if you want to drive more organic
traffic to your website and beat your competitors so you can attract new
customers, you need to understand where you stand in the search engine landscape
and what you need to improve. The only way to do this is by conducting an SEO
audit which will reveal, where you have problems that need to be fixed,
gaps that need to be filled and will also help you create the perfect road map to crush your competitors. An in-depth local SEO audit can cost
several hundred dollars, sometimes thousands, if you Commission an agency to
do it for you. But today I'm going to show you how to do a quick SEO audit
yourself, so you can start improving your online presence straight away without
spending a dime. I've even put together an SEO audit checklist which includes a
ton of free tools and recommendations which you can download in the
description below so you can go through each step of the process for your own
business from the comfort of your home and at your own pace. At the end of it, you'll know exactly what you need to work on Hi there, this is your first time
here welcome to the community my name is Luc Durand the founder of rankingacademy.co.uk which I created to help local business owners like you thrive
online and run successful businesses. If you want to join the thousands of people
who are already part of this growing family it's simple and free, just click
on the subscribe button and the Bell notification and you will automatically
be alerted when I publish a new video. If you're ready let's jump in. Google my
business listing audit. Do you have a Google my business listing? I know this
sounds obvious for many of you but they are tons of businesses out there who
have yet to claim their Google listing. Like this one, face painting fairies.
Google my business is crucial to your online success and will have a major
influence on your overall online visibility. If you haven't claimed your
listing yet do it now, if you don't know how watch my video, how to set up Google
my business for best results. If you have a listing and it is verified, it's
important to get it right. Here is what you need to look out for.
Business name. Use the same business name that you would use in real life and that
is printed on any of your legal documentation or business cards. Do not
add any additional keywords in a hope you will rank higher.
It's against Google's policy and you may get suspended. Address and phone number. Make sure your address and phone number are accurate, get this wrong and you will
be in a world of pain, you will mislead Google and your customers too. Business
categories. Ensure you've selected the right primary category for your business
as it will influence your rankings enormously. This can sometimes be a
tough choice, dentist, cosmetic dentist, and dental clinic are three different
categories so make sure you choose wisely. Once you're done with your
primary category you can add secondary categories that apply to your business.
Business hours. Have you entered your business hours? If not make sure you do.
People look at this stuff. Don't cheat and pretend you're open when you're not
to avoid frustration and potential bad reviews which leads me to my next point,
reviews. Reviews are a major influence when it comes to rankings. It could make
the difference between your competitors ranking and not you. How many do you have? how positive are they? have you responded to all of them? You can encourage
customers to leave you more reviews with this nice little tool that will generate
a link which will automatically trigger a Google my business review pop up and
ease the review process. For more info on this just check my video on how to
collect reviews. Website. Link your Google my business listing to your website if
you haven't done it yet. FAQs. Have you added frequently asked
questions to your profile? FAQ will help people make informed decision about your
business. People also use the FAQ option to ask about services you provide which
can often generate fresh leads so there are not to be ignored. If you're stuck
about what to write in there here is a tool that might help answerthepublic.com. Throw a keyword in there and it will spit out a list of common questions
you can use. Photos. Photos are probably the best way of showcasing your
business and capturing attention so add some photos regularly. You can also add
videos and 360 panoramic views for better engagement. Google posts. Do you
publish any post? You can increase your visibility with Google posts. Posts can
be used to provide an update about your business, promote a product, a service or
an event. They increase your listing prominence in search results especially
on mobile and are used automatically to answer FAQs in the FAQ section.
Although they expire every 7 days, it's a great feature not
many businesses are using so make the most of it. Business description. Have you
added a business description? if you haven't, time to start typing. You can add
a description to tell customers a bit more about your business in up to 750
characters. Google my business has more options available,
some of them industry specific, but if you can nail these down for now you will
have a solid profile. Time to move on to citations audit. If you don't know what
a citation is, it is a mention of your business in major directories and social
media platforms which generally includes, your business name, your business address, your business phone number and sometimes a link to your site like in this example
on yell.com which is a major directory in the UK. Having your business listed in
these is the foundation of any local SEO strategy and is important for two
reasons: these directories very often rank at the top of search engine results
for local searches which may include your business and drive traffic to your
site, but more importantly it helps create trust and legitimacy with Google
who will be discovering your business across all these platforms. But for
Google to establish trust, your business information needs to be accurate and
consistent everywhere your business is mentioned. You could check the
consistency and accuracy of your business information across the web
manually but to be honest with you it is a very tedious exercise and can still
lead to errors. Instead, use a tool that will do the legwork for you in my
opinion bright local is one of the best tools to just do that.
You can create a free account for 14 days without using a credit card which
is more than enough time to check if your business is mentioned in all the
right places and if there are any errors. You can even download a full citation
report and will also have access to tons of additional information once you've
set up your profile. The next thing we're going to check is if your website is
responsive. Checking if your website is responsive is just ensuring that your
website works on all types of devices and more specifically on mobile phones.
When it comes to local search most of your visitors will come across your site
via a mobile phone so if your website is not compatible your business is really
going to suffer. To quickly check if your website is adapted to multiple devices,
download this free resizer app in Google Chrome, then simulate your website view
on the various devices available. The next thing we're going to look at is
your home page. Since the home page of your site is your most important page it
deserves to be analyzed separately as there are many things to take into
consideration. To really maximize your SEO opportunities this is what you
should check. Is your title tag optimized and includes the keywords and the city
name you are targeting? Have you added a Meta Description to your page compelling
enough so that people will want to click on your listing in Google when they come
across your business? is there a main title also known as h1 which stands for
header which also includes your main keyword and city name? Is there an
obvious call to action on the page such as a phone number that is visible
without scrolling down? Is the call to action visible on the mobile version of
your site without scrolling down? is there enough content on your page? Think
of including your services and products and whatever else you think is relevant.
