your website to over200,000 local directories. This is about submitting through to high quality directories that are important in yourspecific industry and also in your geographic location.
Make sure when you populate the data that you fill it out fully and properly and make sure that the contactinformation that you reference through your microdata on your website and also on your Google Maps listing, allmatches. It needs to be the same address, the same phone number etc.
#4. Create targeted geographic pages on your website.
Next up, look at finally creating some specific targeted geographic pages on your website.
It might be your specific product or service and then you add in the geographic area that is local to you and yourplace of business. If there are particular suburbs that you service or particular areas, then you can go ahead andcreate pages specific for those.
A word of caution with that though is, you need to be careful to make sure they’re not just a whole bunch ofdoorway pages that are duplicating content and simply finding and replacing things like the suburb name but theframework of the page stays pretty much the same. You need to avoid doing that.
If done correctly and with some smart internal linking and following all of those steps, you can actually performvery well for local search. It does depend on the industry and the level of competition, but I’m confident if youfollow those steps, you’ll get some great results.
If you would like some help and perhaps want one of the expert team members to review your site and also yourstrategy, you can head over to melbourneseoservices.com.
Daniel ThompsonMyLocalSeo.ca
Affiliate, Global or Local SEO, the tool I couldn’t do without is SEMRush. It’s the best tool forkeyword research, analyzing competitors and it’s even now got a keyword competition tool!
Robbie Richards put together a great tutorial on the many uses of SEMRush.
The other tool I use is Whitespark. I wrote a tutorial on Local SEO, which outlines how I useWhitespark to crank out citations.
Local SEO doesn’t require a lot of high-end tools. Most of the markets you’ll compete in will have relatively lowcompetition.
The difficult part isn’t ranking a client, it’s getting enough clients to make it worth your while. I’m currentlyexperimenting with Facebook & Linkedin ads. You’ve probably heard of “lumpy mail” which is another great tacticfor generating leads.
In regards to local lead generation, I think the most important thing is being able to quickly setup landing pages.Unbounce and Leadpages are both terrific options but might be a little steep if you’re just starting out.
Personally, I use Thrive Themes & Thrive Theme Builder . In my opinion for a drag and drop style WordPresseditor Thrive is the best (and it’s pretty cheap). I setup this landing page, in ten minutes. I’m going to experimentwith setting up custom landing pages for each potential lead.
Why is this important? This will allow you to track each piece of mail you send out. It also lets you setup focusedcampaigns. For instance, you could make one specifically for Dentists, which you could target on FB exclusively inan ad campaign.
Darren Shaw
WhiteSpark.caTwitter
One of my all-time favorite local seo tools is Mike Blumenthal’s free category tool .
This tool doesn’t get as much attention as it used to since Google dropped support forcustom categories, but I still find it very useful to generate keyword themes related to thebusiness.
Let’s say you’re trying to help a plumber rank in local search.
Enter “plumber” into the tool and it will show you all the synonyms that Google’s local database associates withthe term.
Those are important keywords you want to make sure you’re including on your website. I hope it goes withoutsaying that you don’t want to just stuff the keywords into your content.
Write for humans, not search engines, and if the business offers services related to these terms, be sure toinclude them.
Ideally, you’ll make a dedicated page for each service on the website and include these pages in the primarynavigation.
Don’t just stop with one keyword. Enter all of the obvious keywords into the tool to find more related terms.
The tool also includes category data from major local business data providers such as InfoUSA, Localeze, Yelp,
Bing, and more. Set the dropdown to the various providers for even more options. You can bang out your keywordresearch work pretty quick with just this one tool.
One note of caution. Do NOT keyword stuff the businessdescription field on your Google My Business listing. Thisfield is not considered in the local ranking algorithm, sokeywords in this field won’t help you, but it is considered inGoogle’s spam filter, so keyword stuffing the field could hurtyou.
Write your business description like you’d write an AdWordsad. Write to entice to convince readers that your business isawesome and entice them to learn more. You can include alink or two to relevant sections of your website.
Chris Silver SmithSilvery.com
For highly competitive industries and market areas, it’s realistic to consider organic localsearch marketing to be a long-haul effort.
Ask yourself: why should your business rank higher than the approx 7-10 others thatcurrently occupy the top positions? The simplest answer is: you don’t!
Essentially, this is the nature of the game. It’s not possible to develop this in one month, flat.
