The digital landscape is becoming more competitive by the day, so it is more critical than ever for businesses to have a solid local SEO presence. For any local business owner, knowing how to perform a local SEO audit is the first step toward improving search engine rankings, gaining more local customers, and boosting your overall visibility online. This guide will walk you through what a local SEO audit is, how to perform one, and the tools to get the job done and monitor progress. Grab a snack and a cozy bevie, and let’s dive in.
What is a Local SEO Audit?
A local SEO audit is an in-depth review of the key elements that form your local search strategy. It covers the who, what, where, when, why, and how of your website and your competitors, ensuring every aspect of your online presence is optimized for local search success.
Local SEO is different from national or e-commerce SEO in that it is formed around strategies to rank for location-based queries. With local SEO, you need to ensure that search engines understand exactly where you are and the relevance of your business when someone looks for “record store in Fort Collins” or “smoothies near me.”
How to Do a Local SEO Audit
1. Review your target keywords
You will want to complete keyword research to find out what potential customers are looking for when searching for businesses like yours. You can get a basic idea of how users are searching for your products or services by typing a few of your site’s more obvious keywords (“roofing,” “hair salon,” etc.) into Google and examining the top results. For more in-depth research and insights, a professional SEO agency can help.
Remember that not everyone searches the same way, so be sure to think about alternate keywords someone might type to get your service or product (ex. Landscaping companies can get visits from the interchangeable terms of “lawn mowing,” “lawn maintenance,” and “grass cutting”). You’ll want to focus on your core services or products, but you’ll also want to include phrases that people may use when looking locally. Depending on your customers ' location, you should also incorporate the names of cities, communities, or districts.
For example, for businesses in New York City, it’s important to consider a mix of boroughs and neighborhoods in your local SEO strategy. For example, you might include keywords like “NYC,” “Manhattan,” “Brooklyn,” “Queens,” or specific neighborhoods like “SoHo,” “Williamsburg,” or “Astoria.” Avoid stuffing your website with these locations and keywords—adding too many can cause your site to read awkwardly and signal to search engines that you’re trying to game them. Instead, choose the locations and keywords most relevant to your business and audience, and incorporate them naturally into your content.
When building your local SEO strategy, the concept of long and short-tail keywords is also important. Short-tail keywords are generally shorter words or phrases that are fairly popular searches, like “roofing,” or “basement contractors.” These keyword searches are often the most relevant to your business and are searched a lot, so it’s important to appear for them, but the competition will be more intense. Long-tail keywords, meanwhile, are generally more specific, such as “commercial flat roofing” or “custom countertop installation.” You should consider and look for these long-tail keywords as well, because they are generally less competitive and allow you to collect business from a more niche audience. Any good local SEO strategy will be targeting both long- and short-tail keywords.
2. Conduct a thorough website audit
Now that you know the keywords you want to target, it’s time to get to the meat and potatoes: your website.
There are 100 million things you can look at during a local SEO site audit. However, this blog is not about how you conduct a technical SEO audit, so we are not going to talk about the 100 million items you may need to review. Instead, we are going to address more content-specific items related to local SEO:
Page Optimization
Web page optimization is all about sending the right signals to search engines. This includes making your page easy to navigate, focusing on topical keywords, and providing users with a positive experience. Website crawlers look for certain signals to determine what a web page is about, and they put a lot of emphasis on Page Titles and Headings as the main descriptors. Here’s an example of a page title (in blue) and meta description (smaller text in white, with the search query in bold) from a Google search results page:
Occasionally you will also see search engine results that include the titles of the service pages within the site in the listing. This is why your Page Titles, Meta Descriptions, and Headings should consistently use keyword variations you identified in your keyword research. As mentioned above, you don’t need to spam your website with location mentions, but don’t wholly neglect localized keywords (such as “roofing in Fort Collins”).
Internal Linking
It is important to ensure that your website pages link to other parts of your website and that the links in question aren’t broken or outdated. Internal linking is a big factor in boosting your website's SEO value. It will help search engines understand the flow of your website and how well it can direct users to the answers they are looking for.