Are you linking to important sub pages from your home page which you'd like
visitors to click to and Google to discover? Do all your images have an alt
tag? Are you talking about your location where your business operates?
Have you embedded a Google map related to your business so visitors can check
directions straight to you from your homepage? Does your page include your
name, address, and phone number which is consistent with your Google my business
listing. Once you've completed all of the above it's time to analyze the rest of
your pages. For this we're going to use a tool which is going to speed up the
process enormously. Go to ubersuggest.com
and in the search box add your domain name. I am going to use the example of
this dentist located in tampa florida. Click on search. This will initially give
you an overview of your website which includes the number of organic keywords
you're ranking for, the estimated organic traffic and the number of links pointing
to your site. On the left hand side choose site audit at the bottom of the
menu and click on search to trigger an automatic scan of your site which should
take up to three minutes. Once completed, you should see a breakdown of errors,
warnings and recommendations. Click on the first box to bring up the full list.
In there you will be able to uncover issues with your pages such as, duplicate
meta title, low word count and missing headers across your site and fix them. If
you are unfamiliar with the errors highlighted, just click on the what is
this and how do I fix it? which is very helpful. Since this is an automated scan
it doesn't include every recommendation so, once you've fixed the highlighted issues I recommend you also check the following items for all your pages.
Include the main targeted keywords you are trying to rank for with your page
and the city name in your main title tag. Include the main targeted keywords you
are trying to rank for with your page and the city name in your main header.
Make sure the keywords is different from the home page and unique for each page.
Ensure your content is well structured and includes subheadings.
Add keywords in your subheadings which are related to the main keywords you are
targeting for these pages. Look at this example. One heading includes fuse box
and the other consumer unit which are closely related. Finally, don't forget to
add alt tags to your images. Time to now look at how well your business is ranking in Google. When it comes to local search
your business is likely to show in two distinctive areas within Google. The
first one, is in Google Maps with your Google my business listing which will
also include the map pack. The second one is what I call the more traditional
results which sit below the map pack which is where your business website
will be listed. It's important to know how well your business ranks and for
what keywords so you can monitor if any of the improvements that you have
implemented have made a difference to your ranking. Head back to ubersuggest
and re-enter your domain name if needed. On the main screen, click on the organic
keywords tab. This will show you all the keywords your website is ranking for in the
traditional results, you can even export the results in Excel, save the data and
recheck a few weeks later so you can compare rankings and check if you have
gained any positions. If you are not ranking for any keywords between
position 1 and 10 it means you're not on the first page of Google for any
keywords, so there is a lot of work to do. To make things simpler moving forward
I suggest you create a profile in ubersuggest for your website which will
track your progress automatically so you don't have to keep downloading Excel
spreadsheets and see in seconds if your doing well or not.
Unfortunately ubersuggest doesn't track rankings for Google my business listings
in Google Maps so it only gives you half of the picture. To do this head over to a
site called, localFalcon.com. Local Falcon is a software that allows you to
track how well your Google my business listings ranks directly on Google Maps
for a given keyword. I love this tool as it is very visual and you can instantly
get a feel of how well or badly your business is doing. Local Falcon is not a
free tool however, you can create an account and run one free scan which will
give you a good idea of how powerful this can be for your business. Let me run
through an example with another dentist called Denton dental located in
Nashville USA. Once you've created an account click on scan on the main menu.
Start typing your business name in the business field, it should come up
automatically. Please note that if you have decided to hide
your business address in your Google my business listing, you won't be able to
run the scan. Add the keyword you want to target. In this instance, we're gonna use
"dentist Nashville". Choose the radius you want to target and then the distance
either in miles or in kilometers. Then, select the grid size. Click on run search.
You will see dots showing where your business ranks and in what position
based on your criterias. Any position beyond three means your business is not
featured in the map pack which really is where you want to be. Clicking on the
dots will give you access to more details and check which businesses
rank above you and how far down you are on the list.
Local Falcon stores all your scans so you can easily compare them and
understand if you are making any progress over time. Time to move on to our last item, external links. External links pointing
to your site are one of the most important factors that will influence
your online visibility. In summary, the more quality links you have pointing to
your website, the more relevant it will appear to Google who will reward you
with higher rankings. But how strong is your link profile?
To check this, go back to ubersuggest.com once more, and search for your
domain. On the main screen check what your domain score is. This score is
calculated on the basis of external links pointing to your site.
The lower the score, the weaker the site. Run the same scan for your competitor's
site and look at their domain scores. If your score is lower than theirs is
because they have more valuable links pointing to their site than you do. This
means there is a great chance you will be ranking lower than they are for the
keywords you are targeting.The solution, try getting more web sites to link to
yours. If you don't know where to start you can spy on your competitors links by
clicking on their domain score. This will show all the links pointing to their
site. Just try to get the same links as they do. That's it for today now it's
your turn. Download the SEO audit checklist and run through each item one
by one. I've made this very simple to use just put a cross in
yes or no box and it will change color automatically. Once completed you will
see how well or badly you're doing just by looking at the overall color scheme
and which item you need to address based on priority. Hope you liked the video, if
you have any comments or questions post them below and until next time happy
marketing
