GMB & Local SEO Metrics & Reporting: How to Report Local Wins to Clients
Table of Contents
Effective client reporting is crucial to your agency’s success. Reporting the right local SEO metrics shows the impact of your agency’s work and increases your perceived value, allowing you to charge more.
But that doesn’t mean that you need to report each tiny detail of a project to a client. That is, unless you want to give lessons in SEO. You must concisely convey the value of your work so that clients understand what they’re paying for (& why).
There are tons of metrics and KPIs that you can track for a local campaign. Sometimes, SEOs will differ in their opinions on which metrics really matter and what reports a client should be provided. We’ll help you understand the metrics and project reporting that we recommend as they pertain to our own GMB and Local SEO campaigns.
SEO reporting doesn’t need to be complex and mysterious for you or your client. In this guide, we’ll help you to understand the most important aspects of any local SEO campaign. We’ll even go a step further and show you how to tackle less than thrilling results in a campaign, manage your client’s expectations from the onset, and present the perfect progress report!
Why GMB & Local SEO Are Important?
Local SEO is important in any search where the location of the results impacts rankings. This includes brick and mortar businesses (those with physical locations that clients visit) and SABs (service area businesses that bring their services to the client). In either case, GMB and Local SEO are integral to improving the visibility of your brand online.
The first step in any local SEO project is to convince your client that the work you can provide them is going to be crucial to their brand’s success. Here are some meaningful data points to highlight when pitching local SEO services.
Everyone Searches Locally
86% of consumers rely on the internet to find local businesses, and 29% search for local businesses at least once a week. The majority of consumers are finding what they need online; if your client’s business isn’t visible, they’re missing out on serious leads that their competitors are cashing in on.
Your clients can’t afford to forgo local search optimization. It’s how the majority of potential clients will find them. If your client wants to be successful, especially if they want to grow their business and increase local leads, they need to meet their audience where they’re searching – and for local businesses, that’s often Google Maps.
Drive Customer Engagement
Over 75% of users don’t typically go past the first page of search results. If your clients aren’t ranking on page 1, chances are their listing isn’t being seen.
To be discovered often and drive customer engagement, your clients need to be on page one. When a client invests in local SEO with your agency, they expect to see an increase in rankings and online visibility (both of which should translate into more calls and leads for their business). By improving the visibility of a brand, you increase their authority. The more places that your brand is seen by potential clients – such as in industry or local directories – the more likely they are to recall the company the next time they need the services that the company provides.
Bring in More Customers & Sales
72% of customers who conduct a local search visit a nearby store, according to our GMB Manager. Every client wants to show up at the top of the search results, but many business owners don’t know what they need to do to get there. Sometimes, the path isn’t straight and clear. That’s where an agency comes in, helping their clients to understand the value of local SEO and the necessary steps if they want to draw in more business.
Furthermore, 78% of local mobile searches result in an in-store purchase. If you want to sell something, the first step is to make sure that potential buyers can see your product. Local SEO is often the most affordable option for improving visibility and leads when compared to things like PPC and ad spend. This is especially true considering SEO builds a foundation for long-term rankings, while PPC results end when ad spend does.
Rank in Local Map Pack
Google’s 3 Pack is prominently displayed to searchers in 93% of local searches. It’s where clients need to be to maximize results.
In order to rank in this coveted spot, you must implement strong local SEO strategies. After all, there are only three spots available.
While getting into Google’s 3-pack is the ultimate goal for any local business, it’s not the only way to prove the value of your local SEO efforts. You can highlight other local SEO metrics that show positive improvement.
There are so many local SEO metrics, which are the most important?
Important Local SEO Metrics
Google My Business (GMB) insights is filled with a treasure trove of data for benchmarking and measuring your local impact. There are several actions a lead can take once they find the GMB listing they want to interact with; all of them could denote improvement for your local presence.
For a local business, calls will always be the most important local SEO metric. It’s a strong customer action that provides direct contact with a lead. This is also the easiest metric to report to clients because they can most readily gauge the value of themselves.
Depending on the type of business and industry, there are other important local metrics that you may want to review and report.
- Driving Directions Requests
- Clicks/Website Visits
- Customers Who Viewed Listing on Maps
- Customers Who Viewed Listing on Search
Below, we will go through the individual customer actions, as well as additional GMB data that provides insight into customer habits.
Customer Actions
“Customer Actions” are a group of GMB metrics that measure direct interactions users have with your listing. Customer actions include calls, website visits/clicks, direction requests, and messages.
