Their clients’ local and organic search rankings and traffic started going up 🙂
Seriously though, earlier this week I presented this talk at the fantastic State of Search conference in Dallas. One of the things I tried to stress is the importance of a diversified SEO strategy for local clients. Here at Local SEO Guide, that always begins with an audit.
It’s the guiding document for the earlier part of our engagements and almost always surfaces quick wins for both us and the client. That generally means happier clients and longer engagements. Now that audit is available for all of you right here. I wanted this more to be a checklist, so I channeled my inner Annie Cushing and also included how to perform the check as well as suggestions to follow if there is a problem.
25 Response Comments
Heh. Channeled your inner Annie Cushing. 🙂
Pro tip: Set up a rule that deletes/auto-archives all emails from people requesting access. They will ask, even if your note telling them not to ask is in red font (screenshot: http://www.screencast.com/t/kr34OZYs).
Great pro-tip, I have already gotten some requests 🙂
This is awesome Dan! I’ll be sharing it next week at both the forum and the Local Search Pro G+ community.
Hey Dan, was just looking closer and I have some suggestions.
I think there are more things to check on the G+ L page, unless I missed them.
And I think checking the GMB info below is important enough to maybe have it’s own tab. So a tab for GMB and then the Local Ecosystem is for issues outside GMB.
1) Check to be sure address in dash matches address on live listing.
2) Check to be sure address on listing properly resolves on G maps.
3) Check location of map marker by comparing with address search in G maps.
4) Do citation research to be sure name is correct. (Often KW stuffed or inaccurate)
5) Check description for GEO and KW repetition which can cause blend penalty. (Drop out of pack.)
6) Check for GMB violations like hidden address if SAB, multiple locations if SAB, virtual office locations, etc.
Thank you very much for Excel, translate it into Spanish, serve me much help, Greetings
Kuel. You Cushinged it!
This is going to be great for the audit process for me! Had an overall audit, but no a local one, thanks so much!
Now I just need to get some fancier shoes.
Awesome checklist Andrew! Thanks for putting this together. I can see how the clients rankings were on the rise after using the checklist 😉
I am glad that I have Dan’s and Casey’s (@CaseyMeraz) local audit reports.
Thanks Dan it is very helpful!
@Tilak,
Glad you find it useful!
Thanks for the checklist Dan, I’ve shared this and plan on using it myself.
Great job .
I translated into Italian and shared in my blog ( with link to this article ) .
Congratulations
link: http://www.martinoscanferlato.com/blog.php?action=view&id_notizia=12
@Martino
Thanks for the share & translation!
May be worth going a little deeper in the content audit.
I would look for lots of diversity between your titles, url’s, and h1. We try to have no exact repetition between any of them. Lots of synonyms and variations.
Creating a large list of those variations will pay dividends when you’re trying to diversify your anchor text profile down the road.
you should change the title of the spreadsheet to include your business name so when people copy it they’ll remember where it came from
Awesome checklist. You have a new follower Dan.
Thanks Janis!
Really love this Dan. Thanks for sharing.
Really helpful checklist, thanks!
What a great resource, thank you so much for sharing…sure wish I had better Excel skills to give back lol.
Great post. Big fan of Local SEO Guide.
LOL at the title of your talk… excellent information man!
I dont see any document or template to download. ???
yeah we need to change the default color of our link text
https://docs.google.com/a/localseoguide.com/spreadsheets/d/1-MfkNLhrzbZa2oHmFE0CJCXSXwaJJM1dtslvJT9H6_E/edit#gid=0