Growth Potential Unlocked: How Local SEO Increases Profits

Both organic SEO and local SEO offer huge potential impact on how potential customers discover your business, as search and discovery lead towards intent to purchase. Moreover, though, there is—or should be—a strong interest for revenue growth strategies in SEO metrics.

We know, this correlation may not appear obvious at first glance. Your CEO may not think to ask for the details on how local SEO increases profits either, or the ROI on enhancing your Google Business Profile. These questions continue to sit firmly in the digital marketing domain, yet they offer firm measures of success for data-driven marketing practices.

In other words, as local marketers track SEO metrics to tweak revenue growth strategies and increase local SEO ROI, they should also understand how local SEO may influence profit overall—if for nothing else, then as a way to indicate their digital marketing successes so they can sustain growth.

Tangible Financial Impacts from Local SEO

Strong local SEO can drive business growth, especially when marketers pay close attention to search intent. It can enhance your online presence, target hyper-relevant traffic, build trust, and generate a positive impression—especially for mobile users who are more likely searching with an intent to buy.

Higher Visibility

While organic SEO aims to help potential customers find information about products and services overall, local search usually comes with an intent to find relevant locations nearby. Safari Digital found 46% of all searches on Google include local intent, with 97% of users searching online to find a local business at some point. And these “near me” searches increased by 400% in recent years!

By connecting your business to the right audience at the right time, local SEO can propel your business to new heights within your community:

• increase local visibility

• build trust and credibility

• reach a targeted customer base

• generate traffic to physical locations

Think of it as a better neighborhood-level promotion, and a more cost-effective marketing strategy compared to for example out-of-home advertising.

Higher Conversion Rates

Given a sharper focus on the audience in specific geographic areas, local SEO increases your chances of converting leads into sales—and this is one way to show how local SEO increases profits. Consider that Safari Digital also found a purchase follows 28% of all local searches, and that 78% of local searches result in an in-person conversion: local SEO strategies offer real potential for tangible financial impact.

Those results also arrive quickly. According to Forbes, 18% of local searches lead to a purchase within 24 hours, and half of smartphone users visited a store within a day of their local search.

Investing in SEO Strategies for Revenue Growth

Local SEO accomplishes more than increasing profits through targeting users who are ready to buy; it also boosts visibility and brand awareness, working towards a scalable sales generation channel.

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 when leveraging 21-30 directories compared to businesses using less than 10.

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.

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 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​​.

Similarly, TUI used the Uberall platform to gain detailed insights into the performance of its branches. By integrating thousands of data points from platforms like Google and Facebook, TUI could measure customer experience, track local and national campaign impacts, and optimize their marketing strategies, resulting in improved decision-making.

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.

Uberall’s AI-driven platform centralizes your data to show you how customers find, experience, and interact with your locations online. This data can inform revenue growth strategies and detail how local SEO increases profits—netting you the insights you need to maximize performance and ROI. Get in touch to see it in action.