All customer action metrics are compiled into one graph that gives an overview of how users interact with the GMB listing. You can also break out the graph individually for more detailed insights.
Phone Calls
This GMB metric shows the number of calls from a single listing over a specified period of time – week, month, or quarter. You can also organize the data by days of the week or times of the day to hone in on when users call most often.
Phone call insights show direct interest and action from the audience, which is why they’re the most important local SEO metric. How many businesses have you called that you weren’t seriously interested in working with? Consumers don’t generally waste time calling a business they aren’t likely to purchase from, making calls a fairly clear indicator of the impact of local SEO on the brand’s online presence.
The call data from a listing can also be used to further optimize the brand’s presence on other online platforms outside of GMB, as well as strategize local ad campaigns.
Driving Directions
Driving direction data measures how many requests users made for directions to the business location. Direction data is sorted by zip code, city, or state, making it easy to determine which geographic areas are most interested in your business. You can then leverage this data to more effectively target location-based ads.
Website Visits/Clicks
Visits or clicks to the website are exactly that: how many users landed on the site from your local listing. Like calls, this is a simple but powerful metric and a good indicator of traffic trends and even leads for the brand.
Messaging
You will need to have messaging enabled within your GMB listing to track this data. Once enabled, you can track the number of customers who messaged your brand through the local listing. Be aware, if you are using 3rd party messaging services, messaging insights may show 0 even if you’ve received messages.
In contrast, “Where Customers View your Business” & “How Customers Search for your Business” metrics show impressions, not actions. These metrics count users who saw your listing, but not whether or not they performed an action on that listing.
How Customers Search for Business
Users can find your GMB listing with a direct search, branded search, or discovery search. All three lead them to the Google 3-pack, local rankings, or Knowledge Panel.
- Direct Search uses your business name, address, or brand terms to find your listing.
- Discovery Search uses non-branded searches, such as “coffee shop nearby”.
- Branded Search is users who found your listing by searching for related brands or those you sell in your business. An easy way to tell if terms are branded searches is to look for the “ABC” list in the local map pack. ABC Local Packs are a common site for franchises, like Starbucks or McDonalds, that often have multiple listings within a small area.
Knowing how users are finding for your client provides insight into brand awareness, how effective your local SEO is, and what types of searches to target. Usually, discovery search makes up the bulk of this metric, so we recommend optimizing for location-based discovery searches.
Where Customers View Your Business
This data differentiates between users who found the listing in Google Maps and those who found the listing through organic searches. We recommend viewing this insight graph with only one box checked at a time. This makes it easier to visualize the data and eliminates doing math to add the cumulative numbers together.
Listing on Maps
This metric is just like it sounds. It measures customers who view the business listing on the Google Maps app specifically.
Listing on Search
The Listing on Search results denote the number of users who search for your brand or brand keywords using the regular Google Search (google.com) platform. It also includes searches performed on the “Local Finder” and “Maps” portion of google.com (maps.google.com).
Both Listing on Maps and Listing on Search metrics show impressions. These local metrics show you the number of views your listing received in a specified time, but not the number of clicks or unique users. For example, if a searcher sees your listing in the maps pack from a Google search, this is one impression (listing on search). If the same user then clicks to Maps, where your listing is still being shown, this counts as a second impression.
Because impressions are such a volatile metric, it’s not something that we recommend reporting to your client regularly. However, these impressions do a decent job of showing you generally how many views your client’s listing is getting and whether or not their overall visibility is improving.
Other GMB Metrics
There are other meaningful metrics that Google features in the Local Insights, including photo insights for the client and businesses like theirs. While it is a good idea to keep an eye on these additional local metrics, these are not as important to the overall growth of the business or improvement in local listing visibility.
Be Aware of GMB Limitations
There are limitations to the data the GMB Insights can provide. For example, there is a limited time window for data reporting and no voice search metrics.
- Reporting Time Limits: GMB Insights data is only tracked over 90 days. This not only limits the timeframe in which you can check and compare local metrics, but it also makes reviewing previous data a bigger hassle. Using third party tools like Local Viking helps track local metrics data segments, even outside of the 90 day frame.
- Voice Search: Right now, Google’s local insights do not account for voice search results. This data becomes increasingly important as voice search continues to rise. Without the data from searches on devices like Google Home and Alexa, it will be more difficult to optimize a listing for said platforms effectively.
