Optimize Your Low-Traffic Directories With the Best Local SEO Tools

Optimize Your Low-Traffic Directories With the Best Local SEO Tools

You likely have heard that local businesses are the cornerstone of our communities. Most people would agree with this statement!

According to recent reports, 46% of all Google searches are now localized. There has also been a 500% increase in searches with local keywords in recent years.

Here, we'll discuss:

• What local SEO is
• The benefits of local SEO
• What tools can contribute to boosting visibility
• How Jooice can help you succeed in local markets

Read on to learn some of the best local SEO tools to take your business to the next level.

The Basics of Local SEO

Local search engine optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing strategy tailored to local audiences. It aims to make you more visible to people in a given area.

You make alterations to your website and other web pages to help Google understand where your business is located. In addition to showing Google crawlers that you're reputable, you show them which targeted search areas you're most relevant in.

This makes local SEO especially important for businesses in industries that have limited service areas. For example, restaurants and retail shops need to connect with consumers who have the means to get to them.

Reaching people in other areas isn't going to get you business. This is true even if they meet other demographics requirements and want what you have to offer!

You need to drive foot traffic, so you need to boost visibility with those in your search radius.

On-Site Local Search Optimization

On-site SEO, also known as on-page SEO, includes changes that you make to your own website to improve your organic traffic. Aspects of on-page SEO include:

• Finding high-traffic keywords
• Incorporating keywords organically into content
• Including multimedia content like images and video
• Improving site load times
• Optimizing meta descriptions
• Adding descriptions to images and videos
• Internal linking to other parts of your website

Adding a location page to your website is a great way to boost visibility with local users. This is called "location page SEO" and aims to use area-specific search terms within a single part of your website.

Google crawlers will find this page. They'll see that it's:

• Saturated in local keywords
• Linked to other parts of your websites
• Inclusive of locally-grounded meta descriptions
• Showcasing images of local venues and attractions
• Inclusive of local keywords and phrases for these images' descriptions

This page will then show up in local organic search results. Other pages that you link internally to might appear as well.

Jooice's AI-powered tools make on-page local search optimization easy. You can generate high-quality text and images within minutes.

Because our tool lets you customize this content, you can ask it to use local keywords. You can ensure that all images you generate are relevant to your local area.

Off-Page Local SEO Strategy

Off-page SEO is also known as off-site SEO. Unlike on-page SEO strategies that make changes to your official website, off-page strategies include changes to other parts of the web.

Some off-page strategies include:

• Outbound links to other parts of the web
• Getting links on other websites that drive traffic to your site
• Receiving reviews on platforms like Trustpilot and Google
• Getting mentions on social media
• Maintaining your social media pages

You can localize these efforts by:

• Finding external links to local businesses
• Asking other local businesses to link to your website and drive inbound traffic
• Link review platforms to your Google Business Profile and Apple Business Connect
• Putting your location on social media pages
• Mentioning your location in social media posts

Listings are critical parts of your local SEO strategy. Claiming listings like a Google Business Profile lets you find people via geolocation targeting. Jooice's Listings tool lets you launch consistent profiles across multiple listings platforms to reach everyone in your search area regardless of their preferred platform.

Reviews from past customers and clients are also important for off-page SEO. They come from people in your location who have their GPS on in your service area. Jooice alerts you when these reviews come in so you can respond promptly and thoughtfully with AI-powered tools.

The Benefits of Local Optimization

Jooice works with those in many industries, including retail, food service, and healthcare. These markets all have specific service areas and therefore need local optimization services.

If you rely exclusively on those that can give you foot traffic, local SEO is a cost-effective way to boost your brand. You don't pay for ads and blog posts that target demographics outside your service area. Instead, you can spend all your money on catering to those who can come through your doors.

This means:

• Searchers will already be interested in what you offer
• You'll get more relevant web traffic
• Your click-through rate will likely increase
• You'll boost your clicks-to-conversions ratio

Local search already improves marketing ROI, but Jooice AI can boost your return even further. We cut costs on content creation with:

• Built-in analytics and insights
• Quick auto-generated text
• High-quality AI-made images
• An integrated all-in-one dashboard for launching automated content

You won't need to hire professional content creators and spend money on onboarding or salaries.

