Ranking locally can be tough! To be able to achieve the top SERP spots in your local area, suburb, or region, you need the right strategy.
And in order to create effective strategies, your strategies need to have the tools and insight to correctly and accurately assess your local SEO landscape.
As well as creating and implementing your strategy, you also need to be able to closely monitor and track its progress.
To do this, you need the right tools. In this blog post, we take a closer look at exactly what you ought to be tracking as well as three tools we use every day to monitor and adjust your strategy.
The journey to SEO success
Our favourite SEO tools can help you at every stage of your strategy, from keyword research to competitive analysis. These are the three main ways these tools can help:
Foundation of a good SEO strategy: keyword research
The pillar of your local SEO strategy should be good keyword research, identification, and mapping. Your strategy will revolve around your chosen keywords, and it is these that you will also be monitoring for their rank in the organic results as well as “map pack” results.
Measure your success: keyword and rank tracking
Even before you have chosen your final keywords and implemented your full strategy, you should be tracking your website’s rank. This is an essential first step to ensure that you have an accurate landscape of how your strategy is performing over not only the short-term, but the long-term, too.
Analyse the industry: uncover a deep understanding of your competition
A good local SEO strategy must always take into account the competing websites for the keywords that you want to rank for, and this also means monitoring those websites.
After all, you’re fighting for the same top spot, so you need clear insight into how these competitors are performing.
An effective local SEO strategy will always analyse what the competitors are doing, as this can help uncover greater insight to improve your own strategy.
Track your progress: 3 essential SEO tools
At iformat, we recommend 3 must-have tools that can help you achieve success in local SEO:
1: Google My Business
Perhaps the most powerful (and free!) local SEO tool is Google My Business.
If you’re not on the maps, you’re missing out on potentially thousands in search traffic and you won’t be as visible on Google as you should be, particularly in the Local Google Map Pack.
To take advantage of this, simply log on to Google Business Profile and claim your business.
On your Google Business Profile, you have the use of such functions as chatting with your customers, posting updates, checking performance insights and managing reviews – the latter of which is fast becoming a ranking factor these days as well.
Having a Google Business Profile not only helps your business appear on local organic searches, it also gives you an opportunity to show up in the local maps.
This has a direct impact on improving visibility, because map results appear above organic search results for local searches.
2: SEMRush
SEMRush is not only a great tool for local SEO, it is a great overall tool for local, national and international campaigns. It is highly advanced software with many tools, but one of the most important features for local SEO is Position Tracking:
The Position Tracking tool is a swiss army knife of a tool for local SEO that helps you monitor your keywords and their positions in the SERPs, track historic differences across a range of timeframes, and uncover insight of your site’s ranking data versus your competitor’s ranking.
This is an indispensable tool that our team uses every single day to monitor and improve our clients’ strategies.
3: Brightlocal
Brightlocal’s claim to SEO fame is their citation builder. However, overtime, they have also built their own set of rank tracking tools that are local business oriented.
Their Rank Tracker tool has the ability to monitor your keywords and their position changes in the SERPs.
This tool shows not only organic rankings, but also specifically your rank in Google Maps, making it a great tool for monitoring local SEO. It also shows rankings for Bing and Bing Local.
Their Local Search Grid is also a unique feature – perfect for those visual learners!
This view gives you a compelling visual representation of your ranking on an actual map position versus your competitors’ share of the market with regards to keyword dominance.
If you would like to learn more about local SEO tools, want further SEO coaching, or are seeking comprehensive help with your SEO strategy, give iformat’s local SEO experts a call.
Our local SEO clients benefit from calculated and detailed SEO strategies grounded in accurate and fresh local SEO data, analysis, and application, specific for their target suburbs and cities.
Iiformat is based in Melbourne and Brisbane, and works with businesses anywhere across Australia.
Contact us today and power up your website’s reach with our local SEO services. Get in touch online or call now: Melbourne (03) 8842 1250 or Brisbane (07) 3732 6522.