Search engine optimization (SEO) is a process of website optimization that aims to increase traffic and drive a more relevant audience to the website. Since some businesses operate offline, local SEO has taken an important place in digital marketing, with its own set of rules. The main goal of such SEO is to increase visibility in local search results.
Why do local businesses need SEO? For instance, your potential customers want to grab a bite during lunch in a new neighborhood. What do they do first? They probably google places near you, looking at the ratings of the first few results, comparing them, and making a decision. All of that most likely happens within a few minutes. Even if you have a great restaurant, chances are many potential clients will not be able to find you if you’re not exposed to a larger audience.
That’s why local SEO software can be an excellent idea for your business. Such tools include analytic tools, automated listings finders, review management, and other features. There are also lots of local SEO software for agencies that can help to effectively look after and analyze clients.
We’ve listed the best local SEO software you should use to improve your local rankings:
1. SE Ranking
SE Ranking’s Local SEO is a robust tool that assists you in your local marketing efforts by providing location-based data, monitoring reviews, tracking citations, and interacting with your local audience and customers. With this tool, you can easily build, track, and manage your business’s search visibility, making it easier for customers to find you in local search.
One standout feature of SE Ranking’s Local SEO software for agencies is its reputation management tool, which provides you with actual location ratings and review data across different channels. You can save time by analyzing and replying to reviews directly from the SE Ranking platform. You can also manage your business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) with one local search tool, ensuring consistency across the internet and improving your chances of ranking higher in local search.
The citation management tool in SE Ranking’s Local SEO tool enables you to check the information people see about your business in local search and efficiently manage your data across multiple Google Business Profile accounts. With this tool, you can directly manage all your business locations from end to end and track rankings and local search visibility for each location.
SE Ranking’s Local SEO software provides clear-cut, easy-to-understand dashboards, custom settings, and AI-based semantic insights taken from your customer reviews. You can learn how customers describe your business, discover your possible strengths and weaknesses from the customer’s point of view, and expand your site’s keyword list by getting insights from the words people use in reviews.
When it comes down to it, SE Ranking is the best Local SEO software for boosting your local marketing efforts and getting comprehensive marketing data to improve research and tracking of your local SEO results.
2. BrightLocal
BrightLocal was founded in 2009 by Myles Anderson and ED Eliot. It is one of the most popular local SEO software with more than 60,000 businesses, freelancers, and agencies for reporting and analytic functions. It has a sophisticated SEO function that allows you to monitor, optimize, and audit performance.
This means you are able to analyze the performance of your data like organic search results, local business listings, Google My Business (GMB) insights, social media interactions, and Google Analytics data. Here are the common features of BrightLocal:
- Lead generation tools that allow you to manage and reply to users in a single place. The lead generation widget makes it easy for web visitors to generate personalized and branded audits for their businesses.
- A customized dashboard that allows you to easily monitor data
- Ability to track local and mobile search rankings
- NAP audits and Google My Business
- New online review alerts
- Ability to scan and audit directory websites for updates
- White label solution for marketers
- Social media analytics
BrightLocal charges a subscription fee of $29 every month for one business or agency.
3. WhiteSpark
WhiteSpark started by offering web design services before shifting its focus to SEO services. The company now provides amazing local SEO tools aimed at helping businesses with their local search marketing efforts. One of its notable features is the Citation Finder tool. It gives you a chance to search for citation opportunities unavailable so that you can improve your local search rankings.
The tool is available for up to 3 free searches per day. This is ideal for someone who wants to be sure about the tool before investing in it. Other WhiteSparks’ popular tools include:
- Local rank tracker: This tool makes use of your location settings to offer insights into your general SEO performance. Just like Ahref’s tracker, it gives you an opportunity to understand how you measure up with your competitors. The feature also shows how you rank in different search engines.
- Reputation builder: is a tool designed to prompt customers to share their reviews on a website of their choice via emails or SMSs. Besides, the feature is also able to calculate your Net Profit Score (NPS). NPS is an indicator showing customer’s overall experience with your website.
- Review monitoring: This feature or tool in case there is any bad or good review about your products or services. Its main purpose is to allow you to take quick action, especially in the case of negative reviews on your site.
Generally speaking, WhiteSpark has a lot of useful features that can help grow your business. Unlike most of the local SEO tools, WhiteSpark is tailor-made to suit your business needs.
4. SEMRush
SEMRush is also among the top local SEO software for businesses that are interested in seeing their local search rankings improve. It is popular among brands like HP, Quora, and eBay.
SEMRush offers users information about the level of traffic, keywords, and other useful local SEO information including what your competitors are doing. This keeps you on the edge, knowing which SEO strategies to use at what time.
The three most popular tools or features of SEMRush are backlink checkers, competitor analysis, and keyword search. Recently, SEMRush joined hands with Yext to start providing the management of their own listing tool. The management tool is expected to be a major boost for businesses that rely on local SEO techniques. The tool is quite easy to use. All you have to do is to key in your data or information to search for your location. After which, the tool will give you a list of all your listings as well as the status of each website category. As soon as you are done with the edits, SEMRush will handle the rest of the work. In order to sign up with this feature, you will be required to subscribe to a SEMRush plan that starts from $99.95 per month.
