We all know the elements that go into making a successful local SEO campaign. At ZMOT, we’ve long been talking about the importance of high-quality content that’s informative and useful. Of course, backlinks are also critical to increasing page rank.
Reviewing metrics are important, too. After all, once your local SEO strategy is implemented, you need to be able to determine its effectiveness. The SEO professionals here at ZMOT have a list of key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you discover whether you’re getting the optimal return on your campaign.
- Referrals
A referral is a visit to your site that comes as the result of clicking a link. It doesn’t include traffic that comes from organic search or ads. A referral report shows the number of visitors coming from other websites and shows how engaged they are on your site.
You can view your referral traffic in Google Analytics by going to Acquisitions>All Traffic>Referrals. If your SEO campaign is effective, you’ll see a great deal of traffic coming from referrals. You’ll also be able to see how long the visitors have spent on your site, the bounce rate and the conversion rate.
- Organic Traffic
Organic traffic comes from search engine results, as opposed to ads. Organic search traffic is one of the best gauges of your local SEO influence. You can view your organic search traffic report at Acquisition>All Traffic>Channels in the Channel Grouping report. The Sessions section will show you the number of users who were interacting over a specific period of time. You can track the data from one month to the next to see how well your local SEO campaign is working in the long run.
- Reviews
Many people don’t understand the value of reviews or know how they affect local SEO campaigns. If your business has a substantial amount of reviews, it can rise to the top of the search page. This will give prospective customers confidence in your product or service and establish you as a company they can trust. Reviews come from many places, including websites like Google Reviews, Bing Places, Yelp, etc.But the number of reviews aren’t the only indicators; the reviews need to be legitimate and honest. If your business has many reviews and all of them are five stars, it will raise a red flag with Google. So, there’s no point trying to game the system.
In Conclusion
Creating a local SEO strategy is important, but once the plan is up and running, don’t overlook the importance of reviewing and evaluating the results. Keep these three KPIs in mind when you review the success of your campaign and you’ll be able to plot your course for the future.