- Multi-Location Benchmarking: If you are a franchise or multi-location business, each will have their own GMB listing with it’s own insights. Google falls short in comparing local metrics across multiple locations. You will need to manually compile a combined report of all locations in order to condense and compare the data across all listings.
Reporting Features to Utilize
There are numerous tools and features available to help you provide a clear local SEO report to your client. WEB20 Ranker includes several of these reporting tools so your agency can create a comprehensive report that works for you and your client. With so many local SEO metric tracking and reporting tools out there, what are the top recommended tracking tools?
SERP Volatility Tracking
Google is almost always making changes to improve their algorithm. If you aren’t keeping up with the SERP volatility, you could miss a crucial change to Google’s algorithm that could make or break your client’s SEO. Our SERP Volatility Tracking allows you to easily monitor how volatile rankings are.
Why is understanding SERP volatility important?
By monitoring changes to SERP algorithms and SEO chatter, you’re putting yourself ahead of the game in some respects. Knowing what’s going on in the SEO industry will not only help you explain certain ranking fluctuations to your clients, but it will also position you as an authoritative resource in the client’s eyes. You can also monitor SERP volatility to determine when your strategy needs changes and when you may want to hold off on big changes to the listing or website.
GeoGrid Tracking
Web 20’s GMB campaigns are monitored through Local Viking – a tool to monitor and manage GMB listings. One of the most prominent uses of Local Viking is their GeoGrid reporting. GeoGrids provide a great visual resource, breaking out the listing’s visibility for desired keywords using color coded nodes across a grid of various sizes. Clients love the easy-to-understand data visualization!
GeoGrids should be used as a baseline report before starting any local SEO, as well as a monthly or quarterly report to show increases in visibility, which should correlate with stronger rankings and more calls. You can even create gifs to animate the progress.
Local Rank Tracking
Local rank tracking is one of the most important features to use when you’re performing SEO. Through the use of keyword tracking, you will be able to get a clear idea of the terms that your client is relevant for, terms that you need improved optimization, competing pages within your site, and local competitors.
However, we recommend you combine local keyword tracking with other metric tracking through GMB Insights and GeoGrid reports. By combining multiple forms of local tracking and reporting, you will be able to provide your clients with the most comprehensive and complete view of their local visibility.
Metrics You Should Report to Clients
To convey your value to clients, it’s important you’re presenting the right information in a concise, understandable format. But how do you know the right metrics for each client?
Report the metrics that impact the clients’ bottom line and overall campaign performance. While the “most important” metrics may vary from client to client, our GMB campaigns provide several forms of local metrics tracking to help you best show your clients the value of your efforts.
Below are the most impactful metrics to increase your agency’s perceived value and facilitate clients’ understanding of how you’re helping them.
GMB Insights & Metrics
Google recognizes GMB as an authoritative resource, so search result information is often pulled directly from your GMB listing. This makes it a valuable asset with tons of data.
When you create a report for your client, include the Calls, Website Visits, and Driving Directions Requests (for brick and mortars). These GMB metrics should always be your first indicators of how a campaign is performing, because they show direct engagement between potential clients and the business. Use data from previous and current reports in order to show periods of growth and monitor continued improvement.
GMB also provides other data, like location listing stats, but these don’t need to be reported monthly. You can use them to justify focusing on a specific type of optimization.
Citations
Citations help build local authority and relevance, so they can be impactful to SEO. They also show the client tangible brand assets being built. It’s tedious to report every new citation, but we recommend reporting high-level citations, like Yelp, BBB, Apple, and Waze. Clients will recognize these authoritative sources, and they help to build both your local presence and brand authority.
GeoGrids
Make it easy for clients to understand somewhat ambiguous data with these visual reports. Many clients are visual learners, so this can be an impactful reporting tool. You can even schedule GeoGrid snapshots to show gains week over week.
This data can be reported in two ways. First, local ranking improvements can be seen by the individual nodes decreasing in number and changing colors. Improvements can also be shown when additional nodes around a client’s target area start to show a number ranking, then decrease.
GMB Posts
Regular GMB posts show consistent activity and drive engagement for a listing. We recommend sharing a selection of GMB posts with your client each month in order to show additional engagement. You can also use GMB Insights to gauge post engagement. This demonstrates that you are consistently putting the client’s listing front and center with fresh content and engaging with potential customers.
Local & Niche Relevant Links
Backlink building is crucial to both local and organic campaigns, so it must be reported. But not all backlinks are created equal, or worth sharing with your client. We recommend reporting the best locally relevant and niche relevant backlinks that you’ve secured that month. The best backlinks for a campaign may include top citations, niche relevant directories, outreach posts, or local news links.
