Metrics for Local SEO: What to Track for Better Visibility and Higher Rankings

Even if you run an offline business bound to a particular locality, online visibility in a digital landscape can make or break your success. With most people using online searches to find businesses “near me,” having a strong local SEO strategy ensures that potential customers find your business before they find your competitors.

But how do you know if your efforts are working? This is where monitoring local SEO metrics and KPIs comes in. Without keeping an eye on key performance indicators (KPIs), you’re essentially navigating in the dark, unsure of what’s driving results and what needs improvement.

Below, we’ll break down the most important metrics for local SEO you should track to ensure your business stays ahead of the competition, attracts customers, and continues to grow.

Local SEO KPIs to Measure Your Local SEO Efforts Success

While enhancing the online visibility of businesses, local SEO also boosts foot traffic to your company and helps convert potential customers into paying clients. So, it’s vital to know your digital promotion strategy is effective by regularly checking local SEO important metrics.

• Website clicks
• Phone calls from GBP
• Cost per conversion (CPC)
• Local listings accuracy
• Branded vs. non-branded traffic
• Average page load time
• Local search rankings
• Traffic pattern metrics
• Bounce rate
• Geo-targeted keyword clicks

Website clicks

This metric refers to the number of times users visit your website from various sources, including Google Business Profile (GBP), organic search results, local directories, social media, and paid ads. Website visits are often the first step in a customer’s journey. Once they land on your site, they may explore your services, book an appointment, make a purchase, or contact you directly.

Depending on the traffic source, you can check for clicks using GBP insights, Google Analytics, and Google Console. More clicks mean more potential leads. A higher click number indicates customer interest. Low website clicks may suggest that your search snippets or GBP details need improvement to attract more attention.

Phone calls from GBP

When a user searches for a business on Google, they often see its GBP listing with a “Call” button, especially on mobile devices. Unlike website visits, where users may just be browsing, phone calls typically indicate a higher level of interest and a readiness to take action.

Analyzing call volume can provide insights into customer behavior, including the most popular call times, helping businesses adjust staffing and availability to better serve customers. If your listing is optimized correctly, you should receive a steady call flow from potential customers. You can use call-tracking software to analyze which keywords or campaigns drive the most calls.

Cost per conversion (CPC)

CPC helps measure how efficiently your marketing budget is being spent by showing how much you pay to acquire a new customer or lead through a specific campaign.

CPC = Total marketing and ad spend / Total conversions

A lower CPC means your marketing efforts are cost-effective, while a high CPC means your ads aren’t reaching the right audience or your landing pages need improvement. Using CPC data, businesses can decide which campaigns, keywords, and platforms are providing the best ROI. Through CPC analysis, they can also balance organic (SEO) and paid (PPC) efforts to get the best results for their budget.

Local listings accuracy

Your business should have accurate and up-to-date information across all local directories because search engines like Google use this data to determine a business’s legitimacy and relevance in local search results. Thus, inconsistent NAP details (name, address, phone) can hurt trustworthiness and lower local search rankings, while accurate listings increase the chance that your business appears in Google’s Local Pack (top three map results) to attract more customers.

Thus, regularly update your company info across platforms and use Schema Markup (structured data) to optimize for local SEO and help Google verify correct business details and match them with directory listings.

Branded vs. non-branded traffic

It’s one of the local SEO tracking metrics that allows for assessing brand awareness and organic search performance. Branded traffic comes from searches using your business name (e.g., “Smith’s Auto Repair”), while non-branded traffic comes from general searches (e.g., “best car repair near me”).

A healthy mix of both indicates strong local brand recognition and local SEO efficiency in attracting customers. However, low non-branded traffic signals low rankings for industry-related searches. You should focus on link-building and optimizing for long-tail and geo-specific keywords.

Average page load time

It’s a crucial metric for both SEO and UX. Google favors fast-loading websites, and so do users. Faster sites rank higher in search results, while a slow website can drive potential customers away before they even see what you have to offer. Google recommends that the page load time be up to 2.5 seconds. A 1-second delay can reduce conversions by 7%.

Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to test your site speed. To improve load time, optimize images, use caching, and minimize unnecessary scripts.

Local search rankings

Local search ranking reflects a business’s position in SERPs for location-based queries and determines how visible your business is to local customers searching for your products or services. Ranking higher in local searches drives more organic visitors to your website and foot traffic to your physical site, since 76% of local searches translate into real-world business visitors within 24 hours.

To improve your website rankings, watch for:

• GBP optimization;
• Local keyword optimization;
• Local schema markup application;
• NAP consistency and local citations;
• Online reviews;
• Localized content and local backlinks.

Traffic pattern metrics

Related to the trends and behaviors of users visiting your website over time, these metrics help businesses understand how people find, navigate, and engage with their site, revealing insights into traffic sources, peak visit times, and user interactions.

Through traffic patterns analysis, local companies can optimize their website and local SEO strategies by:

• Optimizing content posting or ad campaigns.
• Adjusting ad spend, promotions, and content strategy based on traffic trends.
• Focusing on channels that drive the most conversions.

Bounce rate

Indicating the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page, this metric helps diagnose issues with page design or content. A high bounce rate can signal poor user experience or irrelevant content, affecting your website rankings and user engagement. To reduce bounce rate and encourage user interactions, improve site navigation, add internal links, implement engaging visuals, and ensure pages load quickly.

Geo-targeted keyword clicks

Geo-targeted keywords include your location in the search term (e.g., “best bakery in Chicago”). Tracking clicks from these keywords helps assess how you’re ranking for important local search terms and whether you reach your target audience in a specific area or region. To attract hyper-local traffic, infuse your content with city, neighborhood, and service-area keywords. By using such tools as Semrush or BrightLocal, you can make a list of the best geo-specific keywords to refine your targeting for better reach.

Top Tools to Monitor Key Metrics for Local SEO

Now that you know the metrics for local SEO you need to track to stay on top of your promotion strategies, let’s look into the tools you can use to make data-driven decisions on changing, optimizing, or refining your approaches, methods, and certain aspects of your local SEO to achieve the best results.

Google Analytics

It’s a powerful, free tool that helps track your website traffic, user behavior, and conversion rates by enabling you to:

• Understand how much traffic comes from organic search, paid ads, social media, and referrals.
• Track metrics like bounce rate, session duration, and pages per session.
• Set goals to monitor form submissions, calls, and purchases.
• Use location data to see which regions your visitors are coming from.

Google Business Profile Insights

GBP Insights provides key data on how customers find and interact with your business listing on Google Search and Maps. You’ll be able to:

• Discover what keywords people use to find your business.
• Track clicks to your website, calls, direction requests, and bookings.
• See how often your listing appears in search results.
• Understand how customers interact with your business images.

This tool gives direct feedback on your business’s visibility and customer engagement to streamline your listing for better performance.

Google Search Console

Designed to monitor your website’s presence in Google search results, this tool allows you to:

• Track rankings, impressions, and click-through rates (CTR) for search queries.
• Identify mobile-related issues that may impact local search rankings.
• Assess traffic and rankings for local searches.

With this data, you’ll know how to optimize your content and fix technical issues.

Third-Party SEO Tools

To benefit from advanced tracking, you might also leverage several third-party tools that provide deeper insights, automation, and competitive analysis for local SEO.

• SEMrush to monitor and manage your business listings across multiple directories and analyze competitors’ local search performance.
• Moz to ensure your business info consistency across directories and track and respond to customer reviews.
• BrightLocal to evaluate on-page and off-page local SEO factors, manage customer reviews, and analyze your GBP performance in detail.

Final Tips

Tracking your local SEO performance isn’t just about collecting data, it’s about understanding what works, fixing what doesn’t, and continuously optimizing for better visibility and higher rankings.

Local SEO is a long-term game, and businesses investing in data-driven decision-making gain a competitive edge in local search results. By using the right tools and monitoring key metrics, you can win more traffic, get local customers hooked, and grow your business.