Free of charge Local SEO Tools Which Belong in Your KitPosted by Pittman Brandt on April 26th, 2021 What a lot can change in just a few years! When I wrote the initial version of the post in January 2014, the neighborhood SEO industry didn't have quite the wealth of paid tools that now exists, and many of the freebies on my previous list have already been sunsetted. Definitely time for a whole refresh of the most useful free tools, widgets, and resources I know of to create marketing local businesses easier and better. While all the tools below are free, remember that some will require you to join access. Others are limited, no-cost, or trial versions that let you get a good sense of what they provide, enabling you to consider whether it might be worth it to get into paid access. One thing you might notice: my new list 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 a great start! For Research US Census Bureau Tool Set Seeking to better understand a target community for marketing purposes? You will discover 20+ useful resources from the US Census Bureau, including population statistics, economic data, mapping and geocoding widgets, income and language information, and much more. Client Onboarding Questionnaire & Phone Script Onboarding a fresh client? Reduce repetitious follow-ups by asking each of the right questions to begin with with this particular thorough questionnaire and easy-to-follow phone call script from Moz. Includes tips for why you're asking each question. As local SEO veterans will let you know, a missed question can lead to unhappy (and costly) surprises down the marketing road. Be sure you have the total picture of an incoming client in clear view before you begin strategizing. Location Information Spreadsheet Vital when marketing multi-location businesses, this free Moz spreadsheet will ensure that you've got all the info close at hand about each locale of an organization. *Pro tip: Whenever using large enterprises, be certain that the info you're inputting in this spreadsheet has been approved by all relevant departments. It's really no fun to discover 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 down to brass tacks. If you want to search for answers to the perennial client question, "Why is that guy outranking me?", this free Moz spreadsheet will let you document key competitive data. The outcome of filling in the sheet will undoubtedly be two columns of stats you can compare and contrast in your quest to find competitors' ranking strengths and weaknesses. Need more guidance? Read my blog post where I put this audit spreadsheet into action for just two SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA 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 undoubtedly be in approximating the impacts of user-to-business proximity. Is effective on desktop devices. Our industry still hasn't fully recovered from Google removing the neighborhood Search filter from its engine in 2015, and I still reside in hope that they will take it back one day, however in the meantime, this extension gives us an excellent sense of how searcher location affects serp's. In fact, it could even be considered a superior solution. The MozBar SEO Toolbar Local businesses in competitive markets must master traditional SEO, and the free MozBar provides 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 at a glance with the MozBar. Google Advanced Search Operators Not a tool, by itself, but the best tutorial I have ever seen on using Google advanced search operators to deepen your quest. Dr. Pete breaks this into 67 steps that will allow 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 ought to be signed up for Google's console that gives you analytics, alerts one to serious errors, and so much more, but local SEO is merely now crossing the threshold of focusing on how deeply connected it is to organic search. When playing in Google's backyard, GSC is a must-have for businesses of each type. BrightLocal's Search Results Checker This popular tool does an excellent job of replicating local search results at a city or zip code level. In some instances, it's best to search by city (for example, whenever there are multiple towns covered by a single zip code), but other times, it's better search by zip code (as regarding a big city with multiple zip codes). The tool doesn't have the ability to recreate user-level results, so remember that the proximity of a given user to a business may create quite different results than what you'll see searching at a city or zip code level. I consider this a great tool to suss out the lay of the land in a residential area, 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, knowledge of offline factors can 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 large number of questions/topics linked to your search. Just about the most awesome facets of this tool is that it has a.CSV download feature - perfect for instantly generating large lists of keywords you could input into something like Moz Keyword Explorer to begin with the sorting process that arises the most powerful keywords for your 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 then shows you which pieces are getting the most social shares. For instance, a seek out wholefoodsmarket.com shows that an extremely shared piece of content at the time of my search is approximately an asparagus and broccoli soup. You can even sort by content type (articles, videos, infographics, etc.). Use of read more may help you generate topics that might be popular if covered on your own 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 second tab in the menu of this widget: Cities by zip code. When you know the zip code of a business you're marketing it is possible to enter it into this simple tool to obtain 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 that an SAB might strategize content, link constructing, brand building, real-world relationship building, social media, and PPC.Like it? Share it! More by this author |