This list of tools provides you with a helpful glimpse into the world of local SEO. Local SEO is essential to the success of your online marketing campaigns, and the best local SEO tools will help you with work automation for some parts.
What will you learn?
- Understand SEO and local SEO, as well as the importance of local SEO
- Take a look at the top 14 best local SEO tools and which one is our favorite.
The percentage of clicks will consistently drop as you go further down the search engine results page because logically, sites with a more relevant result will be positioned at the top of the search engine results.
So, businesses need to try their best to climb the ranks. This is especially true when it comes to Local businesses when there are only 3 prominent spots (Google 3 Packs) for near me searches. Local SEO is an essential part of your SEO strategy to help you increase CTR, traffic and rank higher on the SERP.
However, optimizing local SEO is complex and can take a lot of time. In this situation, the best local SEO tool will be the secret weapon for businesses to prosper.
In this guide, we’ll keep things organized for you with SEO and local SEO information. We also recommend the top 14 best local SEO tools to boost local rankings.
Get-to-know SEO and Local SEO
What is Local SEO?
SEO is critical to your online marketing efforts. Because of this, a lot of marketers choose to implement various SEO tools, including free local SEO tools, to track, measure, and analyze their SEO efforts. You may already be using some of the top local SEO tools, such as Google Analytics. However, you mustn’t forget about your local SEO efforts as well.
The use of Local SEO
Local SEO is an essential part of your SEO strategy, especially if you’re a minor to mid-sized company that relies on the business of local customers. There are many different local SEO strategies that you can implement, from optimizing your content using local SEO keywords to submitting your NAP (name, address, and phone number) to various local directories. To help organize and streamline your local SEO efforts, you should use these crucial local SEO tools.
Why is local SEO important?
Do you know that 72% of consumers that did a local search visited a store within five miles?
97% of people learn more about a local company online than anywhere else in this digital era. That’s where another benefit of SEO comes into use — it can promote your business 24/7, both online and offline.
As consumers move through the buying funnel, they conduct many different searches. As you use local SEO efficiently, you can also increase your brand visibility online.
What is a local SEO tool?
A local SEO tool helps you to organize, streamline, and track all of your local SEO efforts.
With a local SEO tool, you can easily track your rankings, spy on competitors, develop SEO-optimized keywords, monitor your performance, encourage customer engagement, and much more.
Top 14 best local SEO tools
The following are 14 different local SEO software that you might find extremely useful, some of which are available at a small cost and some of which are free local SEO tools.
- BiQ Cloud
BiQ is an SEO suite that democratizes the pricing model and lets you scale as your needs grow. BiQ can help you with most of the challenging parts – finding the right keywords to include on your location pages.
This tool isn’t like the traditional SEO tools you see in the market, thanks to their approach to granular cost control. From products such as Keyword Intelligence, Content Intelligence, Rank Intelligence, and Rank Tracking, you’re sure to benefit from it in one way or the other.
Let’s look at how BiQ can help you do your local SEO keyword research without further ado.
After entering your keyword, you can choose from more than 100,000 locations and 35 languages.
Finding local keywords with Rank Intelligence – discover the content gap between your business and your competitors.
Once you have selected your preferred location and language, the keywords returned would be more specific to the targeted people searching for your business. The tool would help you in creating more localized content. Thus, increasing your site’s visibility locally.
At BiQ, not only will you be taught how to dominate your niche wherever you are located, but you’d also be able to find the most valuable keywords.
If you are not sure which keywords to choose, sort the value of the keyword. It’s simple: The higher the value of the keyword, the more traffic it can potentially bring to your website.
2. Grid My Business
Grid My Business is a grid-based local rank tracker specifically designed to track and compare your Google My Business ranking performance against the top 20s in the local SERP through a specific search query.
You can find all the locations the same as on Google Maps.
Grid My Business can track and monitor your business’ and competitors’ local search rankings. You need to use that data to your advantage and craft your local SEO strategies around it.
There are 5 outstanding features of this tool:
- Customizable grid parameters: This local rank tracking tool is a relatively new strategy for local businesses. With just a 15 by 15 grid, you can quickly identify close to 300 rank positions in one search query.
- Bulk search queries: Grid My Business also allows you to identify local rankings of multiple search queries by performing a quick and easy bulk scan of up to 5 keywords per scan.
- Side-by-side comparison view: With this feature, you can compare the two results that are generated on different dates of the same query.
- Monitoring reports: You can find all the previous scanning on the reports page. Details include place, search query, search setting, and monitoring will be provided. The “Active” status means that the tool will keep analyzing data for your query every 3 days, with updated data.
- Scheduled scanning: You can add your scan details; location, search query, grid size, and radius. Then, you can select the date and time of your intended scheduled scan. This feature helps you save tons of time.
To use Grid My Business, you only need 3 simple steps.
Firstly, enter the company name/location that you want to track. Then, add the keywords which you want to know the ranking.
Secondly, choose the grid size, and suitable radius based on your preference.
Finally, just click “Scan Now” and wait for the result.
Each grid point is your ranking in that area. So you can see that the above business is doing great with their local SEO work.
One more incredible thing about Grid My Business is that it can be used for free with basic features and you can access all the features at a very cheap price.
3. Whitespark Local Citation Finder
The Whitespark Local Citation Finder is one of the full-fledged local listing management tools you can invest in. In addition to essential local listing management, the tool allows you to identify where you should list your business to improve local SEO rankings.
