
5 Common Local SEO KPIs And How To Measure Them
Be honest: Have you ever put together what you now know to be one of the worst SEO reports ever made?
You know what I mean â a bloated 10-pager filled with pointless data that will mean literally nothing to the client, and that theyâll probably never read.
You add Google Analytics (GA) users, sessions, page views, bounce rates, time on site, and traffic by channel for a start.
You sprinkle on some Google My Business (GMB) data to show the number of listing views on Search and Maps, then plug in Google Search Console for a clicks and impressions table.
âLook how busy Iâve been,â you say to yourself. Look at all of those numbers! So clever.
Iâll own up â Iâm guilty as charged. Thatâs not to say that some of that data wonât be useful for those clients.
Itâs just that before we put together our reports, there are a few things we need to get straight first, in order to do the things that reporting generally needs to do.
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We report in order to collect the right data and to analyze that data so that we can understand whatâs working, and whatâs not, in terms of our local SEO marketing activities.
And of course, we rely on this reporting to demonstrate the value of our work and the ROI for the client.
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Are your SEO reports impenetrable for clients? Image source: Wikimedia Commons/Dr. Karl-Heinz Hochhaus
As local search marketers, itâs imperative that we demonstrate the value that we add to our clients in a language that they understand, and with a set of reporting metrics that are meaningful to them.
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In this column, youâll find five examples of Local SEO KPIs and how we can set up a simple measurement framework to track them.
What Your Local SEO Reporting Needs To Do
Whether youâre working on local SEO for a small business or a multi-location behemoth, itâs likely that theyâll want to see how local search results are driving business-critical user actions.
Some common questions local businesses are looking to answer in terms of GMB performance include:
- Is GMB driving traffic to my website?
- Are people calling me from my GMB profile?
- Are the people visiting my website via GMB parting with their hard-earned cash and buying online?
- Are people using my GMB profile to interact with my business in a way that will lead to inquiries and sales?
- Are visitors that come to my website via GMB doing other things that are important to me as a business?
If you havenât already worked with your client to put together a âgoal charterâ, now is the right time.
In project management, the project charter defines the goals and objectives of the project. Apply this framework in your Local SEO campaigns to give definition to what it is youâre hoping to achieve.
The goal charter answers three key questions:
- What are your goals?
- Why do these goals exist?
- How will we know when weâve met these goals?
Digging into questions one and two of the goal charter enables you to identify the business-critical actions that move the needle for the business, and how these translate into goals.
Where SEO KPIs Come In
So we have identified our goals, and we already know that these goals need to be SMART.
Whatâs a KPI again?
The goal is the endgame; the outcome that we hope to achieve.
The Key Performance Indicator (KPI) then is the metric that weâll be using to let us know how well we are doing towards reaching that goal.
KPIs are measurable â theyâre the measure of performance youâll use to help you judge progress towards your goal.
Local SEO Reporting: Common Data Sources
There is a case for local rank tracking, as youâll very likely want to track organic visibility across important search terms.
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Whether you want to report rankings to a client is another matter; it very much depends on the client.
The fact that you scored them a âtop of the Map Packâ ranking for a fantastic high-volume keyword might not mean so much to the business.
But the fact that this drove a $5,000-a-week increase in GMB-attributable revenue or an extra 50 phone calls a week via GMB Insights is much more likely to get them excited about your local SEO efforts.
The KPIs weâll cover below require access to the following data sources:
Google My Business Insights
GMB Insights gives us some great data on real-world actions that have the power to affect the bottom line of any business.
These are labeled as customer actions:
- Views of your website.
- Direction requests.
- Calls.
- Bookings.
- GMB messaging.
It also provides data on âhow customers view your business on Googleâ and other (perhaps) less actionable/robust metrics.
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Google Analytics
GMB Insights gives us data on many actions taken on our GMB profile that donât require a click-through to the website.
But what it doesnât tell us is which parts of our GMB profile customers and potential customers click on, and what they do on our websites when they get there.
To do this, we can use Google Analytics. Hooray!
To get this data youâll need to have set up robust UTM tagging on your links from GMB. If you havenât set this up already, this UTM tagging for GMB guide explains how.
5 Local SEO KPIs You Need To Know
Hold onto your hats⊠here come those five common KPIs.
1. Website Clicks
A lot has been said about the concept of Google as your new home page, and itâs 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.
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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).

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How to measure website clicks via GMB Insights
GMB Insights gives us âwebsite clicksâ data.

If you use the ânew profile performanceâ 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 âwebsiteâ link in your business profile.
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Sadly, this does not include clicks from other elements in your GMB profile. đą
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, weâll see the number of website visitors that arrived at our website via GMB.
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Better still, weâll 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 (âgmblistingâ in this UTM setup) is driving the lionâs share of traffic, but that other parts of GMB, including Google posts and Google products, are also referring visitors to the website.
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2. Phone calls
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.
- âHello there, can I book a table for 6 people for 7pm tomorrow night?â
- âDo you have a wheelchair-accessible restroom?â
- âCan you repair the screen of my Pixel 5?â

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 âcallâ button in your GMB profile.
Click on the âcallsâ 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
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Weâre also interested in visitors that are referred to our websites via a link on GMB, and then who go on to âclick to callâ 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, youâll 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:
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Campaigns>All Campaigns
And filter by campaign name:

And apply the filter, weâll see the number of website visitors that came to the website via your GMB listing.
Then select the appropriate goal from the âconversionsâ column, and select âclick to callâ (or whatever youâve called this goal in your GA setup):

Whoa! Thatâs 975 phone calls from people who came to our website after they found us via our business profile, a Map Pack, or Google Maps.
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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. Revenue
If you sell stuff on your website, itâs 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 theyâre using, their browser or app, etc.
Because weâre 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, hereâs how.
How to measure revenue via Google My Business in Google Analytics
Again, youâll need to have UTM tagging set up, and youâll also need to have ecommerce tracking operating.
Head over to Campaigns and apply that filter to show only traffic from GMB.
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In the Conversions column, select âeCommerceâ:

Youâll 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
Letâs 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:
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- 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 positiveâbut like any reporting, the interrogation of data is key.
Are the âoverviewâ 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?
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5. Other Goals And Events
Every business is unique. Weâve 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 goal charter, there are quite likely a number of goals that you have identified as being important to your business, and if youâve worked out a robust measurement framework then hopefully youâll have set these up as goals in Google Analytics.

Examples might include:
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- âContact Usâ form submission.
- Newsletter signup.
- Whitepaper download.
- Appointment booking.
- Click to email.
Whatever the actions are, as a local marketer youâll want to know how your activities are contributing to these conversions.
We can see this data in (you guessed it) GA.
Youâll be pretty familiar now with navigating to GMB traffic in our campaign data:
Campaigns>All Campaigns>Filter by âGMBâ
Select âall Goalsâ in conversions to see the total number of conversions attributable to the various elements of GMB during your selected timeframe.

Drill down by specific goal to see how GMB contributed to those conversions:

Conclusion
A local business might have one location, or it could have many. It might be a typical âmom and popâ SMB; 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.
These five common Local SEO KPIs should give you a good handle on your progress.
If these arenât already in place before you start your work, then get them set up straight away.
Youâll 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!
More resources:
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