A local SEO audit is your roadmap to online success. Think about it, when potential customers search for products or services in their area, where do they turn? That’s right, Google. A local SEO audit will give you a clear picture of what’s working, what’s not, and how you can stand out from the competition. It analyzes every single thing on your website and identifies improvements for better local SEO ranking.
Table of Contents
What Does a Local SEO Audit Do For My Business?
Here’s the truth, you could have the best bagels in the world, but if people can’t find you online, it’s as if you don’t exist. A local SEO analysis will reveal any hidden factors preventing local customers from discovering your business.
It analyzes your SEO performance in organic search results. Then, it provides an action plan to attract customers and boost your local SEO rankings. Your business listing will climb the Google search results with a solid strategy.
Key Areas of Focus During A Local SEO Audit
To improve search rankings, boost traffic, and convert those precious clicks into customers, a local SEO audit focuses on these crucial aspects:
1. Keyword Analysis
Just like knowing the ingredients for that perfect bagel recipe, identifying the target keywords your ideal customer uses to find your product is key. A keyword analysis reveals current search terms and helps fine-tune your website content.
This way, your content marketing directly targets the customers that will make your business thrive. For example, early-stage customers might search for “X in [city, state].”
To get a broader keyword list, you can use SEO tools like Ahrefs and Keyword Finder. These SEO services tools can help you think of short and long-tail keywords you may not have considered. You’ll be able to easily track your SEO ranking and local SEO ranking with these tools, too.
2. Google Business Profile Audit
If Google is the phone book for local searches, your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is your entry in that book. But simply creating a business profile isn’t enough.
You have to audit your Google Business Profile (GBP) to ensure you’ve optimized it for Google Search Console. It’s about making your entry stand out with all the details customers need, like opening hours, reviews, contact information, images, website links, and more.
Make sure to keep this profile up to date. Google likes to rank businesses higher if their GBP is filled out thoroughly. Not only this, but it gives your customers a chance to trust and understand your brand. A Google Business profile audit will elevate your entire SEO strategy.
3. Website Audit
The delicious bagel in your shop window won’t entice customers if they can’t easily see it. Similarly, your website needs to be easily found, crawled, indexed, and readily viewable by your customer. A website audit ensures just that.
Key Components of Website Optimization:
- **Page Optimization:** Imagine searching for that perfect bagel. You’ll want a page with relevant pictures, descriptions of flavors, pricing, directions – clear and appealing, right? A local SEO analysis includes page optimization where keywords and content work together harmoniously to highlight the relevance of each page on your website, much like our enticing bagel.
- **Featured Snippets:** Featured snippets are that eye-catching box highlighting a brief text answer, that is prominently displayed on top of the usual search results page. It’s your fast pass to the front of the digital line, think of it as getting a featured review on a local magazine about your shop.
- **Internal Linking:** Internal links guide website visitors just like strategically placed arrows that make exploring your brick-and-mortar shop a breeze. Ensuring links work correctly enhances the flow and usability of your website.
- **Duplicate Content:** Let’s face it, no one likes a stale bagel. Google shares the sentiment. Duplicate content, just like a copied bagel, loses its uniqueness and doesn’t rank highly in searches.
A local SEO audit helps identify and resolve duplicate content, just like throwing away stale bread. This makes your content stand out as original and authoritative. This is especially true because Google prioritizes originality in its rankings. By updating content, deleting duplicates, and including canonical tags, you tell Google which pages you’ve pulled content from. This strategy will increase your chances of ranking higher than other, duplicate pages.
4. Local Business Citation Analysis
Think about local citations as online recommendations for your business. Citations appear on business directories, industry sites, social media, review sites, and more. Local citations are any online mentions that feature the name, address, and phone number (NAP) of your local business.
However, these mentions must be accurate to be effective, just like consistent great reviews. Local SEO audits analyze those listings and fix any discrepancies. It ensures that search engines see correct information – boosting your local search visibility.
This all matters to local customers because they are 84% more likely to choose a business with many reviews as cited by Brightlocal in a recent survey. Your citation analysis and link profile are directly tied to your backlink profile. For example, if your citations have inaccurate contact information, this will negatively impact your link profile and backlink profile.
5. Reviews & Ratings Analysis
Online reviews are powerful testimonials. Local customers often look at a business’s reviews when deciding whether or not to buy from them.
A local SEO audit carefully assesses your reviews and the proportion of positive vs. negative feedback. Then, the audit pinpoints any reviews requiring responses and recurring themes, so businesses can make necessary adjustments based on real customer experiences.
Analyzing reviews like this gives businesses the feedback they need to improve or optimize processes. Remember, a simple thank you for good reviews can go a long way. Don’t ignore negative feedback either, address it politely to show a willingness to improve. This step can make all the difference for any company seeking a thriving local presence. Plus, it shows you’re dedicated to good customer service.
6. Analytics Review
Like tasting your bagel creations, analyzing website performance with tools such as Google Analytics allows you to identify which pages customers love most. By understanding traffic sources, the most engaging content, top-performing landing pages, visitor behaviors, and other data, local businesses can further optimize to cater specifically to customer preferences.
So, think about incorporating more content based on what’s performing best on Google Analytics. You’ll be surprised how quickly your local customer base can expand this way. It’s also helpful for analyzing keyword performance, which can help in a keyword audit. You can use the search volumes data to see how your average star rating impacts customer behavior, too.
7. Backlinks
A backlink is a link to your site from another site. Google’s algorithm will evaluate those links and determine their quality which has the potential to influence how a site is ranked. If there are links on another reputable site (such as The New York Times) back to your site this could lead to higher search results.
Google uses the number of backlinks a site has as an evaluation of trustworthiness. That’s because backlinks signal to search engines that your business or website has high-quality content because others think your content is high-quality, too. Having good backlinks will help make your site trustworthy and give it authority so Google views it favorably.
8. Monitor Search Penalties
A Google penalty can seriously damage your ranking. Most local SEO audits include ways to find any Google penalties because sometimes this happens without the site owner realizing it.
Businesses can avoid these potential ranking obstacles by staying up-to-date with the Google Search Central documentation and paying close attention to guidelines regarding link schemes, content, and other ranking factors. Staying on top of algorithm updates will boost your chances of maintaining an accurate search presence, too.
Conclusion
Conducting a thorough local SEO audit is more than just ticking boxes. It’s about carefully scrutinizing each component to give your company that winning edge. This way businesses can optimize to not only rank better on Google and Google Maps but also reach their target audience. They’ll drive traffic to their site, gain new customers, and keep their existing customers coming back for more.