One effective type of link built in the WEB20 Ranker GMB campaigns is local news backlinks. Using our premium press release syndication, you get the word out about your client’s business and increase their online visibility.
Reporting press releases shows your clients valuable content pieces that achieve locally relevant and authoritative news backlinks. Clients also love being featured on well-known sites in their area.
Competitor Analysis
Consistently comparing your clients’ position within their competitive landscape will help them to understand how they stack up in the market and the progress made month over month. This can also help you to set expectations for your client early in the campaign.
While there are many factors that you can use to benchmark your clients against the competition, we recommend comparing competitor citations, listing visibility and optimization, and website or landing page optimization for the best overview.
Do most competitors have citations your client lacks? Have you built high-authority backlinks competitors don’t have? What content are competitors leveraging for backlinks? Do you need to create more content relevant to a particular topic? Are there competitors within the same building as your client, causing potential GMB filtering? These are all important questions we ask when we review and set up a new local SEO campaign. We also use these questions to mark our progress as we reach for our visibility goals.
On-Page Changes
Lastly, you should report future on-page SEO recommendations. By including a report on proposed changes to the website, you are able to showcase what work to the site would be most beneficial and why, all based on competitor and industry analysis.
Consider what optimization could be done to on-page elements, including:
- Titles need a locally-modified target keyword.
- Headings include a target keyword and location.
- Content is optimized for target keywords and locations, but not over optimized.
- Alt Text uses target keywords related to images and content.
- Name, Address, and Place (NAP) is consistent across all mentions.
- Page includes appropriate schema markup.
Additional Reports Outside of Local
You should provide regular updates to your client on any additional optimization or management you provide outside of a WEB20 Ranker GMB Campaign. If your agency provides additional local SEO services like review management and/or social management, be sure to report an overview of these, too.
If you offer review management, report on the number of new reviews in the past month, including top reviews and bad reviews that you’ve addressed. If you handle social media management, report on engagement for your recent posts, top-performing content, updates to profiles, or emerging social media channels where accounts are created.
What NOT to Report
As an agency, you know a big part of your job is client management and reporting. If you aren’t reporting data that matters to your client’s bottom line, or you’re reporting more data than they can digest, your client’s view of your SEO impact could be falling short (even if you are making significant progress).
Reporting every link, every content piece, every review and social mention for a campaign is rarely the best option. It’s messy, time consuming, and more than likely too much info for your client. Generally, it is better to provide your client with a concise overview of key metrics and data along with the value and impact of such metrics. Remember, you can always provide additional data points if questions arise.
Do: Report top citations and backlinks, such as Yelp, BBB, Waze, and industry related outreach or directories.
Don’t: Report hundreds of citations and backlinks, tiered links or booster links.
Do: Report more calls and direct listing interactions.
Don’t: Report every piece of GMB Insights data.
Do: Report improvements in GeoGrids and local visibility.
Don’t: Report get too technical with local ranking reports.
Client’s care about results, like calls and sales. It’s that simple.
They don’t necessarily care about the process, just that steady improvements are made. Therefore, it’s important to report tangible metrics clients can easily attribute to your work. Clients will understand how you’re impacting their business, which increases the likelihood they’ll continue services with your agency.
Reporting a ton of technical data with SEO jargon will often go right over a client’s head. The complex information can overwhelm clients who have minimal understanding of SEO. Rather than confusing your clients or spending time explaining in-depth SEO processes, you should be investing that time into growing your agency. To do this, you need to create a reporting process that is clear and to the point.
At the very least, make sure that you are prepared to explain the process of every local SEO tactic and its benefits to your client’s bottom line.
How Often Should I Report to Clients?
You want to report often enough that clients feel in the loop, but not so often that overreporting eats up your time and resources. So, how often should you report?
We recommend reporting at least monthly to your clients, but there are special circumstances that could call for less or more. When running an accelerated or fast- tracked campaign, you may want to provide weekly or bi-weekly reports. More frequent reporting is also necessary if you are using the SEO work to sell your client on your value as an agency and/or additional SEO. By contrast, 60 day reviews or quarterly reviews might make more sense if you have long-term clients on maintenance campaigns.
Regardless of how often you plan on reporting to your clients, it’s important you establish reporting expectations early on in your relationship. Make sure your clients know when to expect a report from you and what that report should include. If you plan on reporting metrics that your clients are less familiar with, make sure they understand how the metric is calculated and why they matter to their own bottom line.
How to Handle Less than Thrilling Results
Whether results fall short of your expectations or client expectations, you have options. The important thing is to not freak out. Be pragmatic about what you can control.
If results seem subpar, we recommend conducting a local and competitor audit. A Local SEO Audit will show your client’s current position and competitors, as well as identify potential issues leading to lower rankings. For example, a client may experience a drop in rankings when a competitor starts investing in local SEO. By reviewing the competitor in this instance, you may be able to find new citation and link opportunities, keyword clusters, and/or content topics.
While it can be cumbersome to go through all this information, you will be able to identify issues and quickly remedy them. The more you triage troubled campaigns, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to spot concerns sooner and know what needs to be addressed, often preventing an issue before it arises.
Our free Local SEO Audit tool will save you tons of time, so be sure to bookmark it!
Check Google Updates & Volatility Trackers
If you’ve been chugging along, then notice a sudden drop in rankings or traffic, one of the first places to look is Google. Have they changed anything?
If you’re having issues in the local rankings, map pack, or knowledge panels, check out the GMB Forum and Local Search Forum. Are others voicing similar concerns? If they are, an update could have impacted GMB listings. There could also be a bug that you’ll need to be patient with, such as the case of Google’s Indexing Glitch in 2020.
If your issue seems like an anomaly within local search forums, consider a broader algorithm update. A recent Google algorithm update could negatively impact your local rankings, especially if it was a significant change.
For significant organic ranking drops, quickly gauge how volatile rankings are for the web as a whole with our SERP Volatility Tracking. If volatility metrics are high, chances are there’s been a recent algorithm update. Research the update and what it focuses on. You can usually find mountains of information about recent updates from experienced SEOs, but Search Engine Land is usually one of the first entities to report on updates.
If volatility metrics are low, you will need to evaluate the below factors to determine why your site is losing rankings or achieving lackluster results.
Review Keyword Targeting & Content Format
Are you going after the right keywords? How competitive are the money terms you’re targeting? Does your client have the authority to compete for these terms or should you target more longtail terms first? Does your keyword strategy match search intent? Do your target terms match your client’s main service areas?
Ensure your client’s site is focusing on a handful of local search terms relevant to their location. For example, if you’re a mechanic in Pittsburgh, focus on keyword phrases like:
- Pittsburgh mechanic
- Mechanic in Pittsburgh
- Best mechanic in Pittsburgh
Your content’s format must also match what search engines are currently ranking for the target keyword. If you’re trying to rank a case study, but all top-ranking results for that keyword are listicles, it’s an uphill battle. Strategize your content format and target keywords so they’re working together to get clients to the top.
Another possible keyword factor for lackluster results could be you’re targeting keywords that are too competitive. If your client has low authority or is a new site/listing, you’ll want to focus on long tail keywords with lower competition.
Local Competitor Review
Check what keywords and content your competitors are ranking for. Competitive research can help you spot trends in your local markets and industry, give insight into competitor strategies, and identify content & link gaps. Cross reference competitor elements with your client to determine what is missing.
Evaluate your top-ranking competitors:
- Website – What heading structure do they use? What is the user experience and design like? How much inner linking is used? Do they publish content more frequently or more consistently? What is their URL structure like?
- Keyword Rankings – What is their keyword focus for top pages? Are there keyword clusters and/or content you’re lacking?
- Backlink Profiles – Are you missing links most competitors have? What is the average number of backlinks for top-ranking sites?
- GMB Listings – How often do they post? What categories are they using?
- Reviews & Responses – How many reviews are there? What are the quality of reviews?
- Citations and NAP Signals – How many signals & citations? What types of local citations do they have? Do they have paid citations you don’t?
- Social Media Accounts – Are they active? Which accounts do they have?
You can do this manually, or use competitor analysis tools from platforms like SEMRush & Ahrefs. We recommend setting up competitor tracking for main competitors to consistently monitor their presence and automate comparisons.
Not sure who your direct competitors are? Try using a local search cloaking tool like isearchfrom.com in order to search local keywords and find which listings are ranking in Maps for your terms. You can also using tools like Ahrefs competing domains report.
Try a few keyword searches; you may find that your competitors are different based on the specific terms you’re targeting. See how these competitors are optimizing their landing page on their listing, content posted through their listing, and the type/number of directory listing profiles they are found within.