Duplicate Content
Google and other search engines are very vocal about their priorities regarding original and unique content within rankings. If you have a website with a heavy amount of duplicate content (i.e. content copied from other websites), it is recommended to update your pages so they only have original content or remove any pages with duplicate content.
3. Assess the performance of your Google Business Profile
A Google Business Profile is crucial for a local business. If you aren’t sure what a GBP is, it is a listing that appears when someone looks up a local business or service. A GBP contains all the valuable information about your business that a potential customer needs: your name, address, business hours, and other key information. An optimized GBP will increase your online visibility within the local pack (that first set of GBP listings that appear for most local searches) and can increase your search engine rankings as well.
If you have a Google Business Profile, make sure you use it to its fullest potential. Double-check that all your information is correct and that you regularly gain new customer reviews; add photos/videos, and post relevant updates that can help potential customers learn more about your business. In many cases, a GBP is a customer's first glimpse of your business, so why not make it the best experience you can?
4. Customer reviews
Reviews play a vital role in local search rankings and in gaining new customers. No less than 84% of consumers consider reviews very important when looking for a new business or service provider. Make sure you are responding to your reviews, both positive and negative. Yes, you read that right. You may be hesitant to respond to negative reviews, but responding to negative reviews can be even more crucial than addressing positive ones. Potential customers often read negative feedback to get a fuller picture of a business, so taking accountability and responding thoughtfully is key. Encourage dissatisfied customers to reach out directly to resolve any issues.
To obtain more reviews from your past customers, encourage them to leave a review online after paying or include a QR code on their receipt to encourage them to leave a review later; you can even follow up with an email asking about their experience and directing them to your GBP listing. It can be tough to get a regular influx of reviews, but the more consistently you can update your GBP, the better.
5. Website performance
Having a website that does what it needs to when a user clicks around is probably one of the most important elements of any digital marketing strategy. A local SEO audit is a great time to double-check your website’s functionality. If you have a website with poor user experience, like slow load times or a website that is not mobile-friendly, this can lead to high bounce rates (people leaving your site) and affect your rankings and visibility. Work with your website developer to ensure your site can be crawled efficiently and that nothing is standing in the way of your website being indexed on search engines.
The user experience should be your top priority for your website; when someone can easily use your site, Google will reward you with better rankings. If you build it, they will come. Don’t come for me, Phil Alden Robinson!
6. Competitor Analysis
Understanding your competitors' strategies and knowing how to match and surpass them is essential for a winning local SEO campaign. It’s about staying ahead and seizing opportunities to outperform them. Take time to put target keywords into Google and see who ranks in those top results; these are your organic (search) competitors. Look at their websites, GBP listings, and any social media activity, and see how well they rank for other keywords you are looking to rank for. Semrush and Ahrefs are powerful tools for discovering what keywords other websites rank for, allowing you to incorporate those insights into your SEO strategy.
Local SEO Audit Tools
Many of the actions that are listed above can be done manually, but why do that when there are multiple tools at your fingertips?
Google Search Console: a free tool that will help you monitor how your website appears in search results. With GSC, you can measure your website’s performance, see indexing issues, submit sitemaps, and discover new ranking opportunities.
Google Analytics: is another free tool that helps you understand how users are interacting with your website. With GA4 you can see where and how users are coming to your website and you can track a variety of interactions, like clicks, scrolls, purchases, button clicks, downloads, and more.
Google Business Profile: we’ve got another free tool! A Google Business profile allows you to showcase important information about your business, such as your location, hours of operation, contact details, and reviews. It appears in search and Google Maps.
BrightLocal: if you are looking for a more inclusive marketing platform, BrightLocal can monitor online reviews, track your local search rankings, perform audits, and look at your competitors.
Boost Your Local Presence with Beyond Blue
As a small business SEO agency, Beyond Blue Media understands all the nuances involved in crafting a successful marketing campaign for businesses in Fort Collins, northern Colorado, and nationwide. No matter where you are, Beyond Blue Media can take you farther, with years of industry experience, professional help with local keyword research and audience insight, and more. Contact us today for a free quote or to learn more about what our local SEO auditing service can do for you.
