Local SEO reports help us understand the progress of our optimization strategies and redirect them where necessary.
But for that, you have to closely follow the evolution of the main KPIs, the true protagonists of any local positioning reporting process.
Let’s see what they are and what your local SEO reports should have.
👉Check out our selection of Looker Studio templates
Important KPIs in Local SEO
“How many people are visiting my profile?”; “And my website?”; “How do I know if they are interested in buying from me?”.
These are some of the questions your clients may ask you to find out if they are getting a good return on investment or ROI with their positioning strategy.
The answer lies in the local SEO KPIs. These include conversions and sales, but there are many others that you should take into account for reporting:
1. Conversions and/or Sales
KPIs such as the number and rate of conversions and sales are the sign that the local SEO strategy is generating business.
In local positioning, a sale can be a purchase or the contracting of a service, while a conversion can be filling out a form to request information.
💡 Conversions can take place in the Business Profile, on a local landing page, or on any other URL of the website just after visiting the business listing.
2. Ranking of Main Business Keywords
The ranking of the main keywords of the business is one of the local SEO KPIs that measure the visibility of the project and its evolution.
You have to pay attention to the keywords positioned both for Google Search (Google Search) and for Google Maps, as they can be very different:
- Of local content (they derive traffic to the website): such as «what to see in Seville in 2 days or «best pizzeria with terrace in the center of Valencia», and that derive traffic to the website.
- Of business or service location (they direct traffic to the listing): such as “mechanical workshop Barcelona” or “brake repair Barcelona”.
Thus, we can know which ones are increasing traffic and generating sales or conversions in both types of search.
3. Position of the Google Listing in the Local Pack
The position of the Google listing in the Local Pack allows you to know the positioning of the local business in the map results.
The best way to measure it is through a geogrid, a local positioning map that shows us the positions of a local business in a specific geographic area, using colored pins.
Thus, we have a kind of heat map that indicates in which areas we are positioning in the first positions (green pins) and in which not (orange or red pins, depending on the ranking) for local searches.
4. Traffic Generated to the Listing and the Web from Organic
Traffic is the local SEO KPI that helps us know if our optimizations are translating into organic visits to the web or the business listing.
It helps us understand which of the two channels has better performance and what the engagement of the users is, especially if we cross it with metrics such as:
- The pages visited per session and the time spent on the website
- The impressions and interactions with the business listing
This data can be extracted from Google Analytics (website data) and from the Google Business Profile console (listing data).
5. Appearances and Citations of the NAP
NAP citations are online appearances of the name, address and phone number of a business on other web pages.
They are a local SEO KPI that is closely related to the increase in the relevance of the business, as Google uses them as a ranking signal.
For the reporting process, it is not enough to detect the new citations; you have to monitor them all to verify that there is maximum consistency in the data between them.
If there are many, it is better to use a specific tool, such as NAPhunter.
What should a Local SEO Report Have?
A complete local SEO report has to offer an overview of the progress that has been made in the positioning of the business.
For this, it must include data and metrics from different sources, and several analyses of important aspects worked on in the positioning strategy.
Let’s see them:
Metrics of the Google Business Profile Listing
In your local SEO report, you cannot miss a space dedicated to the user interaction data with your Google Business Profile.
You have them inside the performance tab of the profile and, basically, you will find three types of data:
✓ Where users have clicked
✓ Through which searches they have reached the listing
✓ How many people have seen it by platform and device
You will be able to know the total number of interactions in the period of time that you have defined (maximum 6 months ago) and delve into more specific metrics:
- Calls
- Reservations
- How to get there
- Clicks to the website
❗ Of course: you will not be able to investigate on which specific days more visits and clicks occur, nor from where you are receiving more visits, whether from organic search or from Google Maps.
To obtain more data you can use local SEO report templates, which cross the main metrics of the Business Profile with data from tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console to create complete and very visual reports:
If you work with several clients, there are local SEO softwares that not only allow you to analyze, but also make changes in bulk in several listings. A good example is RankPulse.
