Getting your content online is one thing. But getting people to discover and engage with it – that’s the real challenge. This is where local SEO comes in. Making your content visible, optimal, and at the top of the search engines, is why the hunt for the best local SEO software matters.
For small and big businesses, here are a few numbers that can convince you why local SEO rankings matter.
Reasons include:
- Online reviews are trusted as much as personal recommendations by 88% of consumers. (BrightLocal)
- Local mobile searches account for 18% of sales made within a day. (Source)
- About 50% of your customers find you on mobile, provided your business information is listed as a local address online. (Source)
- Consumers are 50% more likely to visit you if they find you through a local search on their smartphone. (Source)
- There’s an 80% chance of conversion with a local search. (Source)
These local SEO stats paint a convincing picture. We explain why you need local SEO tools as part of your overall SEO strategy.
Why is local SEO important?
As a business, you need lead generation and conversions. This is possible with a local search presence whether you run your business from one place or several.
To get ahead of your competitors online, you will need to use SEO tools that optimize the local search rankings of your business website.
You need a comprehensive local SEO strategy to generate more organic traffic for your business online.
Before we proceed further, it is important to know that local SEO is different from traditional SEO. This article will help you improve your local SEO score with local SEO tools to manage, track and optimize your strategy.
Also, choosing the right local search marketing tools is important. There are so many out there that it can be very confusing to choose which ones are ideal for boosting your business visibility.
1. BrightLocal
Need a one-size-fits-all reporting platform for local SEO? BrightLocal deserves a look. This tool is used by over 10,000 local businesses, brands, and agencies globally to boost their local search capabilities.
Here are some of the local SEO features you can use with BrightLocal:
- Generate SEO Reports – for detailed and easy SEO reports.
- Clean-up and Build Citations – the team running BrightLocal fixes and builds citations on over 1400+ sites. It also works as a local citation finder.
- Audit Citation and NAP – For locating and tracking existing citations on various sites.
- Audit Google My Business (GMB) – Check and get detailed information for any GMB listing. Helpful for keeping local business listings optimized.
- White-label reporting – Use a custom dashboard for a client reporting system.
- Monitor Online Reviews – Check review platforms like Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare, GMB, and more to keep track of user-generated reviews.
- Track Search Rankings – Easy way to track keywords across major search engines from one place.
For a detailed comparison, check out BrightLocal’s complete plans.
- Single Business $35/ month
- Multi Business $60/ month
- SEO Pro $90/ month
You can also try it for free with a 14-day trial.
2. Yext
Want to keep your brand’s online listings clear and consistent across all channels? Yext is the platform that helps you boost your brand awareness and increase sales while also driving traffic to your business listings.
This platform tracks listings, pages, and reviews from one place. Here are some features you can use with Yext:
- Data Cleansing: Cleaning and matching your data sources is easy with Yext. By cleaning up your business information within your internal data sources, you remain confident that your organization provides the right information to customers.
- Duplicate Listing Suppression: Say goodbye to duplicate business listings once and for all.
- Google My Business Management: Google My Business can be integrated with Yext. This ensures that any updates made directly through the platform will be published to GMB whenever you like.
- Local Pages: Yext makes it easy for mobile users to find accurate and relevant data about your business in nearby locations. This is accomplished with Yext Pages that are optimized for search engines.
Pricing: $4-$19 per week, depending upon your chosen plan. For local SEO efforts, Yext remains one of the best tools to optimize your business listing.
3. Moz Local
Moz is a reputed company that has built products around search engine optimization over the past decade. That’s why its local SEO tool Moz Local comes highly recommended. With Moz Local, you can boost your business’s local visibility. You can also use it to check if your business listings are consistent and working as required over the internet.
Moz Local is more than just your average local SEO platform. It also covers review sites, review management, local SEO data, and keyword rankings. It is also a great tool for auditing your Google Business profile.
Here are some key features you can take advantage of to boost your local search visibility with Moz Local:
- Local Listings Dashboard: Get critical insights about your online listings. Manage, track, and optimize their health and performance.
- Instant Directory and Aggregator Submission: Take the sting out of distributing your listing information in real time to key directories and essential data aggregators.
- Google My Business Sync: Easily claim your Google My Business (GMB) listing. You can keep any changes to your Google Business profile in sync.
- Real-time Update Distribution: If you update basic or enhanced listing data, this tool automatically reconciles those changes across the Local Search ecosystem.
- Distribution Reporting: Using metrics like Average Score, Listing Reach, and Listing Accuracy, you can assess the effectiveness of your published listings over time. Also, get access to weekly reports with PDFs.
- Review Monitoring: Monitor your business with the latest reviews and ratings on the most popular sites from one place.
- Review Management for Google: You can view, report, and respond to reviews directly. Its a handy tool for reputation management.
Price: $14-$33 per month, depending on your chosen plan. Semrush is the most comprehensive local SEO tool to have.
- Lite $14/ Month
- Prefered $20/ Month
- Elite $33/ Month
4. Listing Management Tool by Semrush
As one of the best local SEO tools, Listing Management utilizes Yext’s Knowledge Network to help your business listing get published across various online local directories and intelligent services. It’s perfect if you want to use one dashboard to update your information once and publish it at places like Google, Yelp, Facebook, Bing, TripAdvisor, Apple Maps, Google Maps, and more. It only takes one click.
Semrush is a powerful digital marketing tool that covers everything. However, the Listing Management tool is only available for in five countries currently – US, UK, France, Germany, and Australia.
- Pro $119.95 monthly
- Guru $229.95 monthly
- Business $449.95 monthly
For a further $20 per month, you can employ Yext’s Digital Knowledge Management capabilities.
A 30-day free trial is available to try everything Semrush Pro offers. Try this local SEO research tool to turbo-charge your online marketing efforts too.
5. GrowthBar
Want to do backlink analysis, keyword research, and PPC analysis, all from your Google Chrome browser? It is possible with GrowthBar, an SEO tool that gives you access to the SEO metrics on Google search results or websites.
This multi-purpose SEO tool can help you climb local search rankings with key insights. You can use it to identify the best-performing keywords being used by your competitor. It is also a handy utility to find local keyword suggestions.
To use GrowthBar, simply install it with a Google Chrome extension and enter your credentials. As far as local SEO solutions go, this is one of the most cost-effective ones.
- Standard $29 /Month
- Pro $79 /Month
- Agency $129 /Month
You can also take advantage of their 5-day free trial.
6. Whitespark
Whitespark was originally founded as a web design agency but is one of the top local SEO tool providers worldwide. It helps agencies and businesses solidify their local search marketing.
Whitespark works best for local listings management which provides more local search visibility to organizations.
To optimize your website for local searches, Whitespark comes with the following features:
- Local Citation Finder: find and highlight the most critical citation opportunities to increase your local search rankings.
- Local Rank Tracker: Monitor your local and organic search performance with ease.
- Reputation Builder: Reputation management is made simple for your business on popular platforms.
- Link Prospector: Automate your link prospecting and find more link building opportunities.
- Free local SEO tools: Offline Conversion Tracker, Google Review Link Generator, and Review Handout Generator are all part of Whitespark’s free suite of local SEO tools.
Pricing: $100 per location for up to 5 local sites.
Conclusion
Increasing your web traffic is possible only if you choose the right SEO software tools to manage your business online. Every local SEO checklist should also consider the effect that review sites have on reputation management. Ignoring these things in favor of boosting only local search engines’ rankings as well as keyword rankings is counter-productive in today’s era of social media.
Small businesses can stand out in a big way with local SEO insights that highlight what things they need to work on to compete with the best of the best. For that, you will need to make use of the best local SEO tools.
