Local SEO Audit Process: A Step-by-Step Guide

A local SEO audit is a thorough examination of a business's online presence to identify areas for improvement and optimize its visibility in search engine results. This process helps businesses attract more local customers.

To start, a local SEO audit involves gathering data on a business's online presence, including its website, social media profiles, and reviews on platforms like Google My Business. This data is used to identify inconsistencies and inaccuracies that may be impacting the business's online visibility.

The audit also involves analyzing the business's website for technical issues, such as slow loading speeds and mobile responsiveness. According to our research, 70% of businesses have a website that is not mobile-friendly, which can negatively impact search engine rankings.

A local SEO audit also examines the business's online reputation, including its ratings and reviews on platforms like Yelp and Google My Business. This helps businesses identify areas for improvement and create a plan to increase their online reputation.

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A local SEO audit is an assessment of how your web page ranks in search engine results and how its ranking can be improved to generate more revenue and conversions.

It can be done on its own or as part of an overall digital audit, allowing you to identify areas for improvement and make effective adjustments.

A local SEO audit diagnoses your website's strengths and weaknesses, helping you understand where you stand in terms of local search visibility and performance.

It assesses various factors that affect how well a business ranks in local search results, particularly on Google, giving you a comprehensive understanding of your online presence.

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A local SEO audit is a thorough process that involves inspecting, analyzing, and evaluating your website and internet marketing efforts to identify issues and opportunities for growth. GMB Gorilla's Local SEO Audit takes less than 10 business days to complete.

To prepare for a local SEO audit, you'll want to gather some information about your business and online presence. This includes verifying your Google Business Profile listing accuracy, checking for duplicate listings, and ensuring completeness. You should also review your website's NAP consistency with your GBP listing and assess review quantity and quality, particularly on Google.

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Here's a checklist to help you prepare for a local SEO audit:

A comprehensive local SEO audit involves several key areas of focus. These include proximity, prominence, and relevance.

Proximity refers to how close or distant the search user is from your business. This can be evaluated by analyzing your business's physical location and how easily customers can find you.

Prominence is about how prominent your brand is online, which can be measured by the number of inbound links, article mentions, reviews, and citations you have. This is an important aspect of local SEO as it helps search engines understand your business's online presence.

Relevance is about how relevant your business is to the term being searched for. This can be evaluated by analyzing your website's content and ensuring it is highly relevant to the local audience.

A website audit is also a crucial part of a local SEO audit, which involves analyzing the underlying structure, content, and overall site experience to ensure maximum crawlability, indexability, and visibility.

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Here are some key areas to focus on during a website audit:

Additionally, a local SEO audit should include a Google Business Profile audit, which involves verifying the accuracy of your GBP listing, checking for duplicate listings, and ensuring completeness.

A local content audit is also essential, which involves creating content tailored and distributed for consumption during each stage of the customer's buying journey, including informational, transactional, navigational, and commercial content.

84% of consumers say reviews are "important" or "very important" when deciding to try out a new business or service provider.

Analyzing your reviews is crucial, so take a close look at the ones you have. Are they mostly positive or negative?

Responding to reviews is key, as it shows Google you're an active and responsive business, which can impact your ranking.

Encourage clients to leave a review online by offering a special promotion, such as a gift card or a percentage off their next purchase.

Having enough reviews to determine a pattern is essential, so make sure you're consistently collecting them.

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To prepare for a local SEO audit, you'll want to have a clear understanding of what's involved. A comprehensive local SEO audit involves many different steps to ensure a thorough evaluation.

You'll need to verify your Google Business Profile listing accuracy, including your name, address, phone number, categories, hours, and more. This is crucial for ensuring consistency across all platforms.

A thorough audit also requires checking for duplicate GMB listings and removing any you find. This will help prevent confusion for potential customers searching for your business online.

Reviewing your website's NAP consistency with your GBP listing is also essential. This ensures that your online presence is consistent and accurate.

You'll also need to review your website content for local relevance and keyword optimization. This will help search engines understand the context of your business and improve your local search visibility.

