Local SEO Tools: Top 10 Tools to Improve Your Local Search Ranking

Local SEO has become more important than ever. As local competition heats up, the task of dominating local search results is taking precedence over any other small business marketing activity. These 10 local SEO tools will help you to dominate your local competition.

If you have a small business but are not yet too adept at local SEO, the following statistics should convince you otherwise:

1. 88% of consumers trust both online reviews and personal recommendations. (BrightLocal)
2. 18% of local mobile searches lead to a sale in one day. (Google)
3. 50% of local mobile search engines look for business information, such as a local address. (Go-Globe)
4. 50% of consumers who do a local search on their smartphone visit a store in one day. The same is true for 34% of consumers who searched on a computer or tablet. (Go-Globe)

Table of Contents

Why local SEO is important

10 best local SEO tools

1. Moz Local

2. BrightLocal

3. Semrush listing management tool

4. Growth bar

5. Whitespark

6. Navads

7. GeoRanker

8. Synup

9. Yext

10. Local SEO checklist

Summary

Why local SEO is important

It doesn’t matter if you’re operating from one location or a hundred, a strong local search presence is key to generating more leads and conversions for your business. As such, local SEO should be an important aspect of your overall SEO strategy.

The SEO tools listed in this article have one thing in common: they are geared towards optimizing the local search ranking of your website.

To try the following tools or really appreciate what they do, it is essential that you have some basic information about local SEO. It is also important to know how it differs from traditional SEO.

Therefore, before you start, I recommend that you check out the local SEO checklist that we published. This SEO checklist is especially helpful if you don’t know much about local search optimization. It should help you gain a basic understanding of how local search works and to learn what parts of your website to optimize for local searches.

Now let’s get back to the main topic which is improving your local SEO with reliable local SEO tools. The tools listed here can help you manage, track, and optimize your local SEO efforts.

So here are the top 10 local SEO tools to use to improve your local search rankings.

10 best local SEO tools

1. Moz Local

Moz Local, developed by Moz, is perhaps the most popular local SEO tool on this list due to the reputation the company has built around search over the last decade.

Moz Local helps you increase the local visibility of your business and ensures that your business listings are correct, consistent and visible on the web.

Among other things, Moz Local submits your company’s accurate location data to all major online directories and data aggregators help you close duplicate business lists and allows you to easily update your business lists.

Here are some of the key features that you will have access to when you sign up for Moz Local:

• Local Listings Dashboard – Manage, track and optimize your listings online and get key information about your health and performance.
• Instant Directory and Aggregator Submission: Moz Local distributes your listing information in real time to key directories and essential data aggregators.
• Google My Business Sync: Moz Local allows you to claim your Google My Business (GMB) listing and sync any changes to your GMB profile.
• Real-time update distribution: When you update basic or enhanced list data, Moz Local automatically sends that information through the local search ecosystem.
• Distribution reports – Quickly assess the effectiveness of your ads served over time. Reported metrics include average score, list scope, and list precision. In addition to this, you will receive self-tracking PDF reports with weekly information.
• Sentiment monitoring : Monitor your company’s latest reviews and ratings on popular sites from one place.
• Feedback management for Google: In addition to viewing and reporting on all reviews, Moz Local allows you to respond directly to Google reviews.

In terms of pricing, Moz Local is reasonably priced compared to some of the other tools on this list. You may have to spend between $ 99 / year per ad and $ 249 / year per ad depending on your needs.

Moz Local Pricing: 3 Local SEO Packages to Choose from

Price: Starts at $ 99 / year per listing

2. BrightLocal

BrightLocal, founded by Ed Eliot and Myles Anderson in 2009, is an all-in-one reporting platform for local SEO. Its local SEO services are used by more than 45,000 agencies, companies and freelancers around the world.

BrightLocal provides a number of local SEO features, including:

• Appointment Audit and NAP – Locate and monitor existing appointments on thousands of sites.
• Audit Google My Business (GMB) – Get a quick and detailed audit of any GMB listing.
• White Label Reports – Easy to use customer reporting system through a customizable dashboard.
• Track Search Rankings – Track hundreds of keywords across Google, Bing, and Yahoo!
• Appointment Cleanup & Creation – BrightLocal team manually fixes and creates citations on 1400+ sites.
• Monitor Reviews Online – Monitor reviews on 20 sites, including Facebook, GMB, Yelp, Tripadvisor, and Foursquare.
• Generate SEO reports: generate SEO reports easier to read.

