Top Free Local SEO Tools for 2014

[Linda Buquet]

Miriam Ellis, just opened up her Local SEO toolbox and shared all the FREE tools that are in it. There were a couple new ones I had not seen, so def worth checking out!

Free Local SEO Tools that Belong in Your Kit - Moz

Today I'm popping open my personal tool kit to share a list of my favorite free local SEO tools. The creators of these tools range from one-person shops to the United States government, and I'm grateful for the effort that went into developing these resources that make the life of any hard-working local SEO just a little bit easier and more effective.

What about you? Do you have any free tools to share?

 

[Linda Buquet]

I was trying to think of some other free tools I could share and here are two I use daily. (If you take my training or follow my every word here, you already know about these.)

AOL Search and StartPage.com. I use these tools when I do competitive research and especially for ranking troubleshooting.

They both show Google PURE organic with no maps or blended results. So if someone has a ranking problem this can help narrow down if the problem is a pure organic penalty. However, if they rank high organic but dropped out of blended, then it can help indicate a penalty or problem on the G+ Local side of the house. They both show the same Google organic results but each has a different feature I like.

AOL you can set location which is helpful for replicating G local search results. StartPage however shows a few character longer title tag which can reveal more when using for competitive research, so you can see more of the title tags the top competitors are using. Since Google replaces title tags with business name in the pack you can't see all your competitor's title tags at a glance without using one of these tools.

I also have a detailed post about how I use these side-by-side with G search for reverse engineering the local algo to determine if organic or maps is in control of the local algo:

See: How the Google Local Algo Really Works - What Rules the Ranking Order

What free tools are in YOUR tool box?

 

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Linda!
Thank you so much for sharing this with the community. I got your comment on Moz. Please, feel free to come share your link in a follow-up comment. I think it would be of interest to readers there.