You also won't need to worry about falling behind with blog posts or social media updates. This keeps you fresh in the minds of your followers. It also ensures that your content is always up-to-date so the Google algorithm sees your continued relevance.

Increased Visibility

In many industries, you need to build brand awareness with a local audience.

Improving your local search performance:

• Lets people within your service areas find you organically
• Helps communities discover you rather than competitors
• Pushes community members to reach out for sponsorship opportunities
• Makes other businesses in related markets interested in cross-promotional marketing

You don't just reach consumers. You reach many people who can help your business thrive.

Plus, you show the Google algorithm who needs to see your page. When a lot of people see your page in a specific geographical area, Google bots see that you're most relevant to that audience.

Since relevance is one of the core ranking criteria when indexing, they'll show you to more people who make searches in those geolocations.

Targeted Web Traffic

Local optimization doesn't just let you reach people in your service area. It helps you reach the most relevant potential customers within that location.

You can tailor AI-generated content to those in specific:

• Occupations
• Age groups
• Income brackets

You can also target demographics like:

• People of a certain gender
• Those who follow competitor pages on social media
• People who make certain Google searches for products like yours

More Foot Traffic to Your Brick-and-Mortar Venue

Whether you run a busy cafe or a thriving chiropractic care office, getting people through your doors is the main priority when it comes to conversions. Getting people to contact you or sign up for an email newsletter is a great short-term goal. Still, it's not the end-all-be-all.

Remember that 76% of people look at a business's online presence before going through their doors. 97% of people who want to find a local business will also start the search process online.

Boosting your visibility with a local audience takes potential customers through the earlier steps of the customer journey. This includes the Awareness and Consideration stages of their five-stage journey.

From there, you can guide them through the later steps of the marketing funnel until they're opening your door, wallet in hand.

More Leads, More Conversions

After your local audience becomes aware of your business and considers their options, they'll still need to go through the final three steps of the customer journey. These are:

• Decision, when they decide that they want to make a purchase from your brand
• Retention, where you foster loyalty among your target audience
• Advocacy, where they recommend your products to other interested consumers

The locally-optimized pages on your website can:

• Show people why your brand and products stand out
• Offer incentives for shopping with you over competitors
• Inform visitors of your brand differentiators
• Establish interest in loyalty programs
• Guide people to leave reviews online

This means that you can get more conversions over time.

Jooice makes this simple with a more efficient workflow. You can take people through all steps of the marketing funnel anywhere, at any time.

Our AI-powered platform lets you integrate multiple devices and streamline your marketing strategy. You can start projects on one device and finish them on another. Jooice AI ensures your work is:

• Synchronized
• Accessible everywhere
• Easy to review and alter

You'll get more leads because of this synchronized platform's greater outreach. This means more people to build relationships with and more potential conversions.

A Higher Market Share

Your "market share" is the portion of your target market controlled by your business. Increasing it is the best way to gain a competitive edge.

For example, imagine that you operate one of four Indian restaurants in your area. Four in every ten locals who like Indian food primarily go to your business. Two in every ten people frequent each of the other three.

This would give your restaurant a 40% market share. You'd be the leader of your local market! Having a great local web presence is the first step toward meeting this goal, and using online analytics is the best way to get the lion's share of your market.

Jooice's tools analyze your online presence within your industry. Our analytical tools are made for strategic enhancement. They give you actionable insights and recommendations on how to enhance your SEO to meet your specific business goals.

The Best Local SEO Tools

Local businesses need several different tools to improve local SEO, including:

• Data analysis tools
• Demographic research tools
• Keyword research tools
• Listings
• Review sites
• Tools for content generation
• Performance-tracking tools
• Data visualization platforms

Using diverse tools ensures that you're making smart, data-backed decisions at every part of your SEO journey. You'll be able to optimize for local audiences in a smarter and more efficient way.