Evaluate Your Links
Backlinks to the site may seem less important to a local campaign, but that does not mean that you should ignore them entirely. There are multiple factors that go into a healthy backlink and anchor text profile. You’ll want to analyze all parts of linking to look for impactful opportunities.
First, check the backlink profile for low-quality links. If there is a significant amount of new low-quality domains, disavow those links with Google. Low-quality domains can hold back your client’s rankings.
Next, check that authoritative, quality domains are linking to your site. If not, you’ll want to work on building authoritative backlinks to your client. Don’t feel like manual outreach? We offer authoritative backlinks in our Done for You Link Building with Guaranteed Traffic Increases!
You’ll also want to look for backlink gaps. These are backlinks that most competitors have, but you lack. You can use SEO platforms to run a backlink audit to find who is linking to you, the quality of those links, and any link gaps.
Over-optimized anchor text can also impact rankings, so check the anchors of newly built links. Ensure the majority of your anchors are branded and naked URLs, not keyword optimized anchors. That can signal an natural linking to search engines.
Lastly, check for unlinked brand mentions. These are great link building opportunities! After all, they already mention your brand. Just provide them with a link! Linking brand mentions can also help to improve your anchor text ratios.
Check GeoGrids
When keyword rankings are stagnant or calls aren’t picking up, turn to the GeoGrid report. How are the individual nodes progressing? If nodes are the same or increasing (falling further in rank), you need to amp up GMB optimization and citation creation. Evaluate what the top listings have that yours don’t, then implement accordingly. Keep in mind, there are cases where visibility and rankings will increase, but calls or leads may not be, such as seasonality.
GeoGrids can show a client’s improvement (or lack thereof) in several ways. First, the position of the nodes shown could decrease. The closer your client’s nodes are to position one, the more visibility and authority your listing has. Conversely, your grid may pick up additional nodes that expand reach. Areas where a client was not previously seeing top 20 visibility will show a red X for a node. As visibility increases, the number of red nodes should decrease.
Check GMB Listing & Insights
Dive into the insights section of your GMB to compare your listing against businesses like yours. The graphs will help you to easily spot gaps. You should also identify when ranking drops or stagnation started and compare to any known updates.
Also consider if the listing is being filtered. Are there other listings close by in the same industry? Is so, you’ll need a stronger listing than theirs. Consider ordering custom signals to build custom citations and links to strengthen your Knowledge Graph.
You can also evaluate if the listing is over optimized or misaligned with target areas. Ask yourself these questions when reviewing your GMB listing:
- Does the listing share an address with other companies, particularly in the same niche?
- Is the category in line with competitors? Are you leveraging subcategories?
- Is your NAP consistent?
- s the client’s listing a SAB when they have a physical location?
- Is the listing located within your target city?
- Is your business name or description over optimized?
- What are common trends among top-ranking competitors?
- Does your listing have less images than businesses like yours?
- Are your images high-quality?
- Are you responding to all reviews and questions?
- Do you have a low number of reviews in comparison to others?
- Are you following GMB guidelines?
- Is there keyword stuffing?
Be sure to check for practices that go against Google’s guidelines. For example, does your client have a mix of listings with addresses & SAB listings? This is against community guidelines. You should also ensure there are no duplicate listings that could be affecting your rankings.
Consistent Citations
It’s not enough to build hundreds of citations. You need to make sure that you’re building the RIGHT citations in the right way. Keep in mind, consistency is key.
Start by creating listings in the top directories in your niche and local area. Then, begin reviewing and creating competitor citations. Finally, address the consistency, indexation, and optimization of your created properties. Too much work? Citation creation service.
Citations that are created on irrelevant platforms, have incorrect NAP info, no interlinking, and/or non-indexed citations could be doing more to harm than good for your local ranking efforts. When we create local citations, we include proper optimization of the listing, which includes a description and links to other social or citations accounts, as well as correct NAP. We also submit all citations to an indexing platform in order to improve the number of live and indexed listings for the brand. Additionally, you may want to build tiered links to the top citations or refresh them with unique descriptions in order to improve the chance of indexation.
If you’ve already built a significant amount of citations with inconsistent info, our citation clean up service is perfect! We’ll fix the citations for you. Not sure what’s going on with your client’s citations? We also offer a citation audit and cleanup package so you don’t have to do the digging.
Stagnation & Optimization Correlation
Check to see if there’s a correlation between the stagnation or drop in rankings and SEO work being completed. This is a particularly important step for clients using an exact match name and/or domain.