A local SEO audit should also include identifying existing citations across all platforms and sites, checking consistency of NAP and other info across citations, and looking for opportunities to build new citations on relevant sites.

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In addition, assessing review quantity and quality, particularly on Google, is crucial. This will help you understand how customers are perceiving your business online.

Here's a concise checklist you can use to make sure you're covering everything:

A website audit is designed to analyze the underlying structure, content, and overall site experience. This can be done using various site auditing tools that crawl a website and identify issues based on SEO best practices.

A typical audit can be broken down into several buckets, but it's essential to have your focused keyword data in hand to ensure your site is optimized for maximum crawlability, indexability, and visibility.

Our local SEO audit involves a 45-point Local SEO inspection, which is conducted by one of our search engineers using proprietary tools.

Conducting keyword research is a crucial step in the audit process. You'll need to perform keyword research on a regular basis to stay on top of evolving search terms used to find local businesses.

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Google Keyword Planner is a great tool to suggest relevant keywords and provide insight into search volume. You'll need to open a Google Ads account first, but it's easy to do.

Google Trends is also a valuable resource for keyword inspiration. Input a search word or topic to reveal search volumes along with a list of related queries.

To broaden your keyword list, think about where your customers could be in the buyer's journey. If they're in the early stages, they're likely searching "Where can I find X near me?" or "X in [city, state]."

Using SEO tools like Ahrefs and Keyword Finder will help you find even more long and short tail keywords you may have never thought of.

The majority of search engine users rarely click on the second page for information, so optimizing your website for SERPs is key to attracting new customers and generating conversions.

Conducting a keyword/serp audit will help you quickly identify where you stand relative to your competitors and other websites/content. This research can help you identify where you have established some level of authority/momentum to build on.

Explore further: Trending Seo Keywords

SEO is a long-term strategy, so no keyword should be summarily dismissed. Even so, it's generally best to focus on those keywords you realistically have a chance to rank and drive traffic for.

You may determine some keywords are better pursued in the short term via a paid Google Ads strategy until you are able to build up your local organic authority.

For those businesses also running PPC campaigns, close attention should be paid to the keywords and search terms working there. Top-performing PPC keywords will also be top performers from an SEO perspective.

A broader keyword view will provide a better picture of the overall strength of your presence and where to best focus your attention.

Identifying relevant keywords that potential customers use when searching for local businesses is crucial.

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To gain a competitive edge, you need to know who your competitors are. Type your target keywords into Google and make a list of at least five businesses in your niche that show up in the search results.

Competitor analysis is a crucial step in the audit process, and it's essential to review their strengths and weaknesses. Look up their Google Business Profile, reviews, social media activity, local listings, and how well they rank for your target keywords.

SEO tools like Ahrefs can help you identify what other keywords their websites are optimized for, so you can consider those keywords for your own strategy. This will give you a better understanding of their local SEO strategies.

A recent Google algorithm update emphasizes the importance of results tied to the immediate proximity of a business, so focus on your closest high-ranking competitors. Review what they're doing to gain an advantage, including their keyword optimization, content, Google Business Profile, reviews, local business listings, or backlinks.

By conducting a thorough competitor analysis, you can identify areas for improvement and develop strategies to outrank your competitors. This will ultimately provide a better overall experience for your customers and help you outperform your competition.

Here's an interesting read: Competitor Website Audit

Mobile is a crucial aspect of a local business's online presence. Google rewards sites with good user experiences, which includes mobile-friendliness.

Websites need to load quickly, be easily navigated, and enable seamless user interaction. This is especially important for local services, as more consumers search via their mobile devices.

Google offers a range of free mobile testing and three mobile-specific monitoring tools in Google Search Console. These tools are Page Experience, Core Web Vitals, and Mobile Usability.

A local business owner can use Google Lighthouse for more in-depth user experience and SEO analysis. However, they may need to enlist the help of a web developer to action any recommendations this tool provides.

Site speed, mobile-friendliness, and schema markup are technical aspects of a website that are evaluated during an audit.

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Local business listings and citations are crucial for search engines to confirm a business is local and reputable. They provide a way for search engines to verify a business's presence in a specific geographic region.