Analytics and Insights Tracking

Google Search Console is a must-have tool for businesses looking to optimize their web presence. This free service offered by Google lets you:

• Monitor your web presence
• Maintain your rankings
• Troubleshoot any issues that arise

The Console:

• Confirms that your site is indexable
• Fixes indexing problems it finds
• Lets you request re-indexing because of new content

You can view Google search traffic data like:

• How often your web pages appear after users make Google queries
• Which queries lead to clicks on your website
• Your website's click-through rate
• Bounce rates (and what pages cause people to bounce)
• When you tend to get the most traffic
• What channels drive the most traffic to your site

As we touched on earlier, Jooice offers quality analytical tools for businesses. They integrate with tools like Google Search Console to provide you with more accurate, up-to-date insights.

Understanding the specifics of these insights is the first step toward optimizing your local SEO strategy.

Jooice's tools are made specifically for strategic enhancement rather than simply data visualization. You'll get:

• Actionable data
• Targeted recommendations
• Advice that aligns with your specific business goals
• Tips for acting on that advice

This lets you make smarter decisions about future marketing actions. It ensures that you're innovative when creating and optimizing content. Your unique site will help you stand out above the competition, especially since the actionable recommendation will align with your pre-determined objectives.

Keyword Research Tools

There are a wide range of keyword research tools on the market. SEMrush is one of the easiest keyword research tools for businesses to navigate.

It's also thorough and gives comprehensive information to businesses looking to optimize local search.

You can find keywords based on:

• A seed keyword/idea (that leads to more specific keywords)
• User intent (informative, commercial, navigational, and transactional)
• Opportunities based on keywords your site already ranks for

Most importantly, SEMrush will tell you the monthly search volume and keyword difficulty for each potential query you enter.

Your search volume (SV) tells you how many people are looking up queries related to each keyword. Phrases with a higher search volume will get you more traffic. Aim for an SV store of 100+.

The keyword difficulty (KD) tells you how hard it will be to rank for a given keyword. Lower KD scores are easier to rank for. Aim for something with a KD below 30, but don't compromise a high SV, either.

Those looking to optimize their local SEO strategy will want to look into location-based keywords.

Many of them involve the location where your business operates. Examples of these keywords include:

• Chinese restaurant in Dallas
• Lincoln Park women's clothing store
• Port Townsend dental clinic

Others will be local keywords that use phrases like "near me." These show your online content to people who enter queries like:

• Lo mein near me
• Dress shop in my area
• Emergency dentist near my location

Geolocation targeting uses GPS to showcase your results to people who enter "near me" keywords when they're near your brick-and-mortar venue.

You can integrate these tools with Jooice by figuring out what AI-driven content to create. Since our tool is 100% configurable, you can enter high-volume, low-difficulty local keywords when generating content.

Our generator will seamlessly and organically use your selected keywords in the AI-powered content we create.

AI-Powered Content Creation

In today's digital landscape, those who don't use AI fall behind competitors. Artificial intelligence is:

• Efficient
• Streamlined
• Inexpensive
• Personalized
• Innovative

It gives you a competitive edge by enhancing decision-making.

However, not just any AI tool will help your business thrive. You need to invest in automated tools that understand your:

• Goals
• Values
• Target audience
• Brand voice

We already brushed on how Jooice creates both AI-based text and images that you can post on your business website. However, it's important to understand that the content you create with Jooice is 100% customizable.

You can:

• Tell the generator what topics and keywords you want to include
• Ask the text generator for engaging topic ideas if you're stumped
• Feed it information about your brand voice
• Ensure consistent styles of writing for a cohesive brand presence
• Look over ready-to-use content before launching it

The best local SEO tools don't just save you time by drafting up content for you. It also saves time by coming up with topic ideas and tailoring content to match your brand's pre-existing web presence.

