Improve Your Business With a Local SEO Audit Checklist
You’re never going to know how well your website is performing if you are not tracking the latest trends or your domain’s vital statistics. Performing regular local SEO audit queries is the only way to make sure you’re doing a good job!
Table of contents:
- Why Do a Local SEO Audit?
- 8 Steps to Perform a Local SEO Audit
- Local SEO Audit Sessions Are Worth It
With a strong local SEO audit checklist, you will be able to continually keep track of your site’s metrics and where you need to improve. By keeping up with your metrics, you can increase the efficiency of your local profile and generate much more in sales!
So what are the best ways to perform a local SEO audit? Is having a local SEO audit checklist necessary to make headway? What are the important takeaways from an audit? This article will explain to you the value of these services and show you how to use them.
Why Do a Local SEO Audit?
As one of the most fundamental parts of any SEO process – especially local SEO – doing audits is largely the difference between failure and success. It is an important part of maintaining any domain and must be acknowledged.
Doing a local SEO audit will allow you to target specific tasks for greater impact. Convincing local customers to come to your store will be much easier if you are one of the highest rankers they see!
Ultimately, delivering customers to your door is the entire point of SEO optimization which means learning it through and through.
What Are the Benefits of a Local SEO Audit?
Successful domains require time, money, and effort in order to continue. Being able to assess all manner of aspects of your website will pay back huge returns because you’ll be able to effectively locate and solve issues as they arise.
By monitoring your strengths and weaknesses, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, and using this data to improve conversion rates, your site will remain at the top of the game.
With time and effort, you can understand your niche perfectly and act on any new circumstance that arises without fail, earning you more customers and a better search engine placement.
In addition, local SEO audit checklist will allow you to better plan out future activities for your business and provide all kinds of insight on proper practices that you should focus on.
8 Steps to Perform a Local SEO Audit
There are many elements you can take into consideration when conducting a local SEO audit. They are relatively simple tasks, but don’t let their simplicity fool you! These tasks can greatly assist you when you are trying to increase the visibility of your website.
Here are a few of the most common steps to take when thinking about performing a local SEO audit. These are all extremely important to any website and, when taken as a whole, will greatly affect the metrics of your business on every major search engine.
Let us take care of your local SEO!
1. Analyze Your Keywords
One of the most important factors in a successful audit is to start with the keywords and phrases that you want your business to be found for. The only way customers can find your business is if they see you in a search, making your keywords an essential aspect of your domain.
- Choose the correct tool to break down your search ranking and keywords,
- Make sure you address the intent of the customer you are trying to gain,
- Expand your keywords’ ‘view’ so that it fills a variety of search queries. Don’t make them too narrow,
- Make sure to compare your keyword list against competitors,
- Try conducting your own searches manually by logging out and opening an Incognito/privacy window to identify the strength of your keywords,
- “Geo-modified” keywords are crucial for local SEO. “Shoes + London” or “Shoes near me” are important things to consider.
2. Audit your Website
After analyzing keywords, it’s important to analyze the fundamental functionality of your website. Here, we’re looking for page load speeds, its ability to be quickly and efficiently indexed, general visibility, and user interface responsiveness.
Ultimately, you want your site to be user-friendly in all the ways it can be. The longer people stay on your site, the more likely they are to make a purchase!
- Try using a page load tool in order to assess the general responsiveness of your website
- The slower your site is, the more people will click away from it. Make sure your images and graphics are all compact and efficient!
- Take out your phone and try to access your site from its browser. Mobile responsiveness is critical to success, so make sure your website displays properly on smartphones as well
- Ensure that your site is free from any technical errors so that it can be indexed and viewed by your customers without any problems
- Landing page experience is the most important to curate. Make a great first impression! Remember that every location you’re operating in should have a separate landing page – customers in Berlin do not want to see the landing page of the Monachium store
- Check all the information on your website – the correct address and phone number are crucial to ensure your customers appear at your store
- User experience is always going to be the most important factor. Make sure it’s great!
3. Google Business Profile Audit
Ensuring that your GBP is up to date and accurate will ensure that your vital statistics remain relevant and useful. This allows anyone looking for your business to have the easiest time possible doing so.
Always make sure people have the easiest time possible finding your business!
- Make sure your business name is correct on all forms,
- Always keep up with your proper operating hours and update them if there is any change,
- Add pictures of your store and products – make sure they are of good quality and portray your business accurately
- Try to identify all the local competitors you can and compare relevant elements,
- Create a concise, accurate business description for the public to see.
4. Manage Reviews
One of the most important factors when trying to optimize local SEO is the role that reviews play in business nowadays. Reviews are one of the most important metrics for ranking a business and they need to be managed effectively.
Find out more about how reviews help with local SEO ranking!
Try to convince your customers to give as many reviews as they can with the best ranks possible. Companies with many ranks will rate higher with their SEO than others. Responding to reviews and opening a dialogue with customers will also boost metrics considerably.
- Quantity of reviews matters – Get as many for your business as possible!
- Get recent reviews – Google allows users to sort reviews by date, and display the newest ones first, so make sure to have reviews from recent days. This will also ensure customers your business is still as good as older reviews claim
- Addressing the concern of negative reviews goes a long way – Bad reviews happen to everyone, so don’t panic. Instead, use them to your advantage – show that you care about your customers by answering their comments and addressing their complaints. This is also a source of feedback for you – you can identify elements that require improvement.
- More customer feedback will offer more opportunities for keyword use.
- Customer interaction allows both Google and customers to see your business as active and healthy.
- Most people choose businesses based on positive reviews – Displaying them openly is critical!
5. Check Local Business Listings
There are many online spaces where your store can end up and you should keep up with them as best as possible! Some of the most valuable tools you have in your arsenal are the ones that are local – like the local guides, for instance. Leveraging these sources will dramatically increase the traffic your site receives.
Make sure that your business is correctly displayed, with up-to-date information, on these resources.
- Make sure your business is listed on websites like Yelp, Yahoo Local, and local guides,
- Provide your business’s NAP (name, address, and phone number) as well as a link to your website,
- Making a template for your business details offers the best, most efficient way to unify your data across many platforms.
- Choose listings relevant to your business – there are listing dedicated to specific industries. For example for SEO agencies Clutch is a perfect space to be present.
6. Do a Local Content Audit
Answering your client’s questions is one of the most important aspects of proper content auditing.
Does your content have topics that will be valuable to your clients? Are the answers to their questions simple, straightforward, and effective?
Distributing custom content that answers consumer questions (ie, an article answering the question “What are the best shoes to buy?”) will enable your business to rank higher.
- Mix your media: try utilizing Twitter, Tik Tok, Instagram, and any other relevant social platform!
- Content can be more than articles. Try short videos, images, or infographics!
- The broader your reach, the more likely it is to be seen. Spread your name far and wide!
- Make sure to check in with what’s working and what isn’t. It isn’t worth doing if you aren’t seeing results!
- Make sure your content is reaching your goals and presenting your business the way you want.
7. Use Analytic Tools
Google Analytics and Google Search Console represent two of the most important tools you can possibly utilize for your business. With them, you will have access to most of the data necessary to boost your site’s SEO.
Google Analytics is the foremost tool used in order to examine website traffic. It lets you optimize marketing campaigns and analyze ads and social media postings in order to give you a better idea of your digital presence. In short, Google Analytics gives you access to the overall performance of your website.
Google Search Console is a free tool that allows you to better optimize your website’s ranking specifically. While it provides traffic information as well, it also helps with identifying keyword positions, average CTR, etc. You can also use GSC to check and request page indexing.
- Data is key to any change, and GSC and GA will provide almost everything you need to know.
- While there are many tools out there, these two are specifically developed by Google to maximize functionality with their search engine.
- Tracking data is the only way to improve and these tools can show you specifically which areas need the most help.
- Insight into user behavior will be critical for you to optimize as best you can.
- Make sure you bolster the areas that are working well! Play to your strengths.
8. Keep an Eye on the Competition
Knowing what your local competition is up to is half the battle. You can see what kind of advertising, keywording, and more with study and research.
By ensuring that you are doing what you can to take the best from your competition and incorporate it into your own site, you will see yourself rise through the SEO ranks!
- Make sure to analyze their site specifically and see what their keywords are.
- Try analyzing as many as possible and creating a ‘web’ of competition.
- Make sure that your search is specific to your region, or at least the region you want to increase your SEO in.
- Apply the knowledge by analyzing your competitor’s highest performing content and producing similar.
- Be sure to see their backlinks and see if you can get similar instances!
Local SEO Audit Sessions Are Worth It
So make sure that you take them seriously! By conducting a solid local SEO audit for your business, you can make sure that your ranking rises dramatically for anyone trying to find your business. If you act on all the points above and optimize them as best you can, you are sure to see results.
SEO is a tricky topic that often takes a long time to successfully perform, so it’s important to do it right! If you need help with this task, just contact our specialist – they will make sure that your website profits from SEO activities!