💡 Do not forget to complete your report with a geogrid so that the client is aware of how the business listing is ranking in its area of influence.
Data from your Web Analytics Tools
As we have seen, with Google Business Profile and some extra tool you can have covered the analysis of the performance of the business listing, but not that of the other leg of the local SEO strategy: the web page.
To do this, you have to obtain the data from web analytics tools, such as Google Analytics.
The most relevant that you should include in your local SEO report are those that have to do with organic traffic, conversions and the behavior of users that come from local searches:
- Visits: volume of traffic coming from queries with local intention.
- Landing pages: which URLs receive more visits from local searches
- Time on page: how long they spend on the web
- Pages per session: average of URLs they visit
- Bounce rate: how many abandon the website without interacting
- Conversion rate: percentage of local users who perform a desired action
- Acquisition channels: which channels (organic, direct, referred…) attract more local traffic
- Devices: prevalence of visits and conversions on mobile and desktop
During the reporting process, analyze which are the most relevant so that the client knows what users do after finding their business in the search results or in Google Maps.
Information about Business Citations
We have already talked about the importance of analyzing all local mentions of the business. But, what data to pay more attention to in the reporting for local SEO? Write down:
✓ Total number of citations found
✓ Classification of the type of websites (directories, social networks, review sites, etc.).
✓ Presence of citations in relevant local directories
✓ Authority and relevance of the sources
✓ Consistency of the NAP in all citations
✓ Volume of citations with additional information (schedules, descriptions or links)
✓ Amount of simple mentions (unstructured citations) in blogs, news portals and others
✓ List of obsolete appearances and/or that need to be updated
✓ Impact on the local positioning of the business
Do not forget to include the citation opportunities that you have detected! Also, emphasize the importance of correcting the discrepancies in name, address or phone number that some of the citations may present.
Main Data from Google Search Console
To complement the traffic data from Analytics, include a section dedicated to the positioning of local pages where data that Google Search Console gives you, such as:
- The metrics of clicks, impressions, CTR and average position of the local landings
- The keywords with local intention that generate more impressions and clicks
- The improvement in positions of local keywords in a specific period of time
- The new local incoming links that point to the website
- The possible crawling and indexing errors of important local pages
- The improvement opportunities that you have detected to improve the positioning of the local URLs with worse performance
Are you facing a complex project with hundreds of pages and thousands of keywords?
➡️ Then, you need to create Search Console reports that are interactive and allow you to easily visualize all this data for the important URLs of the client’s local SEO strategy.
This is a good example. As you can see, you can filter the data by device, country and specific words or types of search.
Review Analysis
The achievement of quality reviews is part of the objectives of any local SEO strategy, especially since Google has recognized its importance:
“High-quality, positive reviews from your customers can improve your business visibility and increase the likelihood that a shopper will visit your location”
Therefore, in your local SEO report you must include an analysis of the reviews received in the business profile.
In it, you can include data such as:
- The total number of reviews received on Google
- The growth rate of new reviews in a given period
- The average rating and its evolution over time
- The proportion of positive, neutral and negative reviews (sentiment analysis)
- The most popular keywords and topics that are mentioned in the reviews
- The percentage of reviews answered and average time taken to do so
- The presence and quality of reviews on different platforms, if applicable
- The impact of new reviews on the local ranking
- A comparison with the reviews of the competitors’ profile
You can analyze a large part of these aspects with a local SEO tool that includes management and analysis of reviews from the Google Business Profile.
Now you know the most important KPIs for local SEO and what essential data your reports should contain, but do not forget to adapt them to the objectives of your client’s business.
Also, remember to document both what happens in the business listing and on the website, but focus on what is important.
Your goal is to create a report that shows the fruits of your work, but that is as clear and visual as possible.
Alex Serrano
12 años en marketing digital. Creador de Chartud y especialista en Looker Studio. Consultor SEO desde hace 8 años. Creador y divulgador de contenido en diferentes formatos como 300Segundos (newsletter) o SEOdesdeCero (podcast). También cofundador de RankPulse.app, herramienta de SEO Local.
