A local SEO audit evaluates your local online presence to ensure your business is optimised to attract customers in your area. It involves reviewing everything from your Google Business Profile to website optimisation and local citations. The goal is to find any issues holding back your visibility in local search results and opportunities to improve your rankings.
Running a local SEO audit is essential because it ensures your business stands out to nearby customers searching for products or services like yours, helping you stay competitive. In this guide, we’ll examine some of the key components of an effective local SEO audit. While some aspects can be done in-house, hiring SEO experts to run an audit ensures nothing is overlooked.
If your online business needs a boost in local rankings, contact our digital marketing team at britweb. We can conduct a thorough audit using industry-leading tools and provide tailored recommendations for long-term local SEO success.
1. Check your Google Business Profile
Start your local SEO audit by reviewing your Google Business Profile (GBP). Ensure that your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) are accurate and consistent across all online listings to avoid confusing potential customers or search engines.
Next, verify that your business is listed in the most relevant categories to improve your chances of ranking for specific local searches, and check that your profile is fully complete. This includes photos, business hours, and a detailed description to provide potential customers with all the information they need. As your business’s presence on Google Maps is linked to your Google Business Profile, it can help locals find you with location-based searches directly. An optimised Google Business Profile also increases your chances of showing in the local pack on Google’s search engine results pages.
With your GBP, don’t overlook the power of customer reviews. Encourage clients to leave positive feedback and respond to reviews to help boost your local performance.
2. Analyse local keyword performance
To optimise locally, conduct local keyword research using tools like Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush. These tools help you identify the specific target keywords, terms and phrases locals are using to find businesses like yours.
Once you’ve identified the right keywords, ensure they are strategically placed throughout your website, including in titles, meta descriptions, headers, and core content. As you work through this process, review your keywords for relevance. They should accurately reflect your services and match what your target audience is searching for locally to drive qualified traffic.
3. Audit your website’s local SEO factors
As on your GBP, ensure consistency across your website by displaying your name, address, and phone number clearly and uniformly on key pages like the homepage and contact page. If your business operates in multiple locations, create separate location pages for each, optimised with local content to target specific areas.
Given that many local searches happen on smartphones, it’s crucial that your website is mobile-friendly for an optimal user experience. If able, you should also implement Local Business Schema Markup. This will help search engines understand your location information better.
4. Review local citations and directory listings
It’s important to ensure consistency across local business listings on major local directories like:
- Yelp
- Bing Places
- Yellow Pages
Your business information – name, address, and phone number (NAP) – should be accurate and uniform across all platforms, and you should aim to find and fix any duplicate listings, as these can confuse search engines and hurt your local rankings.
Once your existing listings are in order, look for opportunities to build new citations by adding your business to authoritative directories in your industry or locality. Expanding your presence in trusted directories helps strengthen your local SEO footprint and improves visibility in local search results.
5. Evaluate your backlink profile for local SEO
Begin by assessing the quality and relevance of your backlinks, especially from local sources like businesses, news sites, and community organisations. Strong local backlinks can significantly boost your local SEO rankings, whilst broken or toxic links may harm your SEO efforts as Google can penalise low-quality links.
Looking ahead, you can focus on building local partnerships by connecting with local influencers and blogs. These relationships can help you earn relevant, high-quality backlinks that work to enhance your visibility.
Further considerations for local SEO
In addition to the key points mentioned, there are other important factors to consider when auditing for local SEO:
- Site speed: Check that your website loads quickly, especially on mobile devices. Slow load times can negatively impact user experience and search rankings.
- User Experience (UX): Easy navigation and clear calls-to-action encourage visitors to engage and convert.
- Local content: Do you regularly publish high-quality, locally relevant content (blog posts, events) to attract local traffic and enhance SEO efforts?
- Engagement: Engage with customers on social media and respond to reviews on platforms like Google to build trust and improve local SEO.
- Geotagging: Add geotags to images on your website to give search engines more location-based context about your business.
These additional considerations can further enhance your local SEO strategy and help boost your business’s visibility. Whilst this isn’t an exhaustive local SEO audit checklist, it’s a great starting point and can help inform ongoing local SEO strategies for your business.
How often should you run a local SEO audit?
Ideally, you should run this type of audit at least twice a year to stay competitive in local search results and ensure all your information is accurate and up-to-date. However, the frequency can depend on a few factors:
- Changes to your business: If you change your business address or phone number or add new services, it’s important to conduct an audit to ensure your listings, website, and online presence reflect these updates.
- Algorithm updates can impact local search rankings. After significant updates, it is a good idea to perform an audit to ensure your business is still optimised for local searches.
- Competitive markets: In highly competitive areas, you might want to audit more frequently to stay ahead of your competitors and maintain strong visibility.
Regular audits will help identify and fix issues before they affect your rankings, ensuring your business remains visible to local customers.
Improve your local SEO performance with britweb
If you’re ready to enhance your local SEO performance, our highly skilled and experienced team at britweb has worked with many local businesses and is ready to help.
Our experts will conduct a thorough local SEO audit and provide actionable recommendations to boost your visibility and drive more local traffic.