One of the best ways that companies can ensure that they’re taking advantage of every opportunity they have to attract local potential customers is by conducting a local SEO audit. This type of audit will assess all of the company’s search engine ranking to help it figure out which steps it should take to maintain or improve its local digital presence. Companies that haven’t conducted an SEO audit before might think it’s a difficult process, but it’s not the case, and it’s actually quite easy. All that a local SEO audit entails is assessing how a company’s website ranks in search engine results pages and figuring out how that ranking can be improved to generate more conversions and revenue.
Keywords
The first step in any sort of SEO audit is figuring out which keywords potential customers are using in their search queries to find the business itself as well as similar ones to it. Different customers can use different queries to find what they need, which means companies need to ensure the keywords they’re looking to use aren’t very narrow. To make the most of a keyword list, companies should think about the different stages of the buying journey and what the consumers might search for during each stage.
Website
Once a company knows which keywords potential consumers are using to find the business and similar ones to it on search engines, it’s time to audit the business website for page optimization, links, and the content itself. That means companies need to ensure there aren’t any missing headlines, title tags, or metadata on any page of their business website. They should also make sure all of the page’s links actually lead to other parts of the business website and aren’t outdated or broken. The last step in this stage is to make sure that there isn’t any duplicate content on the entire website.
Customer reviews
One of the key elements of local search rankings is the reviews from past customers, and they’re also important to other potential customers too. In fact, according to research, over 80% of consumers have stated that reviews are incredibly important when they’re deciding to make a purchase from a business. That means companies have to analyze the reviews they receive from past consumers, respond to both positive and negative ones, and try to mitigate any negative ones from developing into potentially negative situations. In fact, responding to reviews is very important because it shows search engines that the company is a responsive and active business, which plays a significant role in search engine rankings as well.