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Top 3 Local SEO Tools for Increasing Traffic

Local SEO is an increasingly competitive landscape, and the changes made by Google over the years have made local SEO increasingly complex. Many local businesses fail to take advantage of local SEO because they don’t understand the potential impact it could have on their business or simply choose to ignore it.

There are some great free and paid tools available on the market to help you with local SEO. We’ve looked through the best and came up with a list of 3 for you below.

What is local SEO?

Local SEO is the process of improving your website’s visibility among people looking for physical goods and services in a specific area. It focuses on optimising a website to rank highly in relevant local search results.

One of the most effective ways to improve your business’s online presence is by focusing on local SEO. Whether you’re a dentist, a hairdresser, a takeaway or a flower shop – local SEO will help connect you more closely to those in your neighbourhood who are searching for services in your area.

For example, if you were a dentist in Sydney, you would most likely attempt to rank for the keywords like “dentists in sydney” and “dentists near me”. This way, you would get found by people who are planning to visit a dentist or who are already driving around looking for a dental clinic.

Google My Business

Google My Business is a free and public tool set up by Google that allows businesses to create listings to market their products and services.

If you have a business listing on Google My Business it will appear in search results as well as other Google properties – Maps, Google+ and adverts – making your contact information accessible to users wherever they are.

It’s quite easy to create or update a Google My Business listing even if you have no prior coding or digital marketing experience. You can fill out information like your business address, hours of operations, website, and contact information.

Users can leave reviews, rating your business anything between one to five stars. If you’ve claimed your listing, you can then respond to reviews and thank or acknowledge customers’ feedback.

After creating your listing, you can continue to post about your most recent products and services. For example, if you’re having a holiday sale, you can post about it on your Google My Business listing. The great thing is, it’s completely free. You don’t need to pay extra to ensure that people see your post.

Listing Management by SEMRush

In the days before the Internet, people relied on phonebooks to find businesses. Now, people rely on search engines like Google or online directories to find businesses they’d like to work with in their area.

If you market your business online, you will most likely have several listings across different platforms.

Listing management can be a time consuming and monotonous process. If you have a lot of listings already set up, then chances are you also have hours of work ahead of you to manage all of them.

But with SEMRush’s new Listing Management tool, this process is easier than ever.

All you have to do is open the tool, enter your URL, and click on the magnifying glass icon. It will then show your listings online along with information in the said listings like your business name, address, and phone number.

At one glance, you can see if the information in your listings is up to date or if it needs to be changed. For example, if you recently moved to a new location, you can use Listing Management to see which listings you need to update with your new business address.

Aside from showing you existing listings, it also shows you other directories where you can create listings. By creating listings in these directories, you can gain access to a new pool of potential customers and generate more traffic to your website.

BrightLocal

According to their website copy, BrightLocal can help you “know where you rank, why you rank there, and how to rank higher.”

It has plenty of local search-related functions.

Local Search Grid creates a map that shows you nearby competitors and how well they’re ranking for your target keywords. At one glance, you can see right away if your digital marketing efforts are paying off or not in comparison to your competitors’ rankings.

Citation Tracker helps you find new and monitor existing citations, including listings in online directories. At one glance, you can find listings you need to claim along with listings that contain incorrect information. 

Local Search Audit audits your SEO efforts, rating everything from your domain authority to how many websites link back to your website. It lets you see which aspects you still need to improve on and can serve as a guide for your future digital marketing efforts.

Conclusion

As a local business, you want to be sure that you use the best local SEO tools.

The local SEO landscape can be extremely competitive, but there are numerous tools available to make life easier.

Need help preparing your website for 2022? Cornerstone Digital is a web development company in Sydney. Call us on (02) 8211 0668 or email us at info@cornerstone-digital.com.au.

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Darlyn Herradura

A self-professed book and digital marketing nerd, Darlyn Herradura focuses on building trust between customers and businesses with the written word. She understands that creating valuable content is the best way to get found online and happily spends her time doing that.