Free Local SEO Tools In which Belong in Your KitPosted by Pittman Brandt on April 26th, 2021 What a lot can change in just a couple of years! When I wrote the initial version of this post in January 2014, the neighborhood SEO industry didn't have quite the wealth of paid tools that now exists, and several of the freebies on my previous list have already been sunsetted. Definitely time for a complete refresh of the most useful free tools, widgets, and resources I understand of to create marketing local businesses easier and better. While all the tools below are free, remember that some will require one to join access. Others are limited, no-cost, or trial versions that enable you to get a common sense of what they provide, helping you to consider whether it might be worth it to get into paid access. One thing you may notice: my new set of local SEO tools offers increased support for organic SEO tasks, reflective of our industry's growing knowledge of how closely linked organic and local SEO have become. Now, let's open this toolkit and obtain 2018 off to an excellent start! For Research US Census Bureau Tool Set Looking to better understand a target community for marketing purposes? You'll find 20+ useful resources from the united states Census Bureau, including population statistics, economic data, mapping and geocoding widgets, income and language information, plus much more. Client Onboarding Questionnaire & Phone Script Onboarding a fresh client? Reduce repetitious follow-ups by asking all of the right questions the first time around with this particular thorough questionnaire and easy-to-follow telephone call script from Moz. Includes tips for why you are asking each question. As local SEO veterans will tell you, a missed question can lead to unhappy (and costly) surprises down the marketing road. Make sure to have the full total picture of an incoming client in clear view before starting strategizing. Location Information Spreadsheet Vital when marketing multi-location businesses, this free Moz spreadsheet will make sure that you've got all the info at your fingertips about each locale of a company. *Pro tip: Whenever using large enterprises, ensure that the data you're inputting in this spreadsheet has been approved by all relevant departments. It's really no fun to determine six months into a marketing campaign that there's internal disagreement about company NAP or other features. Local Competitive Audit Spreadsheet Now we're really getting right down to brass tacks. When you need to search for answers to the perennial client question, "How come that guy outranking me?", this free Moz spreadsheet will assist you to document key competitive data. The end result of filling in the sheet will be two columns of stats it is possible to compare in your quest to discover competitors' ranking strengths and weaknesses. Need more guidance? Read my post where I put this audit spreadsheet into action for just two San Francisco Bay Area Chinese restaurants. Manual GeoLocation Chrome Extension Watch Darren Shaw demo using this tool to show what sort of local pack changes whenever a user virtually crosses a street and you will quickly know how useful this Chrome extension will be in approximating the impacts of user-to-business proximity. Works well on desktop devices. Our industry still hasn't fully recovered from Google removing the Local Search filter from its engine in 2015, and I still live in hope that they will take it back one day, but in the meantime, this extension gives us a good sense of how searcher location affects serp's. In fact, it may even be a superior solution. The MozBar SEO Toolbar Local businesses in competitive markets must master traditional SEO, and the free MozBar offers a wonderful introduction to the metrics you must look at in analyzing the organic strengths and weaknesses of clients and competitors. On-page elements, link metrics, markup, HTTP status, optimization opportunities - get the data you need instantly with the MozBar. Google Advanced Search Operators Not a tool, per se, but the best tutorial I've ever seen on using Google advanced search operators to deepen your research. Dr. Pete breaks this into 67 steps that will enable you to use these search refinements for content and title research, checking for plagiarism, technical SEO audits, and competitive intelligence. Be totally wizardly and impress your clients and teammates, simply by knowing how to format searches in smart ways. Google Search Console Apologies if it already seems like a no-brainer to you that you need to be enrolled in Google's console that gives you analytics, alerts you to serious errors, and so a lot more, but local SEO is just now crossing the threshold of focusing on how deeply connected it really is to organic search. When playing in Google's backyard, GSC is really a must-have for businesses of every type. BrightLocal's Search Results Checker This popular tool does a fantastic job of replicating local serp's at a city or zip code level. Occasionally, it's best to search by city (for example, when there are multiple towns covered by an individual zip code), but other times, it's better search by zip code (as in the case of a big city with multiple zip codes). The tool does not have the ability to recreate user-level results, so remember that the proximity of a given user to a small business may create quite different results than what you will see searching at a city or zip code level. Additional hints think about this an excellent tool to suss out the lay of the land in a community, identifying top competitors. Offline Conversion Tracker Form Give this handy Whitespark form to anyone who answers your phone so that they can document the solution to the important question, "How did you hear about us?" Submitted information is saved to Whitespark's database and tracked in Google Analytics for the future reference and analysis. For local businesses, understanding of offline factors could be priceless. This form offers a simple point of entry into amassing real-world data. For Content Answer the Public One of the best-loved key word research tools in the digital marketing world, Answer the Public lets you enter a keyword and generate a lot of questions/topics related to your search. Just about the most awesome areas of this tool is that it includes a.CSV download feature - perfect for instantly generating large lists of keywords that one could input into something similar to Moz Keyword Explorer to begin with the sorting process that turns up the most powerful keywords for the content dev and on-page optimization. Buzzsumo Another great content inspiration tool, Buzzsumo teaches you lets you enter a keyword, topic or domain name, and shows you which pieces are getting the most social shares. For example, a seek out wholefoodsmarket.com shows that a highly shared piece of content at the time of my search is approximately an asparagus and broccoli soup. You may also sort by content type (articles, videos, infographics, etc.). Use of Buzzsumo can help you generate topics that could be popular if covered on your website. OSHA Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) System Search Another interesting resource for brainstorming a wide pool of potential keywords for content dev consideration, OSHA's SIC search returns big, comprehensive lists. Just look up your industry's SIC code, and then enter it along with a keyword/category to really get your list. USPS Look Up a ZIP Code Widget Dealing with service area businesses (SABs)? Note the next tab in the menu of this widget: Cities by zip code. When you know the zip code of a business you're marketing you can enter it into this simple tool to acquire a list of every city for the reason that zip. Now, let's not take a wrong step here: don't publish large blocks of zips or city names on any website, but do utilize this widget to be sure you know of all the communities for which an SAB might strategize content, link constructing, brand building, real-world relationship building, social media marketing, and PPC.Like it? Share it! More by this author |