Managing Your Local Listings

Claiming local listings is an important step toward boosting your business's visibility. There are many platforms that you can claim a listing on, including:

• Google Business Profiles
• Apple Business Connect
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Bing
• Foursquare
• Yellow Pages

Creating profiles on these sites lets search engines know where you're based. When someone makes a "near me" search with their GPS on, your physical location will show up.

Claiming a listing also means that searchers can get information about your business at a glance. When you pop up in local searches, they'll be able to see your:

• Business hours
• Contact information
• Website links
• Branding information (logos, taglines, etc)
• Social media links
• Location on Maps features
• Top reviews from past customers

This lets people find you. It also lets people get more information about your business before choosing to drop by. They'll develop trust when all relevant facts are available at their fingertips and feel confident in their decision to choose you over competitors.

Claiming Your Google My Business Listing

Since Google Maps has over 1.5 billion monthly users, it's the #1 navigation platform on the net. Apple Maps, which comes in at second place, only has 29 million users each month.

That's why claiming your local listing on Google Business Profiles should be a top priority. You'll boost your visibility with the widest possible audience. This means more web traffic from those who look for local keywords.

If you don't claim your business listing, it likely won't appear on Google Maps at all. In the unlikely event that it does, you won't be able to manage or change any of the information.

This could be detrimental to your business if the information is inaccurate. Local consumers won't view you as trustworthy or reliable if your profile is riddled with mistakes.

Luckily, adding your business through Google Business Profiles is easy.

You can claim your listing by:

• Going to the Google Business Profile home page
• Clicking the button that says "Manage now"
• Typing in your business name
• Choosing a category for your business
• Adding the address of your physical location on Google Maps
• Telling Google whether or not you offer delivery services
• Plugging in your business phone number and current website URL

Then, you'll need to verify your listing. There are three ways to do this:

• Via call or text
• Via email
• Via a mailed-out postcard

Once you're verified, you'll be all set!

The verification process can take time, but Jooice works to streamline the process with its Listings tool. It lets you automatically verify business locations so you don't need to do any manual labor.

Optimizing Listings and Ensuring Consistency

Creating a listing is a quick process, but you also need to optimize them with relevant information. Follow the given prompts to:

• Add your hours
• Create and post a description
• Include high-quality images
• Encourage reviews with an automated message
• Set up a live chat and a link to automatically call you

While Google is the biggest platform for maps, it's far from the only one. You want to reach people who use Apple Maps and services like Waze, too.

Staying consistent across multiple platforms is important for several reasons. These include:

• A better customer experience with minimal confusion
• Search engines penalizing those who list their business inconsistently across platforms
• Developing a cohesive brand reputation and fostering trust
• More transparency between you and your local audience

Consistency can be challenging for those who attempt to manually create dozens of listings. Luckily, quality AI-driven tools can easily launch consistent listings across Google, Apple, Instagram, and more.

Jooice: Your Powerhouse for Centralized Listings Management

Luckily, Jooice Listings makes consistency across multiple listings a breeze.

The simplified setup manager lets you set up your account and business profile easily. It offers step-by-step instructions to follow so you don't miss out on adding any relevant information. Filling out the prompts only takes a few minutes and is virtually effortless.

It's capable of:

• Setting up listings for multiple locations
• Connecting the information to multiple platforms
• Automatically verifying your business on each platform

You won't need to manually set up a Google Business Profile. The Jooice manager will integrate your information into the Google interface.

It will then take the information from the prompts and upload it to multiple listings. The information will be the same, and you won't need to waste time manually filling out prompts on every platform.

Centralized management makes this easy. You get access to an all-in-one Jooice dashboard that includes sections for:

• Multiple location listings
• Reputation management
• Location and hours management
• Voice search functionality
• Jooice Apps to supercharge your business
• An onboarding checklist for easy setup
• Insights into your business profiles and how to improve them

This doesn't just enhance your visibility and ensure consistent profiles on up to 20 listing sites. It also contends with duplicates so you don't have multiple listings on a single platform.

Avoiding customer confusion is a must, and Jooice ensures potential clients won't need to deal with frustrating, incohesive information!

