How Local SEO Increases Profits

Tangible Financial Impacts from Local SEO

Effective local SEO can spur business growth, particularly when marketers focus on search intent. It improves your online visibility, targets highly relevant traffic, builds trust, and creates a positive impression—especially for mobile users likely searching with buying intent.

Higher Visibility

While organic SEO helps customers find general product and service information, local search often aims to locate nearby relevant businesses. Safari Digital reports that 46% of all Google searches have local intent, with 97% of users searching online to find local businesses at some point. “Near me” searches have surged by 400% in recent years!

Connecting your business with the right audience at the right time through local SEO can elevate your business within your community by:

• Increasing local visibility
• Building trust and credibility
• Reaching a targeted customer base
• Driving traffic to physical locations

Think of it as effective neighborhood-level promotion and a cost-efficient marketing strategy compared to traditional advertising methods.

Higher Conversion Rates

With a focused approach on specific geographic areas, local SEO enhances your ability to convert leads into sales, demonstrating how local SEO increases profits. Safari Digital also found that 28% of all local searches result in a purchase, and 78% of local searches lead to in-person conversions, indicating the significant financial potential of local SEO strategies.

These results often come quickly. Forbes reports that 18% of local searches lead to a purchase within 24 hours, and half of smartphone users visit a store within a day of their local search.

Investing in SEO Strategies for Revenue Growth

Local SEO does more than just increase profits by targeting ready-to-buy users; it also enhances visibility and brand awareness, contributing to a scalable sales generation channel.

Investing in SEO Strategies for Revenue Growth

For local SEO to positively influence the bottom line, you need to consider investing resources into your SEO strategies. This means ensuring digital marketers for your multi-location business—whether that’s one person at HQ, or a local person for each store—receive the budget and time they need to build out their local SEO and track their results. Local SEO can bear fruit as a cost-effective marketing strategy with the right support behind it.

However, digital marketers need to spend time on proven tactics:

• Optimizing your Google Business Profile to boost visibility and conversions
• Responding to and actively managing reviews to build consumer trust
• Developing a social media strategy that goes beyond broadcasting alone
• Building backlinks and polishing local citations with local directories
• Managing local landing pages and store locator on the brand website
• Tracking how each tactic lands for your audience

Deep Dive: How Listings Management Increases Conversions

Effective local SEO begins with comprehensive listings management—because it helps search engines trust your data and potential customers to find and contact your business. Consequently, your business information such as name, address, and phone number (NAP) should be accurate and consistent across all online platforms.

In fact, data consistency plays a vital role in maintaining a strong local SEO presence.

• Consistent information ensures that search engines recognize your business as legitimate and relevant, boosting your chances of appearing in local search results.
• Inconsistent information confuses both search engines and users, leading to lower search rankings and diminished trust.

Investing in data consistency (by the means of a listings management tool) will enhance your local SEO efforts, increasing your overall profitability. Our study showed that listings showing on more than 20 directories had many more engagements (directions, calls, clicks) than those on fewer than 10 directories. SMBs saw 200% more engagement and enterprises saw 73% more engagement in the highest distribution group compared with the lowest for each population.

How Local SEO Increases Profits Listings

To maintain data consistency, businesses should:

• Centralize Data Management: Use a single platform to manage and update all business information.
• Conduct Regular Audits: Regularly check all online listings for accuracy and uniformity.
• Engage with Customer Feedback: Actively respond to customer feedback to keep information current and reliable.

Deep Dive: How Review Management Increases Conversions

Review management is another critical component of local SEO, as online reviews significantly influence consumer decisions and search engine rankings. Actively managing reviews on platforms like Google, Yelp, and Facebook helps build trust and credibility with potential customers.

How Local SEO Increases Profits Reviews

Search engines consider reviews as a ranking factor for local search results.

• Positive reviews enhance local SEO by improving search engine rankings and building consumer trust.
• Negative reviews harm local SEO by lowering search engine rankings and deterring potential customers.

However, responding to all reviews and effectively addressing negative feedback can demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction—so you can only win with a thought-through review management strategy.

• Monitor Reviews: Regularly check review sites to stay on top of new feedback.
• Respond Promptly: Quickly address both positive and negative feedback.
• Encourage Reviews: Prompt satisfied customers to leave positive reviews.
• Analyze Feedback: Use customer insights to improve your products and services.

Investing in a proactive review management strategy not only boosts your local SEO efforts but also enhances customer loyalty and drives more traffic to your business.

The SEO Metrics to Track Success

The right local keywords matter, as do the right content and social strategies, but so do the right metrics. So local SEO metrics involve much more than your search ranking:

• Organic traffic from local searches
• Referral traffic from local directories and review sites
• Engagement signals such as map clicks or phone calls
• Leads and conversions from your local landing pages

If you want to see how SEO metrics link up with revenue and profit, try monitoring goals and attribution for your local landing pages and conversion points.

For example, KFC boosted its online visibility by improving data consistency, updating online profiles, and leveraging localized content and social media engagement. This resulted in a 23% increase in clicks for directions and a 132% rise in Google Maps impressions, turning into a remarkable 37:1 return on investment​​.

Your Marketing Tech Stack Can Unpack Local SEO ROI

Trying to track how local SEO increases profits can look like a minefield. Different platforms suggest that you consider different statistics that need collating and tracking by the digital marketing team. To simplify SEO ROI attribution, consider investing in a single platform that allows you to manage listings, reviews, social, locators and local pages, messages, as well as insights and analytics, all from a single dashboard. Putting all of these tools together in one place can make tracking digital marketing data more efficient and more effective.

Local SEO Tools and Resources

To effectively implement and manage local SEO strategies, utilizing the right tools and resources is crucial. These tools can help streamline your efforts, provide valuable insights, and ultimately enhance your local SEO performance.

Google My Business

Google My Business (GMB) is an essential tool for local SEO. It allows you to manage how your business appears on Google Search and Maps. Optimizing your GMB profile can significantly boost your local search visibility.

Moz Local

Moz Local helps manage your business listings across the web. It ensures your business information is accurate and consistent across major directories, which is vital for local SEO success.

Yext

Yext is another powerful tool for managing local business listings. It provides detailed analytics and insights, helping you understand how customers are interacting with your business online.

BrightLocal

BrightLocal offers a suite of tools designed specifically for local SEO. From citation building to rank tracking and review management, BrightLocal provides comprehensive solutions to enhance your local search presence.

SEMrush

SEMrush is a versatile SEO tool that offers local SEO features such as position tracking, listing management, and competitive analysis. It helps you monitor your local search performance and identify opportunities for improvement.

Whitespark

Whitespark specializes in local SEO tools and services. Their citation finder and local rank tracker are particularly useful for identifying citation opportunities and tracking your search rankings in specific geographic areas.

Review Management Tools

Tools like Podium, BirdEye, and Trustpilot help manage and respond to customer reviews across various platforms. Effective review management can enhance your local SEO by building trust and improving search engine rankings.

Data Analytics Tools

Utilizing data analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Google Data Studio can provide insights into your local SEO performance. These tools help you track key metrics, understand user behavior, and measure the effectiveness of your local SEO strategies.

By leveraging these tools and resources, you can optimize your local SEO efforts, drive more traffic to your business, and ultimately increase your profitability.