Pricing starts from $ 29 / month, where you can monitor your business in up to 3 locations. BrightLocal also offers a free 14-day trial where you can try out some of its key features.

BrightLocal SEO Packages

Price: Starts at $ 29 / month

3. Semrush listing management tool

Semrush’s listing management tool was developed in collaboration with Yext, a digital platform for managing your local listings, reviews, and pages. (see # 9 for details)

Semrush’s profile management tool leverages the Yext Knowledge Network to publish data to all the most popular smart directories and services, including Facebook, Google, Yelp, Bing, Amazon Alexa, Foursquare, TripAdvisor, Google Maps, Apple Maps, Yahoo and many more.

By using Listings Management as your only centralized dashboard, you can update your information once and post it where people are searching.

Just type your business information in the search bar and click “Check Listings”.

Semrush will then present all of your listings and the status of each to you:

Image Courtesy: SEMrush

Next, proceed to checkout and start taking advantage of the tool to boost your local SEO.

SEMrush paid subscribers can utilize all of Yext’s digital knowledge management capabilities for just $ 20 per location per month.

As of now, the listing management tool is only available to Semrush users in five countries: US, UK, Australia, Germany, and France.

Note: SEMRush is a powerful suite of digital marketing that can help with more than just local SEO.

Price: $ 119.95 / month for Semrush Pro (includes listing management tool)

4. Growth bar

GrowthBar is an SEO tool that gives you critical SEO metrics on any website or Google search result.

The best part? GrowthBar also has a Google Chrome extension that allows you to do keyword research, backlink analysis, and PPC analysis without ever leaving your Google browser.

While GrowthBar is a multipurpose SEO tool, you can also use it to unlock a ton of local SEO information to aid you in your effort to scale local search rankings. For example, you can use GrowthBar to find local keyword suggestions and identify the best-performing keywords from your local competitor.

Here’s how you can use GrowthBar for local SEO research:

To get started, activate your GrowthBar extension and type in a local search query on Google. GrowthBar will display a list of keyword suggestions just below the search box, along with monthly search volume and CPC data.

You will also see the ranking difficulty score for your starting keywords. To expand the list of keyword suggestions, click the “See more” button below the suggestion box.

Next, while on the same screen, visit the “Keyword Tracking” tab and plugin your local competitor’s domain in the search box and enter 1-2 keywords that you would like to track.

GrowthBar will generate a detailed overview report with top organic keywords, domain authority, and estimated organic traffic per month from your local competitor.

To see all the organic keywords your competitor ranks, click the “See More” button under the “Top Organic Keywords” section of the report.

You’ll see all the organic keywords your competitor is ranking for, along with monthly search volume and ranking position.

Having this data at your fingertips will give you a competitive edge to outsmart your competition on local SERPs and gain more local search visibility.

Price: Free; paid plans start from $ 29 / month

5. Whitespark

Founded by local SEO expert Darren Shaw in 2005 as a web design agency, Whitespark is now a full-fledged local SEO company providing tools and services to help businesses and agencies with local search marketing. Whitespark’s Citation Finder tool is a very popular tool used by various marketing agencies and businesses around the world.

From creating citations to getting reviews, tracking your rankings, and building high-quality backlinks, Whitespark helps you show up, win customers, and manage your local search.

Whitespark provides the following tools to manage and optimize your website for local searches:

• Local Citation Finder – Helps you find all the critical dating opportunities you are missing, so you can increase your local search rankings.
• Local Rank Tracker – Allows you to monitor the performance of your local and organic search.
• Reputation Builder – Allows you to review your business on popular platforms and bring more business through the door.
• Link Prospector – Helps you automate link prospecting and find more link building opportunities.

Besides these, you can also access Whitespark’s free local SEO tools such as Review Handout Generator, Google Review Link Generator, and Offline Conversion Tracker.

There is no pricing information for your local SEO solutions on the website, so you will need to contact their team on the contact page for pricing information.

According to this blog post from founder Darren Shaw, local SEO packages start from $ 100 / location for up to 5 industrial/local sites.

Price: from $ 100 / location

6. Navads

Navads offers local listing management for business brands and media agencies that require their business listings to be optimized for search across the entire local search ecosystem.

Through its platform focused on data quality, Navads is the leading provider of location data for the databases that power the navigation and mapping industry.