Having a presence in reputable local directories, review sites, business directories, or local partner sites is essential. This can include the Chamber of Commerce or other relevant local organizations.

An audit of your listings and citations can be done in an automated or manual fashion, depending on the size and scope of your local business. If you manage a limited number of locations and have the time, a quick method of identifying where your current listings can be found is to conduct a search on your business name.

The first 3-4 pages of search results should reveal the same listings. This can help you identify where you are currently listed and what information is being displayed.

Conducting a search on the list of keywords you've researched and want to be found for can help you understand where you're missing listing and citation opportunities. The most valuable directories and listing sites will be those which appear in the search results for these keywords.

It's also essential to find and resolve any duplicate listings to prevent confusing customers and search engines with outdated, inaccurate information.

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Google Search Console is a free resource that provides valuable data on keyword and content performance, indexing, and more. It's essential to review this data to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

A complete local SEO audit must include a review of Google Search Console data. This will help you catch any issues related to pages not being crawled or indexed, which can have a detrimental effect on search engine visibility.

Google Search Console sends notifications for issues like pages not being crawled or indexed, as well as regular performance updates. But an audit ensures nothing has been overlooked.

Reviewing Google Search Console data is a crucial step in the audit process. It helps you understand how your website is performing and where you can improve.

Website owners and managers should pay close attention to any manual actions taken based on questionable practices, as this can also affect search engine visibility.

Consider reading: Google Search Console Seo Audit

Online presence is a crucial aspect of a local business's visibility. Local search audits assess the online presence by analyzing online reviews and their sentiment.

Research shows that potential customers use online reviews to inform their purchasing decisions, with 85% of consumers trusting online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Assessing the sentiment of reviews on platforms like Google, Apple Maps, Yelp, Facebook, Tripadvisor, and other relevant listing sites is essential.

A comprehensive online review analysis helps identify areas for improvement, such as responding to negative reviews or encouraging customers to leave reviews on multiple platforms. This analysis also provides valuable insights into customer satisfaction and helps businesses make data-driven decisions.

Local businesses should ensure their online presence is consistent across all platforms, with accurate and up-to-date information. This includes verifying business listings on Google My Business and other relevant directories.

A fresh viewpoint: Competitor Keyword Gap Analysis

A technical website evaluation is a crucial step in the audit process. It involves checking for any issues that might hinder your website's visibility in search results.

Google rewards sites with good user experiences, so it's essential to evaluate your website's technical aspects. This includes site speed, mobile-friendliness, and schema markup.

For more insights, see: Technical Seo vs Content Seo

A 45-point local SEO inspection is a thorough evaluation of your website and internet marketing. This inspection is conducted using proprietary tools to identify areas for improvement.

During the inspection, a search engineer will analyze your website's technical issues, such as site speed and mobile-friendliness. This helps to identify potential problems that might be affecting your website's visibility.

After the inspection, a consultant reviews the data and analyzes the findings. This is where recommendations and strategies for improvement are derived.

A website audit is like a check-up for your site, making sure everything is running smoothly and efficiently. A typical audit analyzes the underlying structure, content, and overall site experience.

You can use site auditing tools to crawl your website and identify issues, prioritizing actions to be taken based on SEO best practices. These tools can help you optimize your site for maximum crawlability, indexability, and visibility.

Optimizing on-page elements is crucial for a local SEO audit. This includes evaluating title tags, meta descriptions, headers, and content to ensure they align with local search intent.

A local SEO audit also checks how well your site is optimized for relevant keywords and location-specific information. This is done by examining your website's structure and content in terms of their optimization for local search terms.

Our local SEO audit is designed to help you improve your website's visibility and ranking on Google. It's an easy way to get a plan in place to achieve higher rankings for your GBP and website.

The audit process is straightforward and involves identifying areas for improvement. Our team will analyze your website and provide actionable recommendations to enhance your online presence.

We'll start by assessing your website's current state, including its structure, content, and technical performance. This is an essential step in understanding where you stand and what needs to be addressed.

By the end of the audit, you'll have a clear plan to boost your website's ranking and drive more traffic to your GBP. This is a great way to get started on your SEO journey and see real results.

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