5. MOZ Local
Moz Local is probably the most popular tool you can ever come across. The good thing about this tool is that it can be used both by big enterprises and small businesses that would like to increase their online visibility. Moz Local guarantees business listings on all reputable online directories and aggregators. It also helps in removing duplicates and incorrect information about your website or business.
In other words, Moz ensures that all listings as consistent and correct. As if that’s not enough, the tool fosters your relationship with that of your audience by providing you with instant notifications whenever there’s a new review, on a real-time basis. Below are some of the local SEO solutions offered by Moz Local to your business:
- Directory and aggregator submission: It shares listings across the search distribution
- Social media verification account: ensures that your business has a verified Facebook and Twitter accounts
- Google My Business sync: This allows you to claim your business and synch information for correct NAP information
- Local listing distribution: helps you to set up your business listing
- Review monitoring: helps in monitoring your reviews as well as ratings
6. GeoRanker
GeoRanker is a platform with several local SEO software. The good thing with this platform is that it can be used both as a local rank checker as well as a local citation finder. It operates in more than 150 countries with over 50,000 cites citation source discovery, SERP ranking reports, and local SEO competition analysis. Here are some of the common GeoRanker features and how to use them:
- Leads database: This allows you to pick a position, fill, and create a database for leads
- Business database: Helps you to find and build keywords for any area of your choice found on the internet
- Image crawling: This feature helps to protect you and your business from copyright infringement by keenly following how they are used on the web.
- Local rank checker: This one makes it easy for you to check the position of various websites using different browsers
What are the advantages of GeoRanker?
- Google Ads audit is free
- 24/7 customer support
- You can try some of the feature free of charge
7. GrowthBar
GrowthBar is a search engine optimization tool that makes it easy for you to search keywords, perform competitive analysis, generate content, and track keywords. The software provides a Google Chrome extension designed to give SEO analytics right from the Google search results.
00:24This means you can basically use Google search to find any keyword that you would want to use for your marketing purposes. GrowthBar will then offer you meaningful insights concerning anything you want – whether it is information about your competitors, keyword research, and many more. What features does GrowthBar have?
- Site Inspector: After logging into GrowthBar, you will be able to see three different tabs. The first one is called Site Inspector that allows you to input any domain URL – for instance, you can type in your competitor’s URL and access a lot of information about them like their organic traffic, domain authority, organic keywords, their Facebook ads, backlinks and many more.
- Rank Tracker: The second dashboard has a Rank Tracker where you are able to track the performance of your SEO efforts and share the report with your sales and marketing team. You will be able to see the traffic flow of your website every month and track the rankings of your target keywords in the search results.
- Content and keyword tab: Lastly, there’s the last tab that allows users to take advantage of the sophisticated OpenAI GPT-3 AI technology. This AI technology helps you in creating optimized content for the purposes of ranking high in different search engines. You can input any keyword you like and instantly get the content outline you need.
In short, GrowthBar has very powerful features and technology that make your local SEO efforts easier. From finding the keywords to generating a content outline, you are assured of ranking on the first page of Google. You need at least $29 per month to subscribe to this service.
8. Synup
Synup is an all-in-one marketing software used in managing and optimizing local business content. The software works by scanning through information about your business online and shows you where your business has been listed.
It is quite easy to use the tool – it is automated in a way that allows you to analyze listings, analytic data, and reputation. Below are some of the common features you will find in Synup:
- Management of Local listings: the software crawls location data on over 200 directories and local search engines and puts that information in a single place that can be easily managed
- Monitor your analytics: Ability to automatically track analytics related to the location of your business as well as performance
- Aggregated interactions: Instant notifications in case a customer or user leaves reviews on your website
- Reporting: This feature makes it easy for you to export all the important information you may need in any format of your choice including CSV, excel, or PDF.
9. Advice Local
Advice Local is also a popular listings management tool that works almost the same way as Yext and the likes. It is however more advantageous than Yext because it allows one to build local citations manually rather than API.
However, it takes more time for Advice Local to gain a score of 80 percent when it comes to local directory submissions. Besides, the data that can be supported is limited to NAP basics like address, name, and phone number.
Conclusion:
As customers are overly dependent on internet searches, local business owners can benefit from implementing SEO. Even when it comes to offline locations nearby, most potential customers want to look at ratings, and websites and compare their options to make a thorough decision.
If you’re just a local business, it’s even more important than in an online company that your target audience finds you. For this, you need to ensure that you’re visible to an audience interested in your services. Local SEO marketing software can help you with this by offering insights into your local business performance: reputation and citation management, GBP local search audit, and much more. Find your top local SEO software based on the characteristics and strategic goals you pursue. If you’re an offline business with several locations, you will most likely need a comprehensive tool that will make it possible to look after each location.
One of the best local SEO software that offers accurate information on how your business is performing is SE Ranking. Besides reviewing and replying to ratings, you can manage all locations from the tool and see what information shows up for users in local searches. This will help you promptly address any issues and enhance your overall strategy.