You need to consider ongoing, monthly services to make this a possibility.
Besides using Google KW Research To Target The Long Tail In Local Search why not add SlideShare into yourtools arsenal and leave competition behind.
From a local SEO point of view, slide presentations can contain links as well as local citations, and these cancomprise a very unique source of references or “buzz” about your business as search engine algorithms analyzethem when encountered on the web.
The links do not have to be only to your business website; it’s natural to link presentations to your social mediaaccounts as well. Links to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram are also definitely in order.
Quick suggestions:
1. Optimize Your Title Slide
The title slide is likely the most important for SEO purposes, so design it carefully, incorporating valuablekeywords in the main title headline, and try to include your business’s name, address, phone number, and websiteURL on that initial slide.
2. Optimize Your Final Slide, Too
The last slide in a presentation is similarly important. Incorporate your contact information there, includingbusiness name, address, phone number, website URL, and links to your top social media accounts.
Read more tips on the benefits of using SlideShows for local SEO & web visibility and optimize your business forlocal search.
Gerry Downey
DGDMarketing.comTwitter
(Website was recently hacked should be back up soon)
I’m sure everyone has their own favourites when it comes to Local SEO. So I’ll start off withthe usual suspects and leave my favourite tool till last.
BrightLocal Is my favourite tool of choice when it comes to assessing where the competitionare listed online, how many listings they have and how many links they have going to their domain.
As well as checking to see if there are any duplicate NAP listings for the business in question.
Schema Creator Sometimes I use this tool, there are many tools out there that can produce the markup
for you but most of the time I like to do it myself as some of the tools don’t have all the input fields that I might needso Schema.org does me just fine for markup but if your new to it the schema creator tool is great.
Category Tool By Mike Blumenthal is a handy little tool for those tricky niches which are hard to pick a categoryfor, getting these little things wright the first time round saves a lot of hassle for the future.
This handy little trick is one of my favourites when it comes to what people might be actually typing into the searchbar when they are looking for certain information.
By typing in _ with your search google will list the best closely related searches which is a goldmine for initialresearch. You can then take these searches and drill down into the best long tails for you to target with which everkeyword tool you prefer.
“>Hootsuite Has a handy little feature where you do a search via Google maps it will show you who are sendingout tweets from that area.
This is very handy for your outreach efforts in finding local bloggers, which from the local side of things is great asa foundation to build opon.
And last is an IFTTT recipe which is similar to the Hootsuite one only that it creates a list of people that tweet froma certain location, again I use this for connecting with local influences in that area. That’s it my favourites are thelast two.
Casey MerazEthicalSeoConsulting.com
This is a hard question since there are so many useful local SEO tools out there and eachprovide a different service. Also most effective to me means what is going to make my life theeasiest.
For me though my favorite tools are those that save me the most time.
Whenever I’m evaluating a potential new client there is a lot of work that can go into conducting a full local SEOaudit.
Therefore I like a simple easy to use snapshot that will give me the important details quickly for me to analyze.
It’s for this reason that I think Brightlocal’s Local SEO Check-up is the most effective tool for me. By filling out
some basic company information including the NAP of a business I’m working with I can get some actionableinsights in about 15 minutes.
This is especially useful since it covers six major areas I need to evaluate before I have a clue what needs to befixed first with a local project.
Since Pigeon local SEO has taken on more organic signals so seeing some of the on-page ranking factors next tosome of the important citations is very important to me.
But to be completely fair there are a lot of tools I use regularly and fine very effective such as Local SEO Guide’sNAP Hunter, Whitespark’s Citation Finder, and Places Scout just to name a few.
If I just need a piece of the pie and need to see if they’re listed in the top data aggregators I can run a quick MozLocal check. It really just depends on the scenario and what I’m trying to accomplish.
George FreitagProfessionalGeorge.org
What I’ve found is that in local SEO, there is rarely anything more impactful to a business’online visibility than working with a directory submission service.
In fact, the longer your business has been around, the more important that directory serviceends up being.
Over time, business names can change slightly, tracking numbers get indexed, website links get broken. Thedirectory submission service is really the only way a business can make sure that your N.A.P. stays consistent.
For most businesses, the most efficient solution is going to be Moz Local, which is why I’d probably list it as thebest local SEO tool for most people. It hits 3 of the 5 major data providers, (Localeze/Neustar, Infrogroup,Acxiom) which are essential in getting more N.A.P. mentions across the Internet.
