What’s the Point of a Local SEO Audit?
A local SEO audit identifies errors on your website and tells you opportunities that you can make more money from. Local SEO audits can help businesses improve their organic rank by using methods and to assess where a business stands online and what needs to be done to improve rankings.
A local SEO audit can identify and address any issues with your website’s search engine optimization and digital marketing efforts to drive traffic to the business’ website. The audit can provide you with valuable insights by helping you continue to improve your online presence.
A local SEO audit can also help you track the progress of your local SEO services and strategy over time. Knowing what digital marketing efforts are successful helps you identify where to allocate further resources and limit or rehabilitate less successful campaigns.
Local SEO Audit: The Essentials of Local Search Audit
What is Local SEO audit? To run a local SEO audit, you’ll need to review your website and make sure it is properly optimized for local search. You’ll also want to make sure your business listings are accurate and up-to-date. Next are social media assets which you also want to assure are fully developed and have regular, frequent postings.
General search engine optimization starts by researching all the on-page elements for use in local SEO. The basic steps include an inventory and keyword strategy. Finding the search terms, knowing your target queries and getting some back link building done is the first step in doing content audits for your website. On page elements such as page title, title tags, subheadings, word count, meta description, and back inks are all important factors in local SEO analysis.
Business listings such as citations, Google Business Profile, Bing Places are highly important for local SEO. Assure that your business listings are complete and accurate. Additionally, look for additional listing opportunities for your business paying particular attention to sources that niche- and location-specific. Focusing on these helps increase your business’ relevancy, proximity and prominence which are all ranking factors for Google search engine results.
Local SEO Audit: Local Search Audit
To do a complete local SEO audit, the audit looks at the overall ranking of the business’ website and competitor analysis. How many search terms does the website rank for and does it rank in Maps, Organic and the Google Pack.
It’s important to get the lay of the digital landscape to understand how well the business is doing and what are the areas for improvement. Oftentimes, there are numerous potential search terms on page 2 onward that, with a little SEO, can be boosted to rank on Page 1 and above the fold which is the holy grail where businesses start seeing more lead flow for the business.
Having this bird’s eye view of a business’ online presence provides a road map for improving SEO to help the business grow and achieve their financial goals through relevant campaigns that drive sales.
Local SEO Audit: Web Site Performance
Site speed is important for customers and for ranking in Google. Recently, page speed has become particularly important element for website ranking. Various page speed tools can provide you with insights regarding your website’s speed.
Off-page analysis involves measuring how well the website is performing in Google search engine results pages (SERPs). Various tools are used to gauge website speed. Backlinks are checked to see the strength of the “link juice” from other websites. This information is compared with competitor websites to determine whether the current backlink profile is sufficient and whether there are possibly opportunity gaps for back links.
Google PageSpeed Insights Tool performs a near-instant audit of a given URL. Pingdom’s Website Speed Test and GTMetrix are two excellent page speed tools. It’s good practice to use all three as they each will show slight variations in the information and provide guidance on what to address to improve your website’s performance, such as slow loading assets, layout issues, structure, excessive code, etc.
Local SEO Audit: Technical SEO
SEO is the process of optimizing how well a website fits within search engine results by reviewing user friendliness and compatibility. A technical local SEO audit includes improving website design, layout, and on-page elements to make your site easier to understand and find.
Improving your site’s technical elements can improve your site’s ranking in search engines, as well as improve user experience. Screaming Frog is a popular web search engine optimization tool that helps you audit your website for local SEO. It provides detailed information about how well your website has performed in specific locations, including:
- SERP features
- Link popularity
- On page keyword density
- CPC (cost per click) analysis
Local SEO Audit: On-page SEO
Local SEO audits find what local ranking issues exist. Google’s algorithm based search engine practices algorithmic changes so it’s necessary to be aware if a business suddenly drops in search ranking. Checking for crawling errors is important because it’s easy to fix. Broken links and low ranking in search engines can be a cumbersome task if they are visible on web pages.
Page titles, title tags, subheadings, word count, meta description, and other elements of a page’s SEO can be analyzed with Screaming Frog or Siteliner. Once weaknesses in on-page SEO are identified, top-tier SEO plugins can be used to improve rankings.
Local SEO Audit: Off-page SEO
In today’s ever-changing online world, nothing stays the same for long. Search engine marketing is one that finds itself in this perpetual motion despite the ever-evolving algorithms and changing market conditions. One challenge marketers face is local search, which should be marketing thoughtfully to achieve growth and revenue regardless what form that takes.
An off-page local SEO audit identifies issues such as low ranking in search engines, crawl errors, and broken links. It also provide information on how well the site is indexed by Google and other major search engines and provide valuable insight on how to optimize a website for better online visibility and improved traffic flow.
A comprehensive Local SEO audit will help you achieve your online visibility and improve traffic if done properly. Optimizing for the web just doesn’t happen all on its own, it has to be strategic. To be confident in the success of your website, leave none unaccounted for. A yearly local SEO audit can help you identify specific steps that are not being taken and where they should be focused on.
Local SEO Audit: Keyword Ranking For Search Rankings
Performing a keyword ranking audit establishes where your business ranks against your competitors using a high-level view of what kind of sites and pages are likely to appear in search results for a user’s search choices. This process can be done on an individual website and within specific terms. Local SEO Audits accomplish this by analyzing search term rankings, traffic and social interactions through images and videos.
Some search terms that have a good chance of ranking for your business include those that are realistic, such as search terms with a medium traffic potential for example. If you are considering performing a local SEO audit, the first step is to brainstorm and lay out broad search terms for your website that might be high in search volume locally. After listing these potential keywords, divide the list into manageable sections that can easily be searched.
