The BrightLocal Agency Playbook

Start by completing your account setup...

Step 1: Add any remaining Clients and Locations

During your trial, you will have already added some of your Clients and Locations into your BrightLocal dashboard. Head to Clients & Locations now to add in any clients that you might have missed.

By doing this, you'll be able to manage all the information on your clients in one place—and start collecting the insights you’ll need to begin making improvements that lead to them climbing rankings.

How to add Clients & Locations

Step 2: Set up your white label profile

Now is a great time to set up your white label profile. Save time on reporting by sending professional, on-brand, and customizable reports directly to your clients. Completing this five-minute task now could save you hours each month!

How to set up your white label settings

Step 3: Add Agency Lead Generator to your site

Agency Lead Generator helps convert more of your website visitors into piping-hot, qualified prospects. Using the reporting power behind BrightLocal's Local Search Audit, your hard-earned website visitors can generate an overview of their website's local search health in exchange for their contact details.

It’s quick and easy to follow up with each new lead without leaving BrightLocal—meaning you can quickly offer solutions to their business’s local SEO challenges without having to complete a lengthy manual audit.

Adding the Agency Lead Generator widget to your site is super simple. Click the link below to learn how.

How to create an Agency Lead Generator widget

…then start seeing results!

Step 4: Identify and add keywords to your reports

When working with a new or existing client, one of the fundamental things to determine is which keywords to optimize. For example, a dentist may want to optimize for ‘dentist’ in addition to other high-search volume keywords that apply, such as ‘hygienist’, ‘teeth whitening’, or ‘Invisalign’.

Local Rank Tracker and Local Search Grid are two powerful tools that allow you to track keyword performance for your clients. Add your keywords to your reports straight away to show clients how ongoing optimization efforts are helping to increase their local search visibility.

And, if you’d like help on finding which keywords you should be optimizing for, we have a great module on this in the BrightLocal Academy—it's free to enroll!

How to create a Local Rank Tracker report

How to create a Local Search Grid report

Want to learn more about our rank tracker twins? We have two great articles for you: 9 Ways Local Search Grid Can Level Up Your Local SEO and Local Rank Tracker: 8 Ways It Can Hone Your Local SEO Strategy.

Step 5: Pinpoint quick optimization wins

The Local Search Audit report lets you see a top-level view of your clients’ performance, and helps you spot the areas that could be holding them back, at a glance.

This report is the ideal tool to get a quick look at the performance of new clients or leads. It surfaces data on everything from on-site SEO and technical website issues to listings, reviews, and rankings. Run a Local Search Audit to point you in the right direction so you can begin formulating your plans for local SEO success.

How to create a Local Search Audit report

Step 6: Learn from the competition

The best local marketers don’t just focus on how their own websites are ranking, they're acutely aware of how their competitors are performing. Use Google My Business Audit to stay one step ahead of the pack, and know which areas to focus on to beat out the competition.

Running a Google My Business Audit will show performance for the most important factors that affect local rankings. Easily compare all of the top-ranked businesses for each keyword so that you can highlight the steps needed to overtake the competition—whether that’s building more citations and links, improving their review profile, adding more photos, or simply switching primary business category!

How to create a Google My Business Audit

How to understand a Google My Business audit

Step 7: Clean up confusing listings inaccuracies

Using Citation Tracker, you're able to make an immediate, positive impact, with minimal effort required. Surface harmful data inaccuracies or duplicated listings that could be confusing your clients' customers.

With this information, you can take action to address any errors and remove duplicates, as well as to find opportunities to ensure your clients are represented in the same places as their biggest competitors.

If you’re short on time, you can also use our pay-as-you-go Citation Builder service, and we’ll do all the hard work for you! Our specialist team builds thousands of business listings every day, meaning your time can be freed up to focus on winning new clients and doing your best work for them.

How to create a Citation Tracker report

How to create a Citation Builder campaign

Step 8: Get more reviews

Reviews play a significant role in how a website performs in local search, yet many agencies aren’t yet focusing on generating more reviews for their clients.

If you’d like to boost your clients’ rankings and reputation, focusing on review generation can be an important differentiator between your agency and your competitors—and it doesn’t need to be difficult or time-consuming.

Use Get Reviews to send review request emails and create landing pages for gathering feedback. It’s really easy to set up a Get Reviews email or SMS campaign, and to create links for clients to use in email footers, on business cards, or in store. Try it out now!

How to create a Get Reviews campaign

Step 9: Showcase reviews to boost website conversions

So, your client has already done a great job of putting smiles on the faces of their customers and generating some really positive reviews. How can this sentiment be harnessed further and be used as a conversion tool on their website?

Add Showcase Reviews to your clients’ sites to show off their best reviews from all the main review sites, and harness social proof to convert more website visitors. Set up this easy-to-install, customizable widget to dazzle your clients, and impress their potential customers!

How to create a Showcase Review widget

Continue learning with BrightLocal

BrightLocal Academy

Level up your local SEO and learn how to succeed with BrightLocal in our free training courses.

Quick Start Video Guides

Take a deep dive into each BrightLocal tool with these quick-start video guides.

Bright Ideas

Keep up to date with the latest local SEO news, resources, and research in our local SEO hub.

Agency Superguides

During your trial you should have received some helpful videos from us, which show you how you can save hours on client reporting each month—just like this one!

In case you missed the email, we’ve put all of these video superguides into a single page so you can access them at any time.

Stellar Support

Help Center

Check out our Help Center for in-depth articles and ‘how-tos’ on all our tools, and more.