Keeping up with the latest and greatest SEO trends is an impossibility, unless SEO is your job. But it’s not. You run a law firm. You’re busy with clients, cases, managing staff and growing your firm; you can’t honestly be expected to keep tabs on every announcement coming out of the Google camp.

And while there are scores of tactics and strategies out there that can help your firm boost its online rankings, one of the most important areas for your law firm to concentrate on is becoming king of your local SEO market.

Local SEO shouldn’t even be called Local SEO anymore. Google has made it clear that local searches and audiences are the future. In other words, Local SEO should now just be known as SEO if you are an expert.

But dominating the local market isn’t that easy; especially if you dare to conquer it alone. Fortunately, you don’t have to attempt to navigate the intricacies of Local SEO alone. These five free tools will help you dominate your local market and will increase traffic and leads for your law firm. Our very own SEO marketing agency uses them.

Yext

Yext allows you to see how your business listings appear across the web. Simply put some basic information in about your business (company name, phone number) and Yext will scour the web and show you how your business appears on sites like:

• Google
• Yahoo
• Facebook
• Bing
• Yelp
• WhitePages
• MapQuest
• Superpages
• Foursquare
• Citysearch
• And more

It’ll also let you know if there are any discrepancies in any of these listings. For example, when we conducted a search of our business, Yext let us know that our Facebook business name isn’t in line with our other listings and that our address on file at Citysearch is wrong.

Once you see what’s wrong or missing, you can edit and fix these entries to ensure your business information is properly listed for local SEO.

Apple Maps Connect

Most local businesses know that they need to set up a Google My Business page as part of their SEO efforts. It helps your firm appear on Google Maps, in the “Local 3 Pack” on results pages, and more.

But have you claimed your business on Apple Maps Connect?

All you have to do is sign in with any Apple ID (think your iTunes account), claim your business, and then edit your business information that’s shown on Apple Maps. With millions of people using Apple products, you can be sure that Apple Maps isn’t entirely swallowed up by Google. If for example, someone searches for directions using Siri, Siri will open up Apple Maps to help the user get to their destination.

Moz Local

Moz Local is another great tool to use.

Once you enter your business name (and/or zip code), Moz will come back with some pretty helpful data, including an easy-to-digest graph summing up your listings across networks and directories. In the image below, you can see how when we hover over the red mark in that second column, a pop-up appears breaking down the areas where we need improvement.

This will allow you to know where you need to make some changes.

Whitespark Local Citation Finder

Any mention of your business (known as citations) is a major local ranking factor. Whitespark monitors your listings and citation growth to help you optimize your local rankings.

In case you’re new to the Local SEO game, N.A.P. stands for name, address, and phone number. These are the key elements search engines look for to know which company a citation represents.

The N.A.P. Hunter helps speed up the citation auditing process and, best yet can be installed as a Chrome extension.

This particular tool is most effective for multi-location law firms that need to monitor many different citations (one per address/location), but because of ease of installation, you might as well run it at least once on your own firm to see where your citations look across the web.

Simplify the Local SEO Game

Whether you run your legal firm or run the marketing department for a law firm, you surely know that there’s a lot that goes into “digital marketing.” It can be a challenge finding the time to dedicate toward each task at hand. But with the help of tools like the ones mentioned above, as well as the guidance of an experienced law firm SEO agency, you can alleviate some of that pressure and focus more time on growing your law firm.

Google is all about local these days. Don’t lose out to your competitors just because you don’t have the time to focus on Local SEO. Use these tools to boost your rankings where it matters most – with the people within your target area.