PPC earnings on the most common keywords are likely to also be favorable from an SEO sense. Though most SEO focuses on organic search, the PPC earnings provide valuable information on the highest converting keywords. Consequently, SEO and paid search should complement each other for optimal results.
Some people search for things in different ways, and it’s important to not limit your research only to the words they use when searching. Rather, you should take into account the various phrases that might be used when looking for what you offer. A broader search term view will provide a better picture of the overall strength of your presence and where to best focus your attention.
It’s also important to balance your keyword types. Focus on your most commercial keywords for your services pages such as “plumber Seattle”. Otherwise, use informational keywords as a content map to provide your website users with helpful, relevant content. Ideally, you want a balance of commercial terms to drive lead flow and informational terms to reflect your business’ authority and subject matter expertise to be useful to prospective customers or clients in your region.
Be sure your keyword selection and the content you create both match searchers’ intent. Buyer intent search terms are fundamental for establishing the evergreen pages of your website to properly match your services to what prospective customers are seeking. Make it as easy as possible for your business’ services to be discovered.
Local SEO Audit: Local Business Listing
A Google Business Profile (GBP), Bing Places, Apple Business are all valuable assets to most local businesses because it acts like secondary website and is a major point of presence. Of the 3 business listings, GBP is the most valuable but a business should aim to have all of them.
A Google Business Profile audit should be assure the accuracy and completeness of the various profile components such as:
- business information and location details
- correct business categories
- hours of operation
- accurate location pin in Google Maps
- appropriate categorization as either a physical location or service area business
- products
- services
- photos
- offers
- updates
- events
- appointment link(s)
- informational content
- contact information
- website links
- customer reviews
The foregoing is a minimum level of development. GBP can be much further optimized to really provide a local business with a strong SEO boost. Optimizing your GBP listing is worth every penny. When a business’ website and GBP are both well-optimized, they work in tandem and amplify the SEO for each other. For small business, this is a game-changer.
Local SEO Audit: Review Management For Business Listings
Review management software can help businesses ask for and manage reviews on GBP and other review sites. Review audits should be conducted to get the most from the surveys your reviews provide, usually to figure out customer service or satisfaction issues or themes that need to be addressed
Local SEO Audit: Local Content For Web Pages
A content audit can help identify the type of content your audience needs. That content might be commercial or quality content, as it relates to marketing. The relevance of commercial content vs. quality content is that your audience wants both; they want to see something clickable that fits their knowledge and interest factor.
Using videos and text-based content to share content is more engaging than with a single type of content. Videos can be optimized for digital marketing visibility, making them an ideal type of content to local businesses.
Local SEO Audit: Local SEO Citations for Businesses
Conducting a local search to determine how many mentions of the business name and address exist online on local business citations is another aspect of competitor analysis. Check to see where your competitors’ business citations are listed and then match and exceed their citations listings.
Checking social media, such as both Yelp and Facebook, as well as citatetion data-aggregators like Axiom and Localeze, as well as historical social media platforms like Superpages, and geographical databases like Google Maps. These sources are all essential citation sources.
Local SEO Audit: Schema-Markup for Local Business Search
Schema markup helps make websites more user-friendly by allowing them to contain rich content in the search engine. If a website is using schema markup, enter the URL in Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to be sure. Schema, or structured data, speaks to the search engine bot to help it understand what your website and web pages are about. The better your schema, the easier it is for the web spiders to crawl your website, index your pages, rank your pages and drive traffic.
If you use WordPress, there are a number of excellent plugins that provide schema. If you are a DIY business owner, adding schema is one of the very best ways to boost your website in the SERPS
Local SEO Audit: Social Media Channels
Engaging on social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, do not directly correlate to the success of your local SEO rankings. But they will have an effect on your local SEO performance. Distributing content in the right social media channels can also help you attract revenue opportunities because you will be building awareness of your brand.
Use a tool like Buzzsumo to find competitor’s most shared social media content. Otherwise, plan on listing your business on as many social media sites that you can reasonably manage. There are a number of excellent social media posting tools you can use and it’s easy enough to repurpose content across all your platforms.
Local SEO Audit: Local Back Links
If a website or a given webpage is using schema markup, the searcher needs to see this kind of content in order for their website or webpage to rank. An online marketer can achieve this by building backlinks from local sources.
Local backlinks are highly significant for local businesses especially when they come from high-quality websites that have developed semi-authority like websites with a high domain value and relative page authority. Relatively few relevant, local links are much more valuable than numerous, low-quality links. Think quality over quantity.
Local backlink sources in your region for a great SEO boost, include:
* Your local chamber of commerce
* Local community sites like Patch
* Local newspapers
* Local bloggers
* Sponsored teams or charities you’ve supported
* Other businesses in your area
Local SEO Audit Are A Report Card & Road Map for Small Businesses
Having an online presence on various platforms works synergystically with your website as the hub. Each digital asset reinforces the other and facilitates linking between assets to make your business as easy to discover as possible. Creating a substantial online presence gives your business online authority and amplifies your brand. Awareness through assets is fundamental to a successful Local SEO strategy.
Strong rankings are essential for business growth. Your Local SEO Audit can show you how well you are doing now and provide you with a plan of action to help augment your online presence. Assets attract audiences and with great service, they become raving fans who provide favorable reviews which then become even more valuable assets that continuously drive growth. The circle of digital life.
Be sure to get your Local SEO check up annually for optimal results. An SEO report can be issued monthly, yearly, etc. and is an important tool to help business owners monitor the health of their business online.
Free Online SEO Report Generator: SEO Audit Tools {Free}
Follow this link for our free SEO checker tool. The site audit tool will provide you with an easy to read report regarding your website performance. The free local SEO audit tool will also indicate how visible your website is online.
