6 Local SEO Tools Your Business Should Be Using
Search engine optimization tools often operate on a global scale, maximizing your business’ rank for your keywords whenever anyone almost anywhere plugs them into a search engine. But SEO is just as important for small, local businesses as it is for big multinational firms. Whether you want to be the top coffee shop in Butte, Montana or the number-one florist in Kuching, Malaysia, you can use local SEO tools to attract attention and generate business. Here are some of the best ones available for your use today.
WhiteSpark Local Citation Finder
Citations are online mentions of the name, address, and phone number of your business, and local citations are particularly important for local businesses. They show up on social media, in business directories, and in local news sources, and you can manage your citations to bring in business and ensure the accuracy of your data. WhiteSpark is the gold standard for citation tools. It allows you to search your keywords alongside your location and discover opportunities for citations. You can also identify your top-ranking competitors and analyze their citations, and find citations you’re missing out on.
It’s not enough just to have a web presence; you want people to get a positive impression from the results they get when they search for your business. Online reviews make a huge difference in whether or not potential customers choose to visit your business – but keeping tabs on the many different platforms people use for posting reviews is a major time suck. Free Review Monitoring sweeps the web for reviews of your brand and conglomerates them all in one place, and lets you do the same with your competitors so you can monitor their image as well. You can also enable email alerts for all new reviews.
Blumenthal’s Local Business Category Tool
Google Places uses different categories to group businesses. This simple tool lets you search and choose categories for your business, so you can make sure you’re included in all the categories that could attract customers to your location.
This tool from Moz lets you check citations, duplications, processing errors, and more with the click of a button. The SEO Quick Check is a great way to ensure that local customers can not only find your business with a Google or Bing search but access its sites without running into a roadblock along the way. Run it today and find out what you can do better!
Google and other search engines use a structured data standard called Schema.org to interpret content in HTML. It’s complicated, but you should know that if you aren’t including the correct Schema microdata in your local business’ HTML, you could be in trouble. Luckily, the Schema Creator tools are available to help you utilize Schema.org. The JSON-LD Schema generator lets you choose a type of microdata you’d like to create and generates JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data that you can place anywhere on your page. The Schema App is a paid app that allows you to export to multiple formats.
This simple, attractively designed checklist helps you make sure all of your local SEO variables are being managed. It helps you keep track of keywords in your page titles, clean up your URLs, and avoid duplicate content, as well as optimizing logos, ensuring your menu items are indexable, and much, much more. When you think all your bases are covered, head to the Local SEO Checklist – more than likely, you’re missing something, and this tool will help you fix it quick.
