8 Essential Local SEO & Listing Management Tools

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• What is Local SEO?
• How does it work?
  • Improves online visibility
  • More relevant traffic
  • Build a community
  • Reduce Advertising cost
  • Increased sales
• What is listing management?
• Benefits of a listings management tool
  • It makes your business more findable
  • It boosts your search engine ranking
  • It allows you to be found on voice search
  • It saves you time
  • It allows you to control your business
• List of the best local SEO tools and listing
  management tools
  • Semrush listing management tool
  • Yext
  • Bright Local
  • Moz Local
  • Whitespark
  • Birdeye
  • Uberall
  • Synup

Introduction

Whether your business is local or international, having a strong local SEO presence is essential to attracting more customers to your website from your target regions, especially if you have a physical shop. Local SEO has become a staple of the modern world. For instance, how did you learn if your local medical store was open during the pandemic? You looked it up online. More than 50% of consumers looked for open or closed stores online in March 2020, when the pandemic was at its worst. Our convenience has now shifted to searching for our essentials online.

If you are a business owner, the good news is that you can use local SEO tools to make it much easier to maintain your company’s relevance and provides a strong local search presence. Local SEO tools can be used to track rankings, offer competitive data, help create keywords that are SEO-friendly, keep track of performance, and promote consumer interaction. In addition to these, when used with listing management tools, businesses with physical locations can maintain and update location data on one single platform and be ahead of their competitors.

If you are not convinced about why you need a local SEO tool and listing management tool for your business, keep reading to learn more.

What is Local SEO?

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of optimizing your website and all of its content to work well with the algorithms used by search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

Local SEO factors on geographic location, while general SEO concentrates on ranking highly in niche-specific inquiries. Despite the fact that many of the concepts are the same in both local and general SEO, there will be a change in the way that keywords and backlinks are used to focus on local audiences and increase impact against competitors.

How does it work?

Search engines utilize artificial intelligence to crawl, index, rank, and choose the top results from all internet content. Your position on the results page depends on your website having the elements that your search engine needs while excluding the elements that may harm your ranking.

With a more focused objective, local SEO attempts to acquire preference from these platforms. You’ll be fighting to stand out in your community rather than competing with the leading brands in your market.

You can increase your visibility in a more pertinent area by using strategies like using location-specific keywords in keywords and backlinking to local events pages. When local searchers browse for your goods or services, this will raise your ranking position.

You need a thorough SEO strategy in place, regardless of the size or industry of your firm. Organic search is the focus of SEO. A paid search will never benefit you as much as an organic search will. Organic searches will bring you more authentic traffic, more conversions, and therefore, more sales. When ranking websites, search engines also take into account the quality of the material. Any website that has a good SEO will automatically improve the user experience which can include elements like the amount of time spent on a website among other things.

Let us now list some of the benefits of local SEO.Benefits of Local SEO

The benefits of local SEO are undeniable and have helped every business that used it correctly. Here is how:

1. Improves online visibility

Most of the traffic goes to the top 5 results of a search. If your business is not showing up there, it is likely that the audience does not know that you exist.

Customers are your company’s main success factor, thus you need to start positioning yourself in their world. Utilizing local SEO strategies will increase your chances of being found and help you rank among the top organic results.

2. More relevant traffic

When you market to local customers, you’re encouraging online visits from potential customers who can convert to offline customers.

When you use a broad SEO strategy for a local-only business, you expose yourself to a lot of dead-end hits. Consider the case where you published a blog with practical advice on how to use your product or service. You’ll be taking hits from all around the world if you haven’t used local targets.

Although having such a large audience feels wonderful, it is unlikely that an international hit will convert to a paying client.

3. Build a community

Businesses and customers alike are realizing how critical it is to preserve local businesses and foster community. You’ll notice the impacts both online and offline when your company starts making attempts to interact with other local businesses.

While gaining more trustworthy local backlinks is a terrific strategy to raise your ranking, it also creates opportunities for helpful business partnerships. Customers who you refer to their appropriate services are more likely to do the same. Your customers are more likely to believe recommendations and frequently find it more convenient to start by visiting establishments in their neighborhood.

4. Reduce Advertising cost

Now, the most valuable audience for businesses is organic traffic. Utilizing local SEO will lessen your requirement for these strategies, which may have previously been your only opportunity for high visibility.

Increasing your rank will enable you to use your search engine as a free form of advertising for your company, generating more worthwhile clicks than a paid advertisement.

5. Increased sales

Sales increase as a result of more relevant traffic. Showing up as an authority in your community will enhance your chances of becoming the landing site for local clients who are ready to buy.

Local searchers will be inspired by your close location and ideal availability even if they aren’t quite ready to make a purchase just yet. They may come to see you and get to know you as a local instead of searching for businesses that are hours distant or need them to make blind internet purchases.

What is listing management?

