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The digital landscape is constantly changing, and today's businesses need to be nimble enough to keep up with the latest online trends in order to stay ahead of the curve. One such trend involves optimizing a company's website not only for major search engines like Google and Bing but also taking advantage of local search engine optimization (or local SEO) to make sure their websites appear at the top of local results pages. A local SEO audit can help you decide whether your site needs changes before your competition does.

Understanding Local SEO Audit

A local SEO audit is a comprehensive review of a company's digital assets and performance indicators. It gives an in-depth, on-site analysis of how effectively a company utilizes different search engines to attract customers from their immediate area.

While it may seem unnecessary for companies that have had success with conventional marketing techniques, local searches are on an upward trend. In fact, according to Google, in the past two years, local search volume has increased by 150%—so if you don't start optimizing now, your competition will leave you behind.

Why Do I need a Local SEO Audit?

The Internet is a powerful tool that allows companies to reach millions of people at a moment's notice. However, to be found on the web, your business needs a bit of help from search engines. Google, Bing, and Yahoo all empower individuals with local search to find businesses most relevant to their needs. From there,

people can contact businesses, check out their location, and even begin a conversation with can ultimately lead to conversion and sale. All of this happens in a matter of moments, increasing the potential for ROI. But, with such a high demand for local businesses, it's no surprise that competition is at an all-time high. To ensure that your business isn't left behind, you need to have a local SEO audit. Enlisted are four reasons why you need a local SEO audit:

1. GMB Audit

If you own a local business and haven't done a Google My Business audit, then stop what you're doing and get one done. There are several third-party platforms that will let you plug in your GMB information and give you an idea of how strong your GMB profile is (i.e., Title tags, descriptions, images, categories).

If yours is anything like many other business pages we see daily, it might be time to make some adjustments. You can also take advantage of a professional local SEO company to provide a specialized audit for your business. Boasting decades of experience, they certainly can help you determine if there's room for improvement and, if so, exactly where to start.

2. Comprehensive Website Audit

A comprehensive local SEO audit will include a comprehensive audit of your website from top to bottom, including on-page SEO issues such as duplicate content and internal linking. It will also check for technical errors in your website code, such as broken links or pages that cannot be accessed by search engines, not to mention schema markup and other forms of structured data.

3. Backlinks Audit

Backlink audit refers to analyzing your website's backlinks to identify any potential issues. This helps you determine if it is time for you to do some link-building or clean-up.

4. Online Reviews Audit

If you are an established business, then you must have garnered some online reviews. Most of these reviews would certainly be positive, putting your business in the limelight. But what about those negative ones? How do they affect your local rankings? The answer lies in a Local SEO online reviews audit.

This Audit will reveal to you if your business is dealing with bad press from unhappy customers. It will also show where things might be going wrong and how to fix them. All in all, a thorough online review audit gives you insights into where to focus your local marketing efforts!

What Happens After My Local SEO Audit?

A good audit should find issues in your on-site optimization, citations, reviews, and lead generation strategies. After you've corrected any problems it discovers, your local business will be more visible to customers who are searching for services like yours.