Resources

Local SEO tools are a vital element for any business trying to generate demand for its brand in a local market, particularly those marketing to multiple locations such as franchise owners. 

In the early days of local SEO (search engine optimization), businesses found they could be far more competitive in a local market as opposed to a national market. Today, however, competition for local search results has become more competitive than ever. 

At the same time, small businesses, in particular, must place a strong focus on your local SEO efforts if they want to have any chance at all of competing today. Don’t believe us, just look at the numbers. 

• Nearly 50% of Google searches are for a local business. 
• Roughly 80% of location-based mobile searches result in a local purchase.  
• Queries that include the phrases “near me” or “close by” increased by over 900% from 2018-2020.
• Roughly 90% of consumers utilize online reviews to make purchase decisions.

Why Local SEO is Important

For multiple-location businesses, small businesses, and really any business with a  local presence, local SEO provides the most direct approach to market your brand specifically to consumers (or businesses if you’re B2B) in that area. 

Today, buyers want what they want, when they want it as convenient as possible. For this reason, the importance of local SEO can not be discounted because it is the best way to put yourself in front of your potential customers the moment they have a need, particularly if you’re nearby. 

Whether your business operates in one location or many, a robust local SEO strategy will enable you to generate more demand and increase conversions. So, how can you get your local online presence where it needs to be?

We’re glad you asked! Below we’ve included a list of our favorite local SEO tools, a helpful local SEO checklist to help you get started, and a list of additional resources to help boost your understanding of how local SEO works.

Local SEO Solutions That Effectively Rank

Brightlocal

BrightLocal is an all-in-one reporting solution for local SEO for marketing agencies and SMBs. Their software automates reputation management, provides monitoring and management of existing and new reviews as well as business listings, and provides detailed analysis of local SERPs (search engine results pages) all from one dashboard.

Pricing starts at $29 per month for up to 3 locations. Additionally, Brightlocal offers a 14-day trial to get a feel for their platform and how well it fits your business goals. 

Brightlocal Features

• Citation and NAP auditing and management
• Google My Business (GMB) Audit
• White-label Reporting
• Rank Tracking 
• Online Review Monitoring
• Reporting

MarketSnare

MarketSnare is a local marketing platform that helps businesses build their local SEO effectively, regardless of how many locations or markets they serve. MarketSnare helps marketers overcome the challenges inherent to managing local marketing programs – at scale – across tens, hundreds, or even thousands of markets. 

Pricing is not public.

MarketSnare Features

• Advertisement
• Lead nurturing
• Engagement management
• Landing page
• Personalization
• SEM

Moz Local 

Probably the most recognizable tool on this list, the Moz Local SEO tool helps businesses to boost their local visibility and ensures that your business listings are accurate and consistent across all outlets. 

Also, Moz Local sends location data, on your behalf, for your business to all of the major aggregators and allows you to make mass updates as needed.

Moz Local Features

• Local Listings Management Dashboard
• Instant Directory and Submission Aggregator
• Google My Business (GMB) Sync
• Real-time Updates
• Metrics Reporting
• Review Monitoring 
• Review Management

Pricing ranges from $99 to $249 per listing, per year.

SEMrush

With SEMrush’s Listing Management tool, you can manage your business listings, customer reviews, and local landing pages.  

The Listing Management tool also works along with Yext to publish business information on all the major aggregate sites like Yelp, Bing, Google Maps, and social media directories like Facebook and LinkedIn. 

Currently, the Listing Management tool is only available for SEMrush users in the US.

Pricing for SEMrush Pro is $99 per month. 

SEMRush Features

• SEO Site Auditing and Keyword Suggestions
• Performance Metrics Tracking
• Audience Insights
• SERP Rank Tracking
• Link Building and Monitoring
• Competitive Analysis
• Data Visualization

Synup

Synup is a local SEO software that helps businesses monitor their progress on local directories and review sites and helps you clean up your content and ensure it’s accurate across all locations, devices, and digital media channels. 

Synup local SEO services also allow businesses to analyze a variety of ranking factors to see how consumers are engaging with their businesses and make optimizations to improve their listings. 

Synup Features

• Comprehensive Listing Monitoring and Management
• Instant-Sync of Listing Updates
• Engagement Monitoring
• Review Response Platform
• Web Ranking Analytics
• Location Display Widget

Pricing for Synup Pro is $99 per month.

Whitespark

Whitespark provides tools and services to help businesses and agencies with local search marketing. They even provide some pretty helpful free local SEO tools to help you get started. 

Whitespark’s Citation Finder tool helps you to build citations, earn and manage reviews, track your local search rankings, and build and manage backlinks to supercharge your local online presence.

Whitespark Features

• Local Citation Checker
• Organic Search and Local Rank Tracker
• Reputation Builder
• Link Prospecting
• (FREE) Review Generator
• (FREE) Google Review Link Generator
• (FREE) Offline Conversion Tracker

Pricing for Whitespark is not public. 

Get Started with this Local SEO Checklist

• Perform an SEO audit of your site to see what you already have to work with.
• Perform research to identify local keywords. We use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Finder and Ahrefs during our research.
• Utilize location-based landing pages for each of your locations on your home site.
• Optimize every page for local SEO.
• Create Google My Business profiles for every location. (Make sure that your NAP, i.e. name, address, and phone number are uniform across all of your listings for each location).
• Encourage customer reviews.
• Utilize rank tracking tools to measure your efforts and make improvements as needed. We use Google Analytics and Google Search Console for this. 

To learn more about how to execute these checklist items, see our in-depth guide here.  

Additional Local SEO Resources

Looking for some additional help getting your local SEO efforts off the ground? Not to worry, we’ve included one of our own local SEO articles as well as some others we’ve found particularly useful on our own journey as digital marketers.

• Sure Fire Multi-Location SEO Tips That Work for Franchise Businesses
• The Definitive Guide to Local SEO – Neil Patel
• Local SEO: A Simple (But Complete) Guide – Ahrefs
• Local SEO Tips: Quality Content Without Context And Relevance Will Fail – Marketsnare

Conclusion

We hope that one, or many, of these tools, suggestions, resources, and checklists are helpful as you formulate and execute your local SEO strategy. 

But we also understand that it can be a little overwhelming in the beginning as you are trying to figure out where to start, particularly if your resources are limited. If that resonates with you, you might want to consider partnering with a digital marketing agency with a proven track record to help you build the plane while you fly it. 

Reach out and we can set up a time to chat more about your strategic goals, as well as your overall SEO strategy, and how we can provide a helping hand to get you there!

Topics: B2B Marketing, Digital Marketing, Local SEO, SEO