Moz Local is also great because it helps you monitor your display on Google, Bing, Yelp, and Foursquare, as well.
If you happen to have a large amount of locations, however, it may be worth talking to any of the above dataproviders directly since they may be able to provide you with some additional support.
But regardless of the solution you choose, the most important thing is that you choose one.
After that, your strategy is simple but important. You choose a Name/Address/Phone and Landing page and youstick with it. Ideally, you only refer to your business using the exact, word-for-word information you gave to MozLocal and you keep doing that until the end of time.
Jeremy RiveraJeremyRiveraSeo.com
I find that the most important part of local SEO is finding out what citations matter to Googlefor a specific industry.
Remember, every business is unique and there are different sites & directories that arerelated just to that industry.
It’s not surprising that you also tend to find some unique link & citation opportunities in even the most boring ofindustries.
You’ve got to hit those “basic citations” first, which takes time and/or money and but then you really need to dig
deeper.
My new favorite tool to uncover some of those more obscure local link & citation building opportunities is aChrome plugin by Local SEO Guide. It runs a series of queries in Google based on the name address and phonenumber of a business.
Since Google uses this same NAP information in it’s local search algorithms, it seemed worthwhile to find outwhat I could find in all of those SERPs.
I used the NAP Hunter chrome extension for a Huntsville lawyer client of mine and was able to dig up somesurprising citation and link building wins for my efforts.
I targeted his the competitors who were ranking for some of my targetted keyword phrases and saw that several ofthe queries pulled up results of local sports teams where they listed the competitor as sponsors with links to theirsite. Jackpot!
A quick email to the client, and now the sports team has a new sponsor and the client has a new, Huntsville basedlink. Another way to use this tool is to determine if local citations even play a role for a specific industry.
I used the same NAP hunter for an online E&O insurance client’s competitors to see that the industry competitorsweren’t listed at all locally, but have developed a deep network of 3rd party sites where they post “guest articles”,even though they really created the site in the first place!
Krystian SzastokKrystianSzastok.co.uk
My favourite local tool is Brightlocal. It’s a tool for managing citations and building them up.
It has a lot of other useful options but for my use the most important aspect was the easewith which I was able to manage multiple branches.
My client had 50 mini sites when I was using Brightlocal each with 2-5 locations. Sadly I can’treveal the business name due to NDA.
Brightlocal did great job managing their citations across so many locations. In regards as to how best to use it, it’simportant to use it regularly, managing your citations shouldn’t be a one off job.
Ideally use it at the start of the project, create your new citations. Then revisit after a month and month after.
Brightlocal gives you a nice counter of ‘current citations’ and ‘possible citations’ so there is usually space to grow.The tool also allows you to hand pick citations from a list of 1,600 that they use.
This gives you additional control over quality of your listings. You probably don’t want to appear on a 1,000directories overnight, but instead do a few a week, but continuously.
Other noteworthy features
Google+ Local Wizard – this feature allows you to compare your competitors listing against yours. This can be asource of inspiration. I recommend reviewing this every 3-4 months, depending on how active your competitorsare on Google+
Local SEO Checkup – this feature is especially useful at the start of the project. It checks your website for anumber of local ranking factors such as:
The address and how it’s marked up
Basic SEO factors such as having a meta description etc
Rich markup being present
Local Ranking Checker – if you don’t track any keywords for your website you’re doing something wrong.
If you’re very local targeted, just use this checker to gain insight into when your website lists and when you appearin a local listing. This also helps to track progress over time.
Reports – If you manage a business with over a 100 locations, having good reporting is crical. BrightLocal hasquite a decent reporting tool which will show which location received how many new citations, etc.
Phil RozekLocalVisibilitySystem.com
My favorite local SEO tool is Moz Local. It’s the best way to do a quick check of your most-important online listings (if you’re a US business).
You just enter your business name and ZIP code and it will give you a quick benchmark ofwhere you’re listed, where you’re not listed, and which listings have correct and incorrectbusiness info.
I’ve used it for the past 5+ years, ever since it was Getlisted.org. Of many tools I use often, it’s the one I use most.
But it’s getting better. Ever since Moz Local started offering a paid product to help with your listings (which Irecommend, by the way, especially if your business is new), there’s been a “Category Research” area. It’s free,often overlooked, and a goldmine for local SEO.
