A local SEO audit is a comprehensive examination of various SEO aspects that affect local rankings. Basically, a local SEO strategy involves optimizing your website to ensure increased visibility or ranking within a given geographic location.
Therefore, the main goal of a local SEO audit is not just to examine the factors that affect local rankings. You also want to address any issues that could prevent your local business from ranking higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
This post will explain how to conduct a local SEO audit to increase your company’s exposure and growth.
1. Google My Business
Google My Business is a free Google tool that whatsapp and digital marketing lets you display your business information on Google Maps and 3-pack search results.
It is a must-have tool for functional local SEO. Therefore, if you don’t already have one, your local SEO audit should start with setting up a verified Google Business Profile account. If you have an account, you must double-check it and optimize it for search engines.
Google ranks listings based on relevance, distance, and prominence. So, consider how you can improve your listing to encourage the right ranking. Make sure you provide factual information about your business, such as your real address, name, hours of operation, services, and location.
Additionally, one of the most important details you must provide is the category of your business. Add the correct category as this will affect the type of search queries that trigger your business profile. Here is an example of how it will appear.
In addition to creating or claiming your GMB profile, you must also optimize your listing. Here’s how:
- Write an optimized business description. Optimize your description with relevant keywords to improve your performance in local search engine results pages (SERPs);
- Upload a high-quality image.Google, businesses keyword research tools with high-resolution images receive more website hits than those without. So, add a cover photo of your brand and products or showcase interior photos of your business;
- Collect customer reviews. Send emails to consumers encouraging them to postPositive Google ReviewsIt’s also important to clean up your email listEmail VerificationTool. It prevents bounced emails and protects your reputation.
- Responding to reviews, especially negative ones, shows search engines and potential customers that your business cares about its customers;
- Add a Q&A section. Use this section to ask and answer the most common questions about your business;
- Add accurate business hours;
- Add contact information;
- letinformation;
If you own a business with multiple locations, you should do the same for all your profiles. Updated and accurate local listings for each business location. Take a look at this:
Little Italy Pizza is a great example of a business that optimizes their GMB listing. Their listing provides all the important details, including a direct link to their menu.
2. Page Signals
Page signals are just as important in local SEO as they are in traditional SEOSEOPage signal audit involvesImprovements, keywords, and other technical page features that help search engines and people understand what your company is all about.
The content on your website must be optimized for relevant resource data keywords to help you rank higher.Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush can help you identify lucrative keywords worth targeting.
Once you’ve identified your keywords, use them to optimize your content titles, meta descriptions, URLs, blog posts, alt images, and everything else that appears on your website.
Effective blogging tools can help you manage your content more effectively and increase the value of your content. For example, tools like SurferSEO can also be very useful in optimizing your on-page content. You can use the software to optimize your blog posts for the right keywords and phrases to improve your posts’ rankings.