If you over optimized the listing or website content, or if you have built too many backlinks at once to the same target URL, this could negatively impact your local rankings. Conversely, you could have de-optimized some of the previously completed optimization on the site or listing, causing similar drops. Of course, whenever you are completing a key optimization component on the listing or website, you should always monitor your results for a few days as Google recrawls the properties.
Other Things to Audit
In addition to the main factors mentioned above, here are other aspects to evaluate:
- Check the website for duplicate content.
- Are you receiving reviews on social platforms?
- Check for manual action & penalties in GSC.
- Look at anchor text ratios
- Is the client even eligible for GMB listing?
- What is their organic authority?
- What is their page speed and web vitals metrics? Once the Page Experience update rolls out, this can impact rankings.
No matter why you’re experiencing subpar results, your life will be easier if you set yourself up for success from the beginning. That’s why setting proper expectations upfront is so important.
How to Manage Expectations for Local SEO
One of the most important aspects of Local SEO is managing client expectations. Many business owners are unfamiliar with local optimization, so they usually expect too much, too fast. Setting clients expectations upfront is the best way to avoid pitfalls later.
Be sure to do these when setting expectations:
- Set Realistic Timeframes
- Stress a Long Term Commitment
- Compare PPC v Organic
- Downplay Fluctuations & Highlight Small Wins
- Keep Your Client In The Loop
Realistic Timeframes
When you begin a campaign, explain what a realistic timeframe is for each goal. When can clients expect to see results?
Our general guidance is 6-9 months to see the full results of a local SEO campaign. However, this timeframe can vary depending on your client. If they’ve already built up some authority and rank on page 2-3, they will probably see results sooner. In fact, a client that has no large issues holding back their local rankings could see great visibility improvement in as little as 2-3 months!
Set yourself up for success by educating your clients. The more clients understand your work and process, the easier it is for clients to see the value of the work you do. When your clients understand the timeframes and expectations of their campaigns, you can save time and headaches down the road.
Stress the Long Game
A long term commitment is needed for optimal SEO results. This goes hand in hand with setting attainable timetables. It is especially important to emphasize the long game early in the campaign, as it can take awhile to see results from your initial work. You don’t want clients to walk away after a few months, because they aren’t seeing the quick results they expected. We’ve also found clients appreciate the upfront and honest feedback – not just telling them what they want to hear.
Remind clients of the extensive process of SEO. It can help to drive home the long term commitment of local SEO. This not only helps you reduce questions and set expectations, but it also makes you look like a real local SEO hero when your client sees improvement earlier than your projected expectation. It is always better to over deliver than to over promise.
Show Comparative Value
If clients are worried about a long term commitment, show the comparative value of local SEO against other forms of marketing, like PPC. Paid ads can get expensive quickly.
PPC also requires clients to continually pay for results. Once that ad spend is reduced or stopped, the leads and phone calls stop too. For example, if your client is running PPC ads to get calls from their listing, these calls will likely all but cease when you stop paying for PPC advertising. However, SEO is a different animal.
Local SEO is an upfront investment, but you build long-term, sustainable rankings, traffic, and authority that provides long term results. Instead of continually paying hefty ad fees, your SEO costs will decrease as time goes on, but ranking benefits will increase.
By explaining the comparative costs and values of SEO and PPC, clients expect higher costs upfront and understand it will pay off down the line. This can help get clients to “buy in” to the long term commitment, while also justifying the cost and overall value.
Downplay Fluctuations & Highlight Small Wins
Another aspect of managing client expectations is talking the client off the ledge when results aren’t as robust as they’d expected. Learn to downplay small bumps in the road like keyword drops. Not every keyword will always be improving. Fluctuations in rankings should be expected, which goes back to educating your client on SEO & timelines.
Highlighting small wins can help offset any worries or subpar results. It gives clients a sense that things are still moving forward while showing off the work you’re doing.
Similar to the stock market, there may be down days, but the overarching trend is upward.
Keep Your Client in the Loop
Too many business owners part ways with their agency because the client feels not enough progress is being made. However, oftentimes, there is meaningful progress being made, the reporting just isn’t conveying the results.
You must consistently report results and talk with your client about how they feel the campaign is progressing. Your clients won’t want to work with an agency they feel is not hearing their concerns. Always make sure that your client knows their concerns are being heard, but don’t let them believe that a mole hill is a mountain by any means.
Solve this problem with consistent reporting using the local metrics we’ve discussed above. Additionally, you can screenshot any quick wins you find and send them over to the client. Even if it’s a quick text to say, “hey, calls are up 10% this week.” It matters. That provides the personal touch clients are looking for.