Business Listings Management can be understood as a service that publishes and updates your company’s name, phone numbers, addresses, and other vital contact details online. The data for your company needs to be accurate and consistent across more than 100 websites, search engines, applications, voice assistants, GPS systems, and social networks. Listing management helps you deal with that.

The listing information about your company is needed to maintain and develop your company’s online presence, which is important for every business today. It is impossible for potential consumers, web crawlers, or search engines to identify, authenticate, and promote your business if your listing information is not consistent and accurate.

You may be able to focus on other crucial elements of your business, like maintaining client relationships, while a business listing management tool takes care of the painstaking chore of ensuring that your company’s contact information is up to date at all required places and sites.

Benefits of a listings management tool

Using a listing management tool not just eases your overall work by completing a major task for you, but it also adds benefits by fulfilling that task in time. Want to know how? Keep reading!

1. It makes your business more findable

We are much past the time when you would look through local directories or manual records to search for the contact of a place or business. Today, people are unlikely to find your company at all if they can’t find it on Google in under a second. Plus, it is not possible for you to take out time from managing your business to add your contact on 100+ websites.

Now, even if a potential consumer finds your address and phone number on Google, will the details be correct and updated? What if they select a broken link? Will the user see your most recent address or your previous one from five years ago? The management of your business listings makes sure that both new and returning clients can locate you easily.

You could lose out on a significant deal merely because the customer could not find your front door. If you think from the customer’s perspective and find that the shop you drove down to has been shut down, you would rather move to the next shop than look for the new address of the same business.

Business Listing Management makes ensuring that your company’s contact information is accurate when it appears online so that clients may get in touch with you quickly and simply.

2. It boosts your search engine ranking

For any organization that wants to continue having a successful online presence, search engine optimization (SEO) is essential. In order to give its users the greatest possible experience, Google optimizes its search results pages. Google is probably not going to give your webpage a higher rating as compared to others if your company’s contact information is hard to find and verify.

Even worse, with a low rating, it is going to be hard for your potential customers to find you. To add to that, imagine the number of people who use their mobile devices to look up business information while on the go. Finding “the best BBQ restaurant near me” or “the best repair shop in Dallas,” for instance.

With the help of a business listings management tool, you will be able to ensure that only accurate and verified contact information for your business is available on multiple websites, which will in turn better your SEO. Users will be able to discover your physical location, and Google will reward you with better search rankings for your improved online user experience.

3. It allows you to be found on voice search

Have you ever realized how convenient it is to use voice search to look for something online? Will your company show up in the search results if a potential client uses the voice search option? These voice search bots analyze your query and your purpose, just like a desktop Google search, to determine which results will offer the greatest user experience. Business listing management updates and publishes your company’s contact details so that voice search engines may find them. As voice search technology advances, so does the number of its users and the daily frequency of its use. Set yourself against your competitors by ensuring that voice-guided search engines are directing customers to your business.

4. It saves you time

Your business is on multiple websites and while managing your business, you might not have time to keep checking that these websites have the correct contact information. Search engine crawlers may become confused by even the slightest variations. As a result, your local rankings will suffer if search engines have trouble locating reliable information about your company. Customers, too, will have a harder time finding your company’s website if your rankings decline.

5. It allows you to control your business

Only the data you enter through listing management tools is what shows on the websites. Therefore, listing management tools give you complete control of what shows about your business on other websites. By entering your accurate information just once, you may create the story, and the listings tool will share it with all partners. It gives you the flexibility to create what image you want to create in front of your customers rather than letting another tool define it. You are able to take responsibility for building your business’s brand and deciding the extent and type of information that will pass on to your customers.

List of the best local SEO tools and listing management tools

Now that you know how local SEO tools and listings management adds convenience to your business and its maintenance, here are a few comprehensive local SEO tools for you to check out and buy as per suitability. All of these provide different and unique features and services that make it easier and more effective for your business to function.

1. Semrush listing management tool

This local SEO software tool makes adding and updating your company’s information to the most prestigious directories both inside and outside of the US simpler than ever. It has been preferred by big brands. As soon as your listings go live, you can use the tool to monitor and update them so that they continue to be correct and consistent across all platforms.

It also creates a listings management tool in collaboration with Yext. You may track client feedback, your company’s position in the local search results for your target cities, and your overall local search performance by using this comprehensive local SEO tool. Even without logging in, you may keep on track by configuring the tool to send you location data through email. You can also explore the location citation possibilities.

From the Semrush listing administration dashboard, you may manage the information you like. Utilizing the tool is simple. You must first enter the information and determine your location. The tool will display a list of your listings along with information about their status on each directory website. Semrush will automatically update your listings after you make any necessary changes.

2. Yext

With Yext’s Review Monitoring function, you can track and reply to customer reviews from all locations in one dashboard thanks to integrations with third-party websites. You can also obtain genuine first-party testimonials from clients and post them on your website.

Additionally, Yext offers powerful tools to optimize your business listings for voice search.

