A Detailed Guide to Conducting a Local SEO Audit

People, these days, are fascinated a lot by what features Google has to offer. Whether it’s about exploring a cake shop or finding any nearby product or service for your pet, you just open Google and obtain the information you need within seconds. Well, what are all these searches for? The simple answer is online visibility. Increasing exposure to your website on Google can transform these searches into actual purchases or visits, especially for local companies.

If you are wondering what local SEO audit has to do with all this, here we end your curiosity. A local SEO audit is vital for increasing exposure to local customers. It helps fix any flaws that are causing rivals to outrank you. While the process may appear difficult at first, breaking it down into steps makes it more achievable. Okay, let’s dig deeper and know what exactly it is and how to do a local SEO Audit.

Also Read | Benefits of SEO Services for Local Businesses

Local SEO Audit: An Overview

A local SEO audit is an evaluation of how the website of any local business ranks in Google. It tells you how you can improve its ranking. This detailed analysis can be done as a part of a digital audit carried out on a large scale. One thing that is worth noting is that Google’s algorithm of local SEO keeps on changing with time.Consider carrying out an audit to ensure that your business benefits from all the opportunities to attract local clients. This comprises a detailed review of your search engine ranking together with actions to boost local presence.

Why Conduct a Local SEO Audit?

Conducting an audit demands a thorough examination of different factors subjected to your local search strategy.
This analysis is crucial to give you an idea of how well your website is performing, what are the potential issues and where your business might profit.If your website’s rankings or traffic suddenly decline, a local SEO audit checklist will help you figure out why.

Local SEO Audit Checklist

Given several factors to assess, dividing your checklist into distinct categories is advisable for a thorough analysis. The following are the key areas to include:

1. 1. Local keyword research
2. 2. Rankings
3. 3. Google Penalties
4. 4. Links and website authority
5. 5. Citations
6. 6. Google Business Profile
7. 7. Reviews
8. 8. Social media

Steps to Perform Your Local SEO Audit

Below are the steps to perform your local SEO audit:

1. Conduct Local Keyword Research

Regularly updating your local keyword research ensures that you are targeting the appropriate search keywords. Identify the search phrases that potential consumers use in search engines. This will help you find businesses comparable to yours. Given that clients may use a variety of terms in their searches, make sure the keywords you focus on are not too limiting. While you may already be familiar with some keywords and phrases to target, using SEO tools such as Ahrefs and Keyword Finder can reveal new long and short-tail keywords that you may not have yet considered.

2. Evaluate Your Local SEO Rankings



As part of your audit, you must establish where your website ranks for your desired keywords. Local pack ranking works differently than regular organic search results, requiring queries to be made from specific places.

Use a rank tracker that you find online to automate this procedure.

3. Assess for Google Penalties

Identifying potential Google penalties is critical since they may have a significant impact on your SEO performance. Checking for penalties ahead of time keeps you from overlooking important issues that might have an influence on your rating. Thin content, covert mobile redirection, user-generated spam, and unnatural link architectures are among the most often penalized.

4. Audit Your Links and Website Authority

Carefully assess the quantity as well as the quality of your backlink profile. Don’t miss taking into account criteria like relevancy, prominence, and anchor text usage. You can use Ahrefs to analyze your link profile and discover areas for improvement.

5. Review Citations

Make sure that your business’s citations are correct and consistent across many platforms. Inaccurate listings can undermine customer confidence while reducing your local search exposure. Plus, carry out a thorough analysis of brand mentions and implied links. Furthermore, it’s important to identify inferred and non-linking citations and evaluate their influence on brand visibility. Besides, conduct a comprehensive search for brand mentions in local newspapers, reviews, blogs, etc.

6. Audit Your Google Business Profile

Review and optimize your Google Business Profile to provide accurate and comprehensive information to local consumers. Verify category selection, update posts regularly, and respond to reviews promptly.

7. Audit Reviews

Online reviews are essential for recruiting customers, establishing trust, and increasing traffic to your website. They also considerably improve local pack visibility. Create a list of the top review sites related to your business for this section of your local SEO audit. Evaluate each site to find your average star rating.

Consider any reviews that have not received a response, as well as the balance of positive and negative comments.
During the assessment of reviews and ratings, look for recurring negative issues such as delayed service or cleanliness concerns. Keep track of your findings for future reference. Fake reviews are a danger because they weaken customer faith in legitimate feedback. Familiarize yourself with methods for detecting and reporting fraudulent reviews.

8. Audit Your Social Media Presence

The final phase in your local SEO audit is to assess your social media presence. While your company does not need to have profiles on all platforms, it should have a presence on the ones that are most relevant to its target audience. During the audit, make sure your profile information and other related information are consistent across all platforms. Apart from that, obtain the necessary information about your competitors in the market for long-term success.

Let Us Help You!

An audit is a thorough evaluation of your website’s local SEO performance. It allows you to identify problems without making quick judgements that might waste money. Now that you realize the necessity of Local SEO audits, contact us to save time and effort. WillShall is committed to meeting all of your needs so far.