It’s a giant list that helps you pick out which categories to pick for your various listings. It’s handy if, for example,you know you’ve picked out the best Google Places categories but aren’t sure what the closest equivalents are onCitySearch, FourSquare, SuperPages, etc.
Cross-reference those category choices with my Yelp and Apple Maps categories lists and you’ve scored theeasiest win in local SEO: simply picking out the best categories.
Moz Local is only available to US businesses at the moment. Until that changes, for clients anywhere I’d say myfavorite local SEO tool is my preliminary questionnaire. It gives me the facts I need to understand a client’s overallsituation and specific problems.
I can Google their phone number and business name and see how messy the citations are, I can see if their site’sa dog, I can see what links it’s got, I can know if my client’s been penalized in any way, and I can perform all sortsof other diagnostics.
Like Moz Local, the benefit of the questionnaire is how quickly it gives me facts.
Mary BowlingMaryBowling.com
The most effective local SEO tool is WordPress. It allows us to quickly structure a localwebsite in the best ways for local businesses and to “bake” SEO into the site right from thebeginning.
Pages, subpages, categories and subcategories allow us to easily silo content around thethemes of the website and enable us to continually add content that supports those themes.
We can also establish SEO-friendly URL structures, deal with pagination, create unique snippets and achieve a
mobile-friendly responsive design without too much technical expertise.
But the best thing about using WordPress for the websites of small, local businesses is that we can quickly trainthe business owners to manage the content on their own websites.
This enables them to update products, pricing, menus, events, etc without having to rely on a web developer, aswell as giving them the ability to blog at will. With a few guidelines from us on SEO best practices, they can modifytheir URLs, optimize their page titles, create compelling meta descriptions and write in ways that please both theirwebsite visitors and search engines.
They can also engage with their customers via blogging and comments and easily push their content out acrosssocial networks.
All of these advantages enable us to provide local business websites that are optimized from the ground up toempowers small business owners to have much more control over their own internet presence.
Mike BlumenthalBlumenthals.com
From the shameless self promotion division of Mike Blumenthal.
Reviews are hard for many small businesses. Hard to get, hard to manage and yet a criticalpart of local search. I didn’t like the tools for location based businesses on the market so Ibuilt the one (with Don Campbell) that I wanted to use, GetFiveStars.com.
Great businesses get great reviews, bad businesses get bad reviews but most businesses fall somewhere in themiddle. They just don’t know where and have no formal process for improving. Many feel battered by the reviewprocess.
I wanted the businesses to feel like they had more ways to interact with the review world that were productive.
With GetFiveStars a business can solicit feedback via our email system, their email system, via their CRM systemor via a kiosk (the kiosk works great for field service professionals).
The system allows a business to easily survey every customer, determine if they are happy, unhappy or just blah.If they are unhappy, then the business is alerted IMMEDIATELY so that the problem can be fixed.
This not only creates really happy customers but dramatically limits the number of bad reviews that show up in thepublic sphere.
If the customer is happy they are lead to a choice of review sites where they can leave a public review. Anypositive reviews they left during the feedback process can be automatically pushed in Rich Snippet format to thebusiness website.
All comments and feedback are tracked and measured. The business can learn who their most ardent promotersare and who just doesn’t care or thinks ill of them.
The business can solve problems immediately and most importantly they can measure their service levels overtime so as to be able to improve and EARN good reviews.
We use the industry standard NetPromoter Score so the business can compare their quality scores to others intheir industry. Reviews at the major review sites (Google, Yelp, Facebook) are monitored and the business isalerted when new ones show up.Case study:
Why Reviews are hard:
Nick RinkSmart-Local.co.uk
There are many different facets to local SEO so we tend to use a range of tools to help withboth analyse and get the work done.
Beyond regular SEO tools like Raven, Moz and others we really like the range of things youcan do with BrightLocal.
Over the past few months we’ve been specifically using their Google+ Local Wizard quite a lot.
Adam Steele
LeanMarketing.caTwitter
How about no tools at all?! No….
We have all become so d*** reliant on the latest and greatest, that somewhere in the mix weexchanged our common sense for the fast, cool and shiny. C’mon! You’re better than tha
I’d be a b***** hypocrite if I said I didn’t use Whitespark, NAP Hunter, BrightLocal, MozLocal and a slew of othersfor my citation audits, but I never forget what works best: common sense, and a little elbow grease.