Managing client expectations is not always easy, but it is important if you want your campaign to succeed. It will not only alleviate concerns and avoid unhappy clients down the road, it will also set you up as a valuable resource for your client, further cultivating an honest and lasting business relationship.
Present the Perfect Report (Visual & Concise)
Crafting the best reports goes beyond what metrics to include. Your reports must provide specific details on improvements in a visually appealing way, while also being concise enough that your client’s eyes don’t glaze over. Here’s what our team recommends.
Concise
Your reports should be short, sweet, and to the point. Most business owners don’t have extra time to read detailed reports about campaigns. Clients prefer an overview of the important data points and recent changes.
Comparisons are the best way to present a meaningful, yet concise report. Compare calls and other local insights mentioned against the baseline data from when you started working with the client. This clearly shows the overall progress you’ve made on the campaign without lengthy explanations. You can also compare the data from the previous month, year, or quarter depending on what you want to show your clients.
Include Small Wins
You should always be grabbing snapshots of any improvements or notable changes. These will always come in handy. Even if the campaign had a down month, chances are there’s some small wins. Highlight what’s improving, no matter how small. The culmination of many small improvements leads to big results.
If individual rankings and customer actions are fluctuating, visibility is a long term goal that can be highlighted. It usually trends upward as you implement solid SEO tactics and create additional content, citations, and GMB posts. Show clients how much their online visibility improved and audience expanded. You can show visibility improvements through citations, directory listings, brand searches, and geogrid reports.
Visually Appealing & Consitentcy
It can be hard for clients and business owners to fully grasp the data points when just reading numbers on paper, so you must also present the information in a visually appealing and easy-to-understand way.
Consider data visualization so clients can easily understand metrics. Many of the graphs can be pulled directly from GMB Insights or Google Search Console. You can also utilize:
- GeoGrids
- Brand Colors
- Simple Fonts
- Defined Structure
- Call Outs
While we recommend visually appealing reports, they must also be consistent. Show the same data in the same place on every report. This helps business owners quickly find the information they’re looking for.
Include GeoGrids
Local search rankings are complex. While clients may think they rank the same across an entire city, there’s much more variation. Show your clients how each location ranks in every corner of their market with GeoGrids. If you have enough GeoGrids, you can even create a gif to animate the progress!
These visually striking maps are a great way to easily show your clients improvements in local SEO, as well as demonstrates the complexities. This visual representation makes it easy to understand the nuisances in local rankings and visibility for a listing.
Your local SEO reports will stand out with these concise and visually appealing elements! GeoGrids are available through the Local Viking Platform with multiple options depending on your client base.
Let Us Report For You!
Our Custom Google Data Studios offer a flexible, robust reporting suite that can replace all your other reporting software.
Our Level 2 reporting integrates with Local Viking to incorporate active GeoGrids for easy-to-understand reporting. We include 5 baseline grids during setup, then updated grids we pulled once a month, every other week, or once a week.
You also get access to Local Viking grids without paying for an LV account! Our reporting suite uses our private instance of Local Viking – saving you money!
If you want to show progression in the local SERPs without manually pulling GeoGrids, our done-for-you reporting service is the answer!
You can integrate and track:
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
- GBP Listing Insights
- Local Viking (Before & After GeoGrids)
Reports are white labeled and branded for your agency, so all you have to do is send the report link to your client! We make it easy to track campaign progress and get your clients the necessary data to understand your value.
Properly Position Your Agency
When all the above ideas work together, you position your agency for high perceived value and strong retention rates. Clients are educated on why local SEO is important, as well as expectations for timelines and investments. They understand your value and how complex SEO can be, relieving the pressure for quick results and allowing you to charge more.
Knowing which metrics matter most and what to report (& not report), highlights gains without making the report confusing or time consuming. Then, compiling these metrics into concise and visually appealing reports will validate client ad spend with hard numbers. They can also help business owners easily digest the data and understand what they’re paying for.
We know how valuable our work is. SEO activities drive impactful, measurable results.
Now, convey that to your clients!
WEB20 Ranker helps agencies to create winning local SEO campaigns for their clients. All of our GMB campaigns include several forms of reporting, ranging from local rank tracking to GeoGrid reporting and everything in between. Alongside our white label agency reporting dashboard, Web 20 gives agencies all the tools they need to fulfill and report their client’s local and organic SEO needs. All reports are white labeled to make it easier to provide direct updates to your clients.