These features can be used for analytics, displaying improvement ideas, scheduling, and real-time updates, and setting up integrations with other applications.

This one also includes services and solutions like

• Data cleansing: Yext will ensure that the information you present to consumers is accurate by cleaning up the facts about your company from all of your internal data sources and maintaining consistency throughout your company.
• Duplicate listings prevention: It makes the work much easier when you get rid of duplicate business listings.
• Google my business management: Because of Yext’s interaction with Google My Business, you can make modifications straight through the platform and publish them to GMB whenever you’re ready.
• Analytics:– It takes care of accurate and relevant data that you provide and collects insights, activities, and data for reporting.

3. Bright Local

BrightLocal is an all-in-one reporting system for local SEO that was created in 2009 by Ed Eliot and Myles Anderson. Over 10,000 major brands, local companies, and agencies utilize their local SEO services globally.

Among its other features, the most popular ones are these:

• A personalized dashboard for tracking data at a specific location.
• Monitoring the rankings in local, organic, and mobile searches.
• Organizing and increasing citations.
• Tracking online reviews on more than 20 websites.
• Examining and auditing directory sites to identify any revisions that are required.
• Audit of GBP and NAP.
• White label approach for businesses.

4. Moz Local

Because of the reputation that Moz has established in the industry over the past ten years, Moz Local, which Moz created, is maybe the most well-known local SEO tool on our list.

It aids your company’s local exposure which also makes sure that your business listings are accurate, consistent, and accessible online. In addition to other things, Moz Local helps you remove duplicate business listings and makes it simple to update your business listings on all the main data aggregators and web directories.

When you join up with Moz Local, you’ll get access to the following main features:

• Local Listings Dashboard: Manage, monitor, and optimize your online listings to get valuable information about their performance and health.
• Instant Submission to Directories and Data Aggregators: Moz Local instantly submits your listing information to the most important directories and data aggregators.
• Google My Business Sync: With Moz Local, you can take control of your Google My Business (GMB) listing and update your GMB profile with any updates.
• Real-time Update Distribution: Moz Local instantly updates your basic or enhanced listing data and distributes it throughout the Local Search ecosystem.

5. Whitespark

Whitespark, formerly a web design firm, now provides SEO software tools to assist businesses with local search marketing.

The most used product from Whitespark is the Citation Finder. It assists you in identifying the citation possibilities you’re overlooking to raise your ranks in pertinent local searches.

The tool’s free use for three searches per day and restricted search results make it ideal for those just getting started.

• Local Rank Tracker: Whitespark’s precise location settings give you insight into overall SEO performance – showing where you stand against your competitors and also how you rank across several search engines.
• Reputation Builder: This feature prods customers to share their reviews on your chosen review sites and calculates NPS(Net Promoter Score).
• Review Monitoring: Whitespark notifies you if and when a bad review is shared so that you can take prompt action.

6. Birdeye

Its name is self-explanatory to its purpose i.e. providing a bird’s-eye view to the local SEO. It is best suited for multi-location enterprise businesses and helps manage reviews.

Its efficient messaging platform, enabling multiple modes of communication makes Birdeye stand out from the other local SEO tools.

• Data integration: BIrdeye collects data from multiple sites and accommodates them into one dashboard for more structured monitoring.
• Review management: It collects reviews from all the sites available, making it easier to examine them.
• Messaging platform: Birdeye supports several modes of communication including text messaging, email, web chat, live chat, and chatbots. All messages come in through one inbox.

7. Uberall

Businesses such as enterprise brands and media agencies require their business listings to be optimized for search throughout the entire search system, making Uberall their preferred choice. Uberall is the prime provider of location data as it is a data-focused platform.

Due to its years of success in the location marketing domain, Uberall has gained strategic relationships with the majority of map-developing companies.

• Google My Business Management: Uberall and Google’s GMB location content platform provide regular updates on your listings.
• Local Listings Management: This feature ascertains that at the moment of the search only the most accurate local listings are made available.
• Local Data Optimization: Uberall secures how your business is listed across sites to prevent any errors.
• Local Search: Using this potent platform, your listings are confirmed to be dominant in map search results.

8. Synup

Synup tracks your business performance across important directories, review sites, and search engines and any data inconsistencies, to ensure accurate citations of your business.

It also lets you interact with your reviews.

• Location Management: Synup makes managing your location incredibly simple.
• Crawl All Listings: It processes 200+ local search engines and directories to notify you of any data inconsistencies present.
• Instant-Sync: Instantly syncs your business and location data across the web.
• Analytics: Tracking web rankings and traffic are one of its key features.

With advancements in technology and wide-scale acceptance of the tools that help you better your SEO, the options available to us have also increased in number. This article jots down a list of powerful local SEO tools and listing management tools that can help you rank highly in your target region, and be on top of the competition with analytics and many other features. It can also help you keep track of your rankings and provide competitive data to help you stay ahead of your competitors.

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