Your local SEO strategies won’t mean anything if you can’t measure them. Understanding which metrics matter and how to measure them is essential for meaningful performance reporting. Our web experts share the Top4 KPIs for local SEO success here.
We’ve all been there: Putting together what we now know to be one of the worst SEO reports ever made. A bloated 10-pager filled with pointless data that will mean literally nothing to the client, and that they’ll probably never read. All the elements are there: You’ve added Google Analytics (GA) users, sessions, page views, bounce rates, time on site and traffic. You’ve also sprinkled on some Google My Business (GMB) data to show the number of listing views on Search and Maps then plugin Google Search Console for a clicks and impressions table.
Look, it’s not that some of that data won’t be useful for those clients. It’s just that before we put together our reports, there are a few things we need to get straight first.
We report in order to collect the right data and to analyse that data so that we can understand what’s working and what’s not as far as our local SEO marketing activities are concerned. And by all means, we rely on this reporting to demonstrate the value of our work and the ROI for the client. But as local search marketers, there’s nothing more important than demonstrating the value that we add to our clients in a language that they understand. This also means a set of reporting metrics that are meaningful to them.
Before we dive right into some of the most common KPIs, note that the metrics we’ll cover below require access to Google My Business Insights and Google Analytics data sources.
1. How many clicks do you get?
A lot has been said about the concept of Google as your new home page. And it’s true that Google continues to change and adapt the GMB interface so that a searcher can do many things in the SERP without clicking through to the business website.
Current GMB functionality includes:
- Call the business.
- Read reviews.
- View photos.
- Browse products and services.
- Ask questions.
- Message.
- Make a booking or reservation.
However, there are still a few opportunities to encourage clickthroughs to our website from GMB if we include:
- A website link.
- An appointment link (if available).
- Google products (if available).
- Google posts (if available).
How to measure website clicks via GMB Insights
GMB Insights gives us ‘website clicks’ data.
If you use the ‘new profile performance’ option, you can select from up to 6 months of the most recent data.
This data shows you the total number of visits to your website via the ‘website’ link in your business profile.
Sadly, this does not include clicks from other elements in your GMB profile.
How to measure website clicks via Google Analytics
Google Analytics to the rescue! GA can give us data here, as long as you have your GMB UTM tagging set up.
In GA, if we select only GMB traffic in our campaign data:
Campaigns>All Campaigns
Filter by campaign name:
And apply the filter, we’ll see the number of website visitors that arrived at our website via GMB.
Better still, we’ll see the number of visitors that arrived on our website broken down into which element in GMB that they clicked on:
You can see here that the primary website link (‘gmblisting’ in this UTM setup) is driving the lion’s share of traffic, but that other parts of GMB, including Google posts and Google products, are also referring visitors to the website.
2. How many phone calls did you get?
The phone rings. Someone wants to book something, buy something or double-check that you can meet their specific needs.
This is good for business.
- “Hello there, can I book a table for 6 people for 7 pm tomorrow night?”
- “Do you have a wheelchair-accessible restroom?”
- “Can you repair the screen of my Pixel 5?”
How to measure calls to your business via Google My Business
GMB Insights gives us call data that shows the number of clicks on the ‘call’ button in your GMB profile.
Click on the ‘calls’ tab to see calls via the GMB listing for that business over your selected time frame:
How to measure calls to your business via Google Analytics
We’re also interested in visitors that are referred to our websites via a link on GMB, and then who go on to ‘click to call’ our business via a link on our website:
Google Analytics can give us data here as long as we have our UTM tagging in place, and if we have set up the relevant goals and events.
In this case, you’ll have to have added an event to track phone number clicks using Google Tag Manager, and have set up the accompanying goal in GA:
Then, in GA, if we select only GMB traffic in our campaign data:
Campaigns>All Campaigns
And filter by campaign name:
And apply the filter, we’ll see the number of website visitors that came to the website via your GMB listing.
Then select the appropriate goal from the ‘conversions’ column, and select ‘click to call’ (or whatever you’ve called this goal in your GA setup):
Whoa! That’s 975 phone calls from people who came to our website after they found us via our business profile, a Map Pack, or Google Maps.
A third method for tracking phone calls is via a call tracking provider.
If you work with a business that uses a third-party call-tracking platform, you can add those metrics into the mix, too!
3. More visitors, more revenue!
If you sell stuff on your website, it’s quite likely that website visitors via GMB will be buying some of that stuff.
This revenue is either being attributed to the direct or organic channels depending on where that visitor came from, which device they’re using, their browser or app, etc.
Because we’re in the business of offering local SEO services, we want to make sure that we can attribute any revenue to our work.
Show me the money! Okay, here’s how.
How to measure revenue via Google My Business in Google Analytics
Again, you’ll need to have UTM tagging set up, and you’ll also need to have e-commerce tracking operating.
Head over to Campaigns and apply that filter to show only traffic from GMB.
In the Conversions column, select ‘eCommerce’:
You’ll then see the revenue that is directly attributable to traffic from GMB via the last click.
If you want to see the full value of GMB, and how it contributed to revenue as part of the conversion journey for customers who converted via a different channel, you can take a look in assisted conversions in GA:
4. Total business profile interactions
Let’s get back to those important actions that a customer or potential customer can take on the business profile, and the things that GMB insights currently provides metrics for:
- Calls (we covered this in point 2 above).
- Messages (now available for the business to manage on desktop).
- Bookings (only if you have set this up using Reserve with Google, integrating a third-party booking partner).
- Directions.
- Website clicks (we covered this in point 1 above).
The total number of actions taken on your business profile is likely to be a useful indicator of GMB performance.
Keep in mind that an increase in interactions is usually positive—but like any reporting, the interrogation of data is key.
Are the ‘overview’ peaks and troughs attributable to seasonality or world or national events?
Are peaks in any of the elements not really indicative of a business win? For example, has a rise in phone calls been caused by disgruntled or dissatisfied customers rather than potential sales?
More goals!
Every business is unique. We’ve covered four common local SEO KPIs that will be useful for many businesses in terms of measuring the efficacy of their efforts.
Based on your goals, there are quite likely a number of goals that you have identified as being important to your business. If you’ve worked out a robust measurement framework then hopefully you’ll have set these up as goals in Google Analytics.
Examples might include:
- ‘Contact Us’ form submission.
- Newsletter signup.
- Whitepaper download.
- Appointment booking.
- Click to email.
Whatever the actions are, as a local marketer you’ll want to know how your activities are contributing to these conversions.
Bottom Line
Your local business might have one location, or it could have many. It might be a typical ‘mom and pop’ SMB or it could be a multi-million enterprise.
Whichever type of business you work with, measuring the impact of your local marketing efforts on the bottom line is going to be critical in order to demonstrate the return the client is making on their investment in you as a service provider.
Our Top4 common local SEO KPIs should give you a good handle on your progress. You’ll want to make sure you can benchmark existing performance before you sprinkle that marketing magic and get those phones ringing and those tills (both real-world and online) kerchinging!
To find out how we can help you with your Website + Marketing, using our unique location marketing platform called Top4, get in touch today at www.top4marketing.com
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