Enhancing Your Visibility Across Multiple Listings

Using Jooice to set up and launch multiple listings for different locations greatly enhances your visibility. There are several reasons for this, including:

• Streamlined customer experiences
• Attracting more searches because of SEO-optimized listings
• Personalizing your online presence with location-specific information
• Targeted content for specific information

Having multiple listings on different platforms also enhances your visibility. This is true even if you only have a single location. Some reasons for this include:

• Reaching potential customers on different device types
• Finding those who use both Apple and Android devices
• More engagement with the community
• Greater opportunities to get reviews on people's preferred platforms

Contending With Local Reviews

According to statistics published in Search Engine Journal, 49% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust family-and-friend recommendations.

This figure is higher in young people, too. 91% of 18-to-40-year-olds trust reviews as much as personal recommendations.

Reviews are a critical part of building trust for consumers. They make you seem more credible so people feel confident in their choice to choose you over competitors.

Reviews directly influence purchasing decisions, too. Though 84% of millennials don't trust conventional advertising, the trust they place in reviews leads to more conversions. 99.9% of shoppers read reviews before making a purchase.

Nurturing good reviews is also crucial when improving local search rankings. The Google algorithm looks at the number of reviews a business has when deciding where to rank them in SERPs.

Google encourages responses from businesses as part of its Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (EAT) criteria. Responding to reviews tells Google crawlers that you're authoritative and reliable.

Access a Unified Dashboard

It's easy to respond to reviews when you can see them all from a unified dashboard. Jooice Reputation aims to help you manage and respond to reviews across several platforms, including:

• Google
• Trustpilot
• The Better Business Bureau
• Facebook and Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Yelp

Our tool shows you reviews in multiple locations all in one place. You can get feedback from 15 common review sites all in one location. This dashboard is visible on desktops and mobile phones alike.

With Jooice, you also get instant notifications whenever a new review comes in. This lets you respond to reviews promptly.

Statistics show that:

• 56% of internet users say that company responses to reviews change their view of the business
• 53% of consumers expect responses to negative reviews within a week
• 45% of people say they may still visit a business if it responds to their bad reviews
• 55% of people feel more positively about a business that responds to a review they left

Quick responses are important, so immediate notifications can greatly boost your reputation!

Since Bright Local indicates that online reviews are 12% of Google's local SEO factors, this is important when managing your reputation.

Respond to Reviews the Right Way

Responding to each review individually:

• Shows that you value professionalism
• Raises your rankings across all review platforms
• Provides valuable feedback to your business
• Shows customers that you're interested in interacting
• Nurtures new leads
• Turns old customers into brand advocates

However, crafting individual responses can be challenging and time-consuming. Jooice makes it easier with AI-powered tools that draft thoughtful responses to feedback.

Much like our tool generates SEO-optimized content, it also crafts great replies to your reviews. You go onto your dashboard and select the review that you want to respond to. Then, you click the Jooice button that generates a thoughtful reply within seconds.

The review is ready to launch, but you can look it over to make sure everything is in order before hitting send. One-click approval means that you can still give reviews personalized attention. You just don't need to make any extra unnecessary effort.

Gain Deeper Insights Into Reviews

Jooice's tool also takes things a step further with review analytics.

You'll get insights into:

• What products get the best and worst reviews
• Which demographics give you the best and worst reviews
• Consumer attitudes toward your business
• A greater understanding of your customers
• How to tailor services to meet their unique needs

By getting empirical data about what your target market wants to see, your business can thrive with greater online engagement and more conversions.

Improve Your Local Search Performance With Jooice

Now that you know about the best local SEO tools for boosting your business's visibility, it's time to get started. Jooice is committed to offering reputation management tools that integrate with other platforms seamlessly and effectively.

We aim to:

• Save time and resources
• Disrupt complexity
• Evolve with the needs of your business

As a result, our all-in-one dashboard lets you manage reviews and listings with just a few clicks.

We offer a free trial so you can test-drive the full suite of Jooice features before making a commitment. Contact our experts to learn more about how our AI-generated content can help your business thrive in a competitive local market!

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