You probably don’t realize, but these tools miss a lot of stuff.
Sure, you’ll hear….”but we get the important stuff – the stuff Google cares about.” And maybe, maybe Googletapped them on the shoulder and said “hey SEO dude, who games Google, let me give you a tip. You deserve it!We only care about these 49.5 citations.”
Hah! Suspect! Very suspect indeed. Maybe they’ve done vigorous testing, been doing SEO for years and years,and just know for fact. It’s not their fault, it’s our own.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped thinking for ourselves, and assumed whatever citations they find, and theONLY ones we ought to care about. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Now let’s suppose they indeed have a direct line to Google, and received said tap on the shoulder. Alright, sure.That they know better than us. But what of brand consistency?
Suppose dear Grandma, in her persistent, ruthless search for her hair stylist of choice, goes deep into the SERPsand wanders upon this citation that had not been updated.
Some SEO decided, “meh, I ain’t feeling this one.” Or, never saw it at all. She hops the bus, heads down to MainStreet, a whopping 1 hour away. Huffs it up Main, cane in hand, only to find her stylist has moved.
Oh noooooes! Well let me you, this Grandma, ain’t happy. And she has herself a Yelp account. I needn’t saymore.
Lazy SEOs, with your Google moles, look what you’ve done!
Me, I love my Grandma. She doesn’t walk so good anymore, so I demand citation consistency for her, and all theother Grandmas out there. So when I do my citation cleanup, I don’t leave any stone un-turned. Small website, bigwebsite, pretty website, ugly website, I update ’em all.
Because I give a d*** about Grandmas!
How do I start? I am glad you asked. Here are a number of tremendous manual audit procedures (you may needto dig a little bit) from SEOs I admire very much:
Darren Shaw_SearchLove San Diego_Audit and fix citations for Local Search gains from Distilled
Advanced Citation Audit Clean Up Achieve Consistent Data Higher Rankings
Local Citation Audit Tip Use The New Sitelinks Search Boxand heck, one of my own for good measure:
Advanced Guide For Citation Audits
So the next time you start an audit, or are working on a cleanup, think of my Grandma. As it so happens, this
happened to her, and she has one badass Yelp account. Dun dun dun.
It’s simple to set up a new report. You’ll need to enter the basic business information, an accurate link to theirGoogle+ Page along with up to five search terms, which should all be geo targeted, i.e. “florist London”.
Reports take a few minutes to run and are also available through an external URL which you can share withclients, if you wish.
The initial overview gives you a quick snapshot of where you stand. For a given search term you can see if it’scitations or website authority that might be possibly letting you down.
You can also see follower and view count direct from Google+ Pages of competitors, giving an idea of whetherthey’re active or not over there.
If it looks like citations could be the issue then the analysis the tool gives can be highly useful. You get to see along list of citations both for your client and competitors. You can sort by citation count or by authority.
We usually start by looking at the citation count which helps to highlight any of the more obvious major ones thatcould be missing. For example, the one below would appear to be missing on Yahoo.com.
They actually have some duplicate issues there, but this has helped to indicate that there’s an issue there thatneeds sorting. Looking at the list by authority helps to target some of the more unstructured citations that come viapress, blogs and elsewhere. Can uncover some gems!
Ryan ScollonBowlerHat.co.uk
I was introduced to Local SEO over 2 years ago when I first started at Bowler Hat and myfirst task was to find an effective but affordable Local SEO tool.
At the time I could only find two and after testing both Whitespark and BrightLocal out, I hadfound my perfect match.
Bright Local was the one for me, It was simple to use and came with some really cool tutorial videos to help youget started. After using it for 2 years, I can still say that it is a great tool and is a crucial tool in order for me tocomplete my job successfully.
It comes with a range of tools but as I like to do a lot of the work myself, there are only a few that are useful to me:
Rank Checker – Allows you to track your organic & local search rankings in google, yahoo & bing. I tend not tofocus on yahoo or bing results but it is still a great tool which allows you to track up to 50 keywords which wouldtake a long time to do if collecting results manually.
CitationTracker – Allows you to keep track of your existing citations but also recommends other citations for you tocreate. This tool includes one of the best features you could possible ask for in Local SEO: Old Citation Finder.
