In a world that is ever-expanding digitally, showing up on top of search engine results is extremely crucial in ensuring that customers find you when they\u2019re searching. And, we\u2019re here to show you how to do a local SEO audit \u2013 in under 30 minutes.<\/p>\n
What is local SEO?<\/h2>\n
If you\u2019re a business owner who\u2019s not heard of this term before, local SEO is all that one needs to do to make sure that their business shows up as the top result for local searches (i.e. “bars near me.” or “carpenters in Salton City, CA”)<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re still unsure about what local SEO is, read this comprehensive answer on Quora<\/a> to get a better picture of what it means.<\/p>\n Now, shall we get started with our 30-minute audit on how to improve local SEO<\/a>?<\/p>\n The content in the title tag, meta description, and other meta tags play a major role in how your website ranks on search engines. Make sure that you add the keywords you want to rank for in your site\u2019s meta description.<\/p>\n To do this:<\/p>\n For example, when someone searches for “carpet cleaning business in Dallas,” Aqualux Carpet Cleaning shows up as one of the top results.<\/p>\n This is because Aqualux has the word “Dallas” in their title tag (yes, we checked):<\/p>\n That\u2019s local SEO<\/a> done right.<\/p>\n If you own a small business and you don\u2019t have a verified Google My Business (GMB), then you\u2019re doing it wrong. Why? Being able to be seen helps with your online reputation<\/a>, significantly.<\/p>\n The GMB listing provides accurate information about a business\u2019 name, address, phone number (NAP), opening\/closing hours and website URL. It allows people to review your business online, and it also links your ratings from other websites such as ReviewBuzz\/Facebook.<\/p>\n Providing accurate information to Google about your business means providing accurate information about your business to customers, so it goes without saying that you need to claim your Google My Business listing right away if you haven\u2019t yet.<\/p>\n Even if you already have a GMB listing, make sure the information that you have on there is perfect. Meaning the address, phone number, zip code. Also, include any changes in working hours due to daylight savings time. Include anything that might end up costing you a valuable customer. After all, this is a critical SEO audit, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n Ensure that you meet Google My Business Guidelines. Google has a set of guidelines<\/a> that they expect all businesses to follow while representing themselves. Ensuring that you meet them keeps you away from any actions that Google might take to penalize your business listing. If you\u2019re short on time, you can use a tool like the Google Guidelines Checker that automatically tells you whether your business meets guidelines stipulated by Google My Business.<\/p>\n Add your Google My Business URL on your page like this virtual reality arcade in NYC:<\/p>\n Or like this executive office suite in Hallandale, Aventura Florida<\/a><\/p>\n Adding your Google My Business and Google Maps URL to your site can help Google identify and contextually rank you for keywords<\/p>\n The top results on SERPs are often Yelp, Home Advisor, Trip Advisor, Foursquare, or other such directory listings<\/a> for local searches. So it\u2019s absolutely essential that you have yourself listed on all major online directories. This allows you to make sure your business is found by potential customers.<\/p>\n And this is exactly why you need to make sure your listing is available on all these directories. Citation analysis is a big part of any local SEO audit, and your presence on important directories on the internet such as these helps search engines rank you higher on the results.<\/p>\n Having a strong social media presence will help you garner more customers for several reasons. For instance:<\/p>\n And we\u2019ve only scratched the surface, here. An active social media presence impacts the traffic that you drive to your business\u2019 blog, website, or physical store, actively or indirectly.<\/p>\n Make sure that you have a handle on all top social networking sites. Appoint someone to take care of it if you need to. You\u2019ll be amazed at how social media can help your B2C business\u2019 growth<\/a>.<\/p>\n The number of backlinks that you have for your business\u2019 website is directly proportional to how well your business ranks on SERPs. Now, if you don\u2019t know what a backlink is, it is simply a link that leads to your website that is present on another website.<\/p>\n Running a quick backlink analysis is very simple. One of the easy to use tools that will help you do this is Moz\u2019 Open Site Explorer<\/a>, which is a free backlink analysis tool. Just enter your website URL and click on the button that says \u2018Search\u2019. Then OSE will give you a list of backlinks that your website has received from reputable websites. It will show you the source of the backlink, the anchor text for that link, and the authority score (PA – Page Authority, DA – Domain Authority) of the website.<\/p>\n A backlink from an authoritative website is sure to boost your rankings on SERPs. Think of who you know that is reputed amongst your business\u2019 community on the internet. You can write to them and ask them for a backlink to your website or blog.<\/p>\n Moz\u2019 OSE will also show you what your website\u2019s spam score is. A spam score of less than three is said to be good for your website. It\u2019s unlikely that your website will get penalized by Google if it meets this standard.<\/p>\n So, that concludes our 30 minutes local SEO audit! We hope that you found this useful. If you have any queries, feel free to add a comment below.<\/p>\n If you have a little more time to spend, then it is our responsibility to let you know that there are several other factors that one needs to look at to ensure that the local SEO of a business is in place. Here is a Printable Local SEO Audit Checklist<\/a> that comprehensively covers everything else that will assist the local SEO of your business and make it rank higher on SERPs!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Here is a 30 minute local SEO audit you can try so that your business can be seen. With this guide, your business will be prepped and visible in no tim<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":8674,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4199","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4199"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36798,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4199\/revisions\/36798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Step 1: Metadata and keywords (5 minutes)<\/h2>\n
\n
![\"carpet](\"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/1-1.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"dallas](\"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/dallas-carpet-title-tag.png\")
<\/p>\nStep 2: Your Google My Business Listing (5 minutes)<\/h2>\n
![\"google](\"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/google-my-business-1024x479.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"reviews](\"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/reviews-from-web.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"virtual](\"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/virtual-reality-arcade-nyc.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"executive](\"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/executive-office-suite-florida.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\nStep 3: Citation analysis (5 minutes)<\/h2>\n
![\"citation](\"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/citation-analysis-screenshot-1024x451.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"serps](\"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/serps-screenshot-1024x422.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\nStep 4: Social pages (5 minutes)<\/h2>\n
\n
\n![\"reviews](\"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/reviews-from-the-web-my-business-listing.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/li>\n
\n![\"pinterest](\"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/pinterest-results-1024x482.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nStep 5: Backlink and spam analysis (10 minutes)<\/h2>\n
![\"moz](\"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/moz-open-explorer-screenshot-1024x410.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"moz](\"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/moz-open-explorer-screenshot-2-1024x437.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\nBonus: A local SEO audit checklist<\/h2>\n