Through years of experience in the domain of location marketing, Navads has developed strategic relationships with leading map development companies including Google, TomTom, Apple, and HERE. Navads is currently trusted by more than 500 companies and has published more than 600,000 companies on the map.

Navads local marketing solutions include:

• Google My Business Management – Navads’ deep-rooted relationship with Google’s GMB location content platform makes updating your listings quick and easy.
• Local Listing Management: Navads Local Listing Management removes incorrect business listings from the ecosystem to ensure that only the most accurate local listing data is presented at search time.
• Local data optimization: With location data optimization, Navads prevents errors from occurring in the way your business appears and is distributed on the web.
• Local Search – With Navads’ powerful platform, you can ensure your listings are claimed, verified, and optimized for local search, so that they rank high in map search results.

7. GeoRanker

GeoRanker has a collection of local SEO tools that can help you find local quotes and track your local search rankings.

GeoRanker provides the following local search marketing tools to help you grow your business:

• Local Dating Finder: GeoRanker creates citations for your business on the best websites for your industry.
• Local Rank Checker & Tracker – This tool checks website ranking and shows exact real-time position for destination locations, be it cities or countries.
• Keyword Density Tool – This tool helps measure the number of times a keyword or phrase appears compared to the total number of words on a web page.

While the above tools can be used for free, there are certain usage restrictions. So if you manage a lot of placements and keywords, you’ll need to upgrade to any of their paid plans that start from $ 99 / mo.

Price: Starts at $ 99 / month

8. Synup

Synup is a local SEO software that allows you to see how your business is doing on top local directories, search engines, and review sites. Synup’s technology suite powers more than 55,000 local businesses.

These are some of the functions that Synup offers:

• Location Management – Makes managing your location a breeze.
• Track All Listings – Crawls over 200 search engines and local directories for data inconsistencies.
• Instant-Sync – Synchronize your location and business data across different sites.
• Specific Niche – Allows you to manage industry and niche specific sites.
• Monitor Interactions: Allows you to receive instant notifications when customers leave a review or social comment.
• Reply – The integrated workflow allows you to reply to reviews from within the tool.
• Analytics – Allows you to automatically track web rankings, traffic, and more.
• Widgets: allows you to use widgets to display your location and reputation data anywhere.

Since it is so effective, it is also expensive. You will need to pay a minimum of $ 30 per location per month.

Price: $ 30 per location per month

9. Yext

Yext lists, pages, and reviews help businesses around the world facilitate face-to-face interactions that increase brand awareness, drive traffic, and increase sales.

Yext uses the following tools:

• Data cleansing : Yext will clean up the facts about your business across all of your internal data sources, keeping them consistent within your organization, so you can have complete confidence in the information you provide to customers.
• Duplicate Listing Suppression: This tool will solve the duplicate business listing problem once and for all.
• Google My Business Management – Yext’s integration with Google My Business will ensure that you can make your updates directly through the platform and then post them to GMB at any time.
• Local Pages – Yext pages are optimized to appear in search engines, so your mobile customers can quickly find relevant and accurate data about their closest locations.
• Listing Management: Yext integrates directly with a large suite of maps, apps, search engines, and social media analytics, so your locations perform better in search and your customers find you at decision time.

Yext isn’t as expensive as some of the other local SEO services on this list. For the starter plan, you will have to pay $ 199 a year.

Price: from $ 199 / year

10. Local SEO checklist

If you find any of the above tools too expensive to invest in, you should try the local SEO checklist. This free local search optimization tool, powered by Synup, offers 40 different options detailing specific SEO tasks to help you optimize your site for local search rankings. You can use this local SEO guide to find out exactly what parts of your site you need to optimize for local searches.

In addition to the checklist, you can also access the following free resources:

• Outline scanner – Find out if you have content marked with relevant outline and get a list of pages that don’t have outline installed.
• Google Checker – Use this tool to see if your business listing meets Google My Business guidelines.
• Small Business Checklist – The Small Business Checklist is a comprehensive list of common tasks that all aspiring entrepreneurs must complete to achieve their business idea.

Price: Free

Summary

The tools above should help you optimize your website for local searches and ensure that you stay one step ahead of your local competition.

While these SEO tools are good for boosting your local search rankings, you’ll need to use them in conjunction with other keyword research and link-building tools to make sure your site’s overall SEO is in place. If you need more information on which SEO tools you should use, check out these links below: