14 Best Local SEO Tools for Small Businesses in 2022

by Lyn Wildwood | May 2, 2022 | Local SEO | 0 comments

Are you on the hunt for more local SEO tools?

Ranking for local keywords in Google isn’t easy, and it’s hard to master other platforms’ algorithms on top of it.

You need to ensure your business is listed on relevant directories, then manage and update your listings regularly.

You also need to keep an eye on your overall rating and receive new reviews regularly.

All of this plays a role into how well you rank for local search terms related to your business.

In this post, we’ve rounded up the best local SEO tools to use to manage multiple business listings, keep an eye on your rankings in multiple ZIP codes and more.

The Best Local SEO Tools for Small Businesses

Our top three picks:

Moz Local – A great way to manage your business listings and ensure you have everything you need.
BrightLocal – An affordable way to manage multiple listings from one plan. Track your rankings across multiple ZIP codes, and ensure your NAP is accurate everywhere.
Surfer Local – Audit your Google Business Profile listings, track rankings by ZIP code, build citations and even create flier templates for review marketing.

1. Moz Local

Moz Local is a local SEO tool offered by Moz.

While their flagship product Moz Pro is great for keyword and competitive research as a whole, Moz Local is truly an SEO tool geared for local search.

It offers local business listing management, online reputation management and publishing.

You can create and manage business listings on Google, Facebook and more. Management features include keeping addresses and contact information up to date directly from the Moz Local dashboard.

Moz Local detects and deletes duplicate listings automatically.

From the Customer Feedback dashboard, you can read and respond to customer reviews from connected platforms.

Moz Local even gathers trends on review sentiment and common keywords.

You can also use the tool to publish updates, photos, up-to-date store hours and more.

Finally, the tool has a Profile Completeness progress bar to help you understand how optimized your listings are.

Pricing: Pricing for Moz Local starts at $14/month per location. Annual plans come with a 25% discount.

You can also receive a listing score for your business free of charge.

2. BrightLocal

BrightLocal is a local SEO tool broken up into multiple local SEO tools for local rank tracking and reputation management.

The rank tracker keeps up with your ranking for local search terms in Google (broad, local and mobile) and Bing (broad and local) over time and reports any changes.

It comes with a tool BrightLocal calls the “Local Search Grid.” This grid shows how you rank for local keywords in different ZIP codes.

The Citation Tracker is another useful tool. It helps you locate anywhere your business’ NAP (Name, Address and Phone Number) is featured, which could be hundreds of websites and directories.

BrightLocal also performs Google My Business and local SEO audits so you can see which areas of local search you need to improve on.

Competitive analysis is included in many of these tools.

Pricing: Plans start at $29/month for three locations. Annual plans come with two months free. A 14-day free trial is available on all plans.

3. Surfer Local

Surfer Local is a local SEO tool that offers Google My Business audits, local rank tracking and citation building.

The Google My Business audit analyzes how well your Google listing is optimized for relevant, location-based keywords, such as “new york dentist” for an NYC-based dentist.

It grades individual parts of your listing and provides guidelines on changes you can make to optimize it.

Surfer Local’s rank tracker tool comes with a feature similar to BrightLocal’s Local Search Grid tool.

It, too, showcases a grid that represents how well your business ranks for local keywords in certain ZIP codes.

The tool also identifies the most popular search terms related to your business so you can optimize your listing for the perfect keywords.

The citations tool helps you locate websites that list your NAP. However, it also finds websites that list your competitors’ NAPs.

This nifty little feature helps you keep up with competitors by ensuring they’re never listed where you aren’t.

Lastly, Surfer Local has a unique feature called “Google Review Poster.”

This is a customizable template you can use to create fliers for the purpose of asking customers for reviews.

Pricing: Plans start at $29/month per location. Annual plans come with two months free.

4. Semrush

Semrush is an all-in-one SEO toolkit. Their platform offers keyword research, competitive research, rank tracking, backlink analysis, keyword planning, projects, content marketing features, analytics and more.

They have one of the largest databases of keywords featuring over 20 billion keywords.

Semrush offers listing management and position tracking for local SEO.

You’ll be able to add your business’ details to numerous online directories, including Google.

This includes an online presence score that lets you know how many directories your business is missing from.

You can also monitor reviews for listings.

The position tracker keeps up with your rankings for local search terms, including how well you rank in different ZIP codes.

Competitive analysis is included in these features.

Pricing: Plans for Semrush’s suite of SEO tools starts at $119.95/month. Local SEO tools are available as add-ons, starting at $20/month.

5. Google Business Profile

Note: Google My Business is now Google Business Profile.

This one may be obvious, but it’s still worth mentioning due to Google’s influence on local business.

Google Business Profile is the cheapest way to create and manage your business listings on the platform.

It doesn’t have rank tracking or citation building nor can you manage listings from other platforms.

What it does allow you to do is fill out your listings’ profiles in an effective way.

Plus, you can respond to reviews and keep in touch with new customers via Google’s direct messaging system.

The tool even has a FAQ section you can create for your listings, and insights and analytics enable you to keep track of your performance.

Pricing: Google Business Profile is free.

6. Local SEO Checklist

Local SEO Checklist is a nifty local SEO tool.

It’s an interactive web-based checklist filled with to-do list items crucial for local search engine optimization.

