How I Track Local SEO Performance for my Clients

tmblast

For #LocalSEO, I track the website, Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Bing Maps performance for my clients. The breakdown will vary with the percentage of what is most important, but it generally has Google Maps (Google Business Profile) being the most important, while having Bing Maps be the least. I track keyword rankings, sessions, and the conversion rate for the website. For Google Maps and Apple Maps, I track the keyword rankings / Category rankings and their numbers, like phone calls, website clicks, and more. For Bing Maps, I only track the views against the competition, and I know that it will be difficult to ever see any lead from Bing due to their lack of mobile presence, which impacts Local SEO clients directly.  Timestamps 0:08 Website, Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Bing Maps Overview 0:22 Website Keyword Rankings 1:00 Website SEO Traffic 1:15 Website SEO Conversion Rate 2:40 Google Maps SoLV Rankings 3:17 GBP Phone Calls, Directions, and Website Clicks 3:54 Apple Map SoLV Rankings 4:20 Apple Maps Phone Calls, Directions, Website Clicks, and More 4:49 Bing Maps Views are the KPI 5:50 In Summary  https://tmblast.com/services/ny-local-seo/  #LocalSEOClients #localseostrategy

Transcript

00:00Hey everyone, what's going on? Greg here again from Team Blast. I want to talk about how I

00:03track the local SEO performance for my clients on a monthly basis. So to start, there's four

00:08critical areas that I focus on for them. Top left is the website, top right is Google Maps,

00:14bottom left is Apple Maps, and then bottom right is Bing Maps. I'm going to go into each one

00:20in more detail. So to start, website rankings. I use a tool called SEMrush,

00:25and I track your non-brand keywords in the zip code you're located in on a daily basis.

00:29And then I remove the map pack results. So what I do here is, for example,

00:33let's say I onboard a client that's an HVAC company from Park Slope, Brooklyn. I'm going

00:38to track keywords like HVAC, HVAC Park Slope, HVAC Near Me, HVAC Park Slope,

00:42company, service, furnace repair, you know, AC tune-ups, et cetera. And I'm going to track how

00:48the website is ranking on a daily basis. Of course, I'm making changes to your website to

00:53optimize the pages, to hopefully improve your keyword ranks, which then will drive more traffic,

00:58which is the next slide over here. I go into Google Analytics 4, and I export the data into

01:04Excel and put it into a pivot table to make it really easy for everyone to see how we're doing

01:07from organic search. Now for local SEO, not all traffic to a website is created equal,

01:13which is the next slide over here. So this is an example of one of the accounts that I have.

01:18And I noticed that they had 2000 organic sessions in September, but when I backed into one of their

01:26primary goals, which is somebody filling up the form on their website, it was 143 out of 2000 sessions,

01:31which is a 7% conversion rate. When you drill down into that 7%, I noticed the majority was coming from

01:37their homepage, but the other ones were their main service pages. However, their blog, which was driving

01:42a good percentage of overall sessions did not convert, and also did not convert from a conversion

01:48path delay. So the reason I share this is that I think traditionally, a lot of SEOs will look at

01:54this slide over here and say, we're driving more and more traffic to your site. But then you as the

01:59owner saying, I'm not seeing any increase or a noticeable increase in leads. It's probably because

02:04of this. When you drill down into the conversion rate, you might notice that, oh yeah, we're driving

02:09all this traffic, but some of this blog traffic we're getting is from different states like Wyoming,

02:13Idaho, California, et cetera. They're not going to be converting into customers for you because

02:18obviously they're not local. So that's why it's really important to get the conversion rate. If you

02:22don't have these set up on your account, that's actually one of the first things I do. I'll go into

02:27Google Analytics 4 with my web developer, and we're going to add conversion tracking to your form,

02:31to your phone icon, and to any other KPI that we need to understand how many sessions it takes for us

02:36to get a lead because that's the number we have to work towards to increase.

02:40Next is Google Maps share of local voice ranking. So I use a tool called Local Falcon,

02:45and I track within a heat map radius around your location, your non-brand keywords. So top one over

02:51here, HVAC. We went from 1.65% of the time in April to now 17.63% of the time in September. So we've grown

02:58our presence for the term HVAC. That's why we're getting more HVAC leads, phone calls, bookings,

03:03etc. For that, I can see how we're progressing for that term. Same thing for the other non-brand

03:07terms as well. I want to see from a month-over-month-over-month perspective if we're growing

03:11our share of local voice. Again, that leads to more phone calls, website clicks, and bookings for my

03:16clients. Next is performance metrics. So I go into Google Business Profile, and I'm going to now

03:22visually display how we're doing for our KPI as a matter of phone calls. Maybe we are a nail salon or

03:28we're a beauty salon. So a directions request might be really important for us to track because that's

03:32people now going into the location. Website clicks. I'm always tracking everything from a

03:37year-over-year perspective just so we can see, hey, month-over-month, that's great. But seasonality

03:42is also a factor too. How are we doing with that? I need to know your numbers just like how you need

03:47to know yours. So when we're talking together on a monthly basis, we're all talking about the same

03:51goal, which is increase and get more leads. Next is Apple Maps. So I use, again, local Falcon. I track

03:59the category for my clients, again, in the radius that you service. And I'm trying to see, okay,

04:04if we're growing our category ranks, that should result in more impressions, more website clicks,

04:10more bookings, more photo taps, more profile views, and of course, more calls for my clients.

04:15Apple Maps results will really vary. So I've seen, generally, it's anywhere between 5% to 20%

04:22of the monthly leads come from Apple. It really varies because some accounts are not well optimized.

04:27Others, just there's no Apple presence there. But for other accounts I have,

04:30I'm seeing Apple Maps be a really critical player. So regardless of where you're at,

04:35I'm going to gather your baseline numbers and then run the scans and then look for ways I can

04:39optimize your Apple Business Connect profile to get even more phone calls, more directions,

04:44more website clicks, and as many other KPIs that we can do to get you more leads.

04:48Finally is Bing Maps. Bing Maps is easily the smallest factor when it comes into local SEO.

04:54Now, Bing Maps did do an update to their profile. It'll be interesting to see what other KPIs they

05:00can come with. But what I've always been focused on is just views. So views is a very, very, very soft

05:07KPI. But if we're able to increase our engagement and our views for adding photos,

05:13special announcements, changing our primary categories, making sure our hours are always

05:16up to date, we should be trying to get as many views on our profile as possible. And then that

05:21should lead to some indirect goals for your account. So somebody who's on Bing, who searches for again,

05:27HVAC Park Slope on their computer, they might see my client and then they pick up their phone and then

05:33they call. I can't track that. But at least if I'm able to increase views, I'm looking at that as

05:38that's the soft goal to track. Because if I can get you at least more views, in theory,

05:42if the conversion rate stays the same, we should be getting more leads as well.

05:46But really, in summary, I'll go back up to the very top over here. I try to make things really

05:52easy for my local SEO accounts to understand what their performance is, what their conversion rate

05:57is, what are the keywords we're going after? Are we improving our website ranks from the changes

06:01we're making? And are we also getting more visibility for Google Maps and then Apple Maps,

06:06which then should lead to more phone calls, website clicks, and then even potential

06:10direction requests as well for people to visit the location. Obviously, there's more to it than

06:15just those four aspects, but that's really what I focus on for my clients. Anyway, I hope this video

06:22was interesting. Maybe it sparked some ideas of what you guys can do for your account. Let me know if

06:26you have any questions. And as always, have a good rest of your day.

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