It also boasts several additional features, including the ability to collect customer feedback and online reviews, monitor local search rankings by a city, discover and create link opportunities, and more. You can use the tool-free for limited search results.
4. Moz Local
Moz Local is a primary local listing management tool that allows users to manage local listings and claim and verify listing submissions. The tool also works with data aggregators to help push listings, ensuring that your business is visible. Additionally, the tool will scan through your citations and notify you of any errors that it finds, which could be hurting your local SEO.
Last but not least, Moz Local will give you a rundown on the categories and media used for your citation. It’s available for a relatively affordable price (compared to other local listing management tools).
5. BrightLocal
BrightLocal is a collection of tools available in various packages that start at $19.99 a month. These tools offer the ability to compare rankings against your competition on three major search engines – to find out where your competitors are listed, and monitor online reviews, just to name a few.
6. Synup
Synup is extremely useful for submitting your NAP to local directories. It’s a tool that allows you to easily manage your local listings, review and analyze your listings and NAP data.
It’s one of the most comprehensive directory lists that you can have. Besides, Synup allows you to check listings and examine if you have existing citations on them, should you add your NAP to listings, and fix incorrect data on current listings. It does cost $25 a month; however, it’s a highly effective tool.
7. Yext
Yext is similar to Synup as it also offers review monitoring, analytics, and local listing management (not to mention widgets).
However, what makes it stand apart from many local listing tools is that it’s one of the few – if not the only – automated local listing management tool on the market. Yext allows you to get your listing data populated right away and provides the ability to update your NAP information in real-time.
8. Local SEO Checklist
This organizational tool will help you do everything to boost your local SEO rankings while offering users 40 options that detail specific tasks. It can also help you optimize your site and increase your ranking by developing your blog, on-page SEO, social media, and more. It’s an essential checklist, but it’s free!
9. Schema Creator
Schema Creator allows you to build schema.org microdata quickly, thereby making it easier for search engines to identify and index your site’s content. This makes it more likely for your content to show up on relevant searches.
10. Google Ad Keyword Planner
This tool works well for strengthening your local SEO keywords. During the keyword research phase, you can identify the traffic for specific keywords and find new local keywords based on local searches.
The Keyword Planner tool even allows you to conduct research based on geographic regions. Not only is it a valuable tool to have for your local SEO keyword efforts, but it’s arguably one of the most useful free SEO tools available as well.
11. Ahrefs
Ahrefs can help with your local SEO strategy by providing you with a detailed backlink profile for any website you want. The tool lets you see who is linking to your site, what anchor text they’re using for your backlinks, and how strong your backlinks are.
It also allows you to check the strength of your competitor’s backlinks. The tool is used by hundreds of thousands of users worldwide, accounting for its steep price point. At its very basic, it will cost you $99 a month, while full-fledged agency plans cost $999 a month.
12. Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business, is the best way to provide customers with information about your business. Without an optimized Google Business Profile, you’re missing out on your online audience.
In Google Business Profile, small businesses can set up their official Google business profile, and upload images of their store and products. The tool also helps you to engage with your customers by responding to reviews and posting informative posts about your business on your page.
If you want your business to appear in Google’s local SEO 3-pack, at the top of results, you need to claim and optimize your Google Business Profile listing.
However, also remember that you should be, at a minimum, posting at least one post per week to your Google Business Profile page. This is a great reputation builder and customers will see that you are engaged as a business owner.
13. Google Search Console
Google Search Console ensures your website remains Google-friendly. You can also use it to check the keywords Google ranks your site for and the number of pages Google has indexed from your site.
Google Search Console can also help you know how your website performs on the SERP in different countries, things like impressions and CTR.
The overview report in Google Search Console featured three main reports: Performance, Coverage and Enhancements.
The URL Inspection tool might be one of our favorites because you get to see how Google views your website. This tool allows you to test how Google renders your site. If you published a new blog post or redesigned a webpage, you can use this URL inspection tool to signal Google to crawl that page.
14. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a website analytics tool for site optimizations. It tracks and reports web traffic to users. Google Analytics can track session duration, bounce rate, and pages per session and get insights from demographic data to use in your overall marketing strategy.
Google Analytics is undoubtedly one of the most useful tools out there to understand your digital performance, no matter your website’s size. Google Analytics is able to track not just one, but multiple websites that you own. When it comes to local SEO, it can tell you how your website performs when it comes to different audiences coming from different backgrounds. For example, If you are interested in only seeing how French visitors interact with the website, you can apply a geographic filter to only analyze visitors coming from France
Once you have this information, you will be able to optimize your website accordingly and maximize your customers’ experience.
To use this feature, of course, you will need to set up a Google Analytics account (if you don’t already have one). You can sign up for a free account here.
TL;DR
Using these local SEO tools will make it easier to implement your local SEO strategies and measure their performance by tracking them, thereby helping to ensure that your local SEO efforts are as strong as they can be.
Although we point out 14 best local SEO tools for your business, you’ll still need to put in the work depending on the tools you use. Choosing the best local SEO tool which is suitable for your work is important. Though tools can help you do a more effective job in local SEO, they are still not a replacement for hard work.
This post was originally written by Joanne and published on April 4, 2017. It was most recently updated on January 04, 2022, by Claire Le.
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