It allows you to enter two old business names and addresses and will find a list of citations that have them detailson. Citations play a crucial part in Local SEO and it can be difficult to manage and maintain 30+ listings but thisdoes all the hard work for you.
SEO Check Up – Allows you to run a complete SEO audit on a particular company. The report covers 6 areas oflocal SEO including Google+ Local, Local Directory listings, on-site SEO and social media.
I tend to use this when I receive an enquiry, as it allows to have a general overview of the work that needs to bedone.
Google+ Local Wizard Tool – Allows you to analyse important Google+ local ranking factors for your business andbenchmark yourself against top 10 competitors.
This is my favourite tool of them all as you can easily compare stats of your Google+ page against the top 10competitors for a particular search term. The best feature is it the ability to spy on competitors to see which highvalue citations they have but you do not.
So there we have it. Bright Local for me is a great tool but it is not yet perfect. It has helped the guys here atBowler Hat doing some amazing work for small companies targeting local areas.
Tyson DownsTitanWebAgency.com
My favorite local SEO tool has to be one of Bright Local’s many tools . I use their tools nearlyevery day.
For example, when I get a new client, part of my Local SEO Audit involves looking at thecompetition in the local market.
As an example, if I’m working with a Las Vegas dentist, then I like to see what type of results are showing for oneof their search terms (typically cityname dentist).
I find out exactly what is showing up by running a Google + Local Wizard report inside my Bright Local Dashboard.What does this show me?
The categories the top results are using
# of citations for each top listing
strength of those citations
exactly what citations each listing has
citation opportunities (by viewing the citations for each listing in the top 7 results)
website authority
# of reviews
# of images
How does this help? We know that all of those items are ranking factors. This is low hanging fruit which allows usto find citation opportunities, and see what category that Google feels is most relevant for certain keywords.
I think at times, SEO professionals like to make this harder than it is.
Making up ‘theories’, and new terminology for who know’s what reason.
Bottom line, keep it simple by:
Making your website easily readable by the search engines (on page SEO)
Being listed on the major citation sites (and a few hidden ones if your competition is)
Being an active, legitimate business (That is-blog. Be active in your community. Give Back. Use socialmedia)
Getting client feedback (in the form of reviews)
Really that’s it. Sure, there’s details here and there, but figure that stuff out and you are 90% of the way there.
P.S. In case you haven’t seen my blog post about the top local SEO tools, you can check it out here.
Margaret OrnsbyMoreCustomersMoreSales.com.au
Citations are without a doubt the least favourite aspect of any Local Search project. It’stedious and time consuming. So any tool to help make this task easier is a good thing.
There are two paid-for tools of note – one from BrightLocal and one from Whitespark. Bothare really good, both get continual enhancements and either one would be a good choice tohave in your arsenal.
But even with these great tools, I still found myself needing to do manual checks. And that is really where the hardslog has been made easier, by a tool that costs nothing.
You need Google Chrome and Excel, and skills to run both. The tool itself is called N.A.P. HUNTER! Lite fromLocal SEO Guide and is an extension you can download from the Chrome Web Store.
It works by doing exact match searches for (and minus) different parts of a business’s NAP info, so it will work inany country and for any website Google indexes.
You enter the key information for a business and it returns for you the combination searches you’re most likely todo manually, as a search result page. You can then download those results to a spreadsheet and work your waythrough the list.
This is where your Excel skills come in handy, as the searches will return duplicates. It will also return junk ones(like reverse phone lookups), so you need to have your list handy of domains you automatically ignore.
But in returning everything, there are almost always ones that the paid services discard or don’t pick up becauseof the way their algos work. And this is where it shines.
This tool is really handy for finding citations that are fragments (eg part of the business name but not the wholething), or finding ones in countries outside the US/UK, or duplicates within the same directory.
In the end, it all comes down to how much of a stickler you are for details and what part/s of the world yourcustomers have their businesses.
If all your customers are US or UK only, then chances are the commercial services will make citations a breezeand you won’t want or need the NAP Hunter. But if you do businesses globally or prefer to nail down every lastcitation, then NAP Hunter is a must-have.
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Wrapping It Up
So there you have it! The Local SEO experts have spilled the beans on their favourite local SEO tools & how theyuse them effectively.
Have you got any additional local SEO tips that weren’t included here?
Don’t forget to check out the Local SEO guide for a step by step ranking strategy!