The tool is entirely free, and you don’t even need an account to use it.

You can even download your own copy of the checklist so you don’t lose your progress when you clear your browser’s cache.

Pricing: This tool is free.

7. Grid My Business

Grid My Business is a local rank tracking tool that outputs a grid similar to the grid-based tools offered by other applications on this list.

You’ll be able to see how well you rank for your chosen keywords across multiple ZIP codes from one map view.

The tool works via scans, but you can schedule scans on certain plans to track rankings over time.

You can scan an unlimited number of locations depending on the plan you have.

There are seven grid-size options. Use them to create multiple sets of scans that have different parameters for location, grid size and search query.

The tool also includes competitive analysis so you can keep an eye on competitors and observe what’s working for them.

Pricing: You can run five 5×5 scans per month for free. Premium plans start at $29/month for 7,500 credits.

A credit represents each ranking the tool outputs for you. This means a 5×5 grid uses up 25 credits, a 7×7 grid uses up 49, etc.

Annual plans come with two months free.

8. Nightwatch

Nightwatch is a rank tracking tool that tracks your rankings from over 107,000 worldwide locations.

Even so, you can use it to track local rankings if all of your locations are in the same region.

Not only does it allow you to track your rankings for specific local keywords, it also includes segmentation for different filter results.

You can segment by search volume, keyword tag and organic position.

Nightwatch’s reports even include specific data for each keyword based on location, such as click-through rates and total number of clicks.

This helps you determine exactly which local keywords yield the best results.

SEO reports and site audits are additional features that showcase how well your site and individual pages are optimized for local SEO.

Pricing: Plans start at $39/month. A 20% discount is available on annual plans.

9.Whitespark

Whitespark offers a handful of free and premium tools for local SEO and reputation management.

Unfortunately, they’re not available as one tool and need to be paid separately.

We’re going to focus on two tools: the local rank tracker and the citation finder.

The local rank tracker tracks your rankings in local packs, Google Maps and organic results from multiple locations.

Whitespark dives deep into these rankings and outputs data on the top 100 positions, not just the top three that display in local packs.

You can even filter the data the tool outputs for you.

The citation finder helps you track where your business’ NAP is located and uncovers directories where your competitors appear but you do not.

Pricing: Plans for the rank tracker start at $17/month.

The citation finder tool is free for up to three searches per day. Premium plans start at $39/month.

10. Yext

Yext is a suite of online reputation management tools.

For local SEO, it offers listing management, competitive analysis and duplicate listing suppression.

For listing management, Yext uses its knowledge graph structure to complete your listings across multiple platforms.

It does this by transforming your data when it enters the knowledge graph, then formatting it in a way each platform accepts.

Yext will even let you know when a listing is unavailable or needs attention.

The competitive analysis tool allows you to see how you rank against local and national businesses alike for search terms related to your business.

The rank tracker even compares branded and unbranded searches.

The tool can detect competitors automatically, but you can also name specific competitors you’d like to compare your rankings against.

Reports even include your competitors’ average review ratings across Google, Facebook and Tripadvisor.

Pricing: Plans start at $199/year.

11. Uberall

Uberall is a set of customer experience software tools.

The listings management tool connects with over 125 platforms across the web and ensures your business is visible on each relevant platform.

The tool suppresses duplicate listings and automatically claims new listings it detects.

Uberall works primarily through automation. However, you and your team can edit listings and location groups in bulk.

The tool will even suggest keywords to include as you type.

Uberall also offers review management tools.

Pricing: Contact Uberall for a personal quote.

12. Marketing 360

Marketing 360 is an entire suite of over a dozen marketing tools.

This includes a listing management tool you can use to manage your listings on Google, Facebook, Yelp, Tripadvisor, Foursquare, Yahoo and Yellow Pages.

The tool connects to over 50 other platforms as well and gives you a score based on how many your business is missing from.

Pricing: Plans are personalized for each customer.

13. Chatmeter

Chatmeter is a business reputation management application that offers tools for local SEO.

These include listings management, local SEO tracking, local pages and review management.

Chatmeter includes over 250 attributes you can modify in your Google listings and identifies which ones need optimizing.

The tool also connects with Facebook, Yelp and dozens of other platforms.

Task management is included to help you stay productive and organized as you manage multiple listings.

The tool’s local rank tracker helps you identify how you compare with competitors in regards to keywords, overall rating, ratings earned over a three month period, response rate for reviews and more.

The tool even compares branded searches against unbranded searches.

Finally, you can use Chatmeter to monitor reviews and respond to them.

Pricing: Get in touch with Chatmeter for a personalized plan.

14. Rio SEO

Rio SEO is a local marketing platform optimized for businesses that operate multiple locations.

It helps you manage every aspect of local marketing, including listings management, citation building, reports and analytics for rankings, social media publishing, and review management.

The tool connects to over 200 directories, including Google and Facebook, and helps you manage your appearance on all of them.

It even has solutions for suppressing duplicate listings and resolving ownership issues.

The platform’s reporting tool enables you to keep track of your brand’s performance from a centralized dashboard.

Keep an eye on keyword rankings, your competitors, citations, conversions and more.

Plus, because this platform is optimized for larger businesses who operate multiple locations, it has permission settings that allow you to control who in your organization has access to what.

Pricing: Plans are personalized. A demo and a free local audit are available.