Must-Know Local SEO Statistics For Your Business Growth

This is a wake up call for all multi-location marketers. If you’re not allocating resources for a robust local digital marketing strategy, you’re lagging behind!

Allocating time, budget, and attention to local search behavior helps businesses to get found and be chosen online. Especially on Google though you need to know the current best practices. Because we live in a world of constantly-changing algorithms.

To take the pulse of search and digital marketing, let’s take a look at the most important local search engine optimization stats.

• SEO stats help you prioritize your efforts, because you’ll know what channels might require more resources over others.

• SEO stats help you stay competitive, because you’ll know what others are doing—and what you can do better.

• SEO stats help you stay on top of trends and gives you the chance to be an early adopter.

As multi-location business, you can use these to inform your marketing strategy and maximize impact both online, and off.

The State of Search and Digital Marketing

According to Statista, the global digital advertising market will reach $786.2 billion by 2026. That translates into a compound annual growth rate of 13.9%. And the portion dedicated to ad spend is expected to reach $279.30 billion this year—with the US, unsurprisingly, generating most of that growth.

Digital marketing is booming

Though marketing budgets are decreasing, 63% of businesses have increased their digital marketing budgets just this past year. In fact, 72% of overall marketing budgets are put towards digital marketing channels; because:

• 27% of consumers conduct a search for a business after seeing their display ad.

• Customers are 70% more likely to make a purchase from a retargeting ad.

• Social media makes up 33% of all digital ad spending in 2022.

SEO is paramount

Statista found that 60% of total ad spending will be generated through mobile by 2028. And a 59% share will most likely belong to Google, the most dominant search engine visited 87 billion times every month.

• SEO industry is worth $80 billion.

• 53% of all website traffic comes from organic searches.

• 75% of people never scroll past the first page of the SERP.

Local search is growing

Safari Digital found that 46% of all searches on Google involve local intent. Meanwhile, 97% of users search online to find a local store. And 28% of all searches in 2023 had a local intent resulting in a purchase. So customers do visit these businesses to buy in person.

• 87% of customers use Google to evaluate local business.

• 42% of local searches result in clicks on the Google 3-Pack.

• 400% more “open now near me” searches in recent years.

Search behavior has changed

Google found that shoppers go online first on more than 60% of occasions. Yet, local search is no longer just about listings. Customers’ omnichannel experience and cross-channel engagement are key.

• 60% of smartphone users contact a business directly from local search results.

• 49% of consumers like to buy from brands with a local presence.

• Voice search usage has increased to 8 billion today—a 146% growth since 2019.

• 86% of customers use Google Maps to find local businesses.

Reviews rule rankings

Positive reviews are a hall mark of a business that is worth trusting. And BrightLocal’s latest Local Consumer Review Survey found customers overwhelmingly choose Google for local business searches and evaluations.

• 98% of people read online reviews for local businesses.

• 73% of customers are more trusting of businesses with online reviews.

• 84% of customers seek out negative reviews to see how businesses handle these.

• Consumers spend 50% more with businesses that regularly respond to reviews.

With such strong signals being sent from reviews alone, it’s worth considering your current review management strategy.

Untapped potential of multi-location businesses

With all of these local SEO statistics being thrown around online, it can be tempting to bury your head in the digital sand. But they actually are an opportunity to stand out!

Staying on top of location-based marketing strategies can make a world of difference to your business. In our latest benchmark report, we found that most multi-location businesses still aren’t getting the basics right toget found:

• 29% do not use online business listings.

• 42% do not include a list of local stores on their website.

• 56% do not provide local web pages for each local store

Moreover, they have untapped potential tobe chosen and convert more consumers:

• 66% do not respond to reviews frequently enough.

• 52% do not engage customers with CTAs on local pages.

• 75% do not have customer referral programs.

And lastly, they miss opportunities to drive loyalty and make customers come back:

• 62% do not analyze sentiment.

• 62% do not have customer loyalty programs.

• 65% do not use review management tools.

In fact, the average local marketing maturity levels of multi-location businesses worldwide is only 48%, with maturity declining as the customer journey progresses:

Tip #1: Race to the top of search engine results pages

Remember that 87% market share for local searches? Yes, there are other search engines, but Google remains the go-to for the vast majority of internet users thinking locally. This means you should be investing time and resources into improving your Google ranking, using all of the critical content features on Google Business Profiles.

Google determines local ranking primarily by drawing on relevance, distance, and prominence. Yet, the most important local ranking factors include:

• Google Business Profile: make sure it is as complete as possible including your name, address, category, attributes, images, FAQs, and more.

• Reviews: encourage customers to leave reviews and respond to them quickly. Harvard Business Review found that replying to local reviews boosts submissions by 12%.

• Behavioral signals: optimize your click-through rate, bounce rate, and time spent on a webpage, and consider adding location landing pages.

• Calls to action: add booking, reservation, and order opportunities on Google, or integrate third-party delivery services.

Besides creating entries in the top 25 online directories, we recommend adding local landing pages to your website, too.

Tip #2: Build a flexible and durable digital marketing strategy

The algorithm is always changing, which means local SEO is not something you can “set and forget”. Make sure you’re future-proofing your multi-location business with a durable, future-ready local marketing strategy:

• Make use of managed listingsrather than spending resources on manual updates.

• Go local with your social media strategy and consider both organic and paid posts.

• Add locator and local pagesto your website to help customers find your stores.

• Automate your review management to not miss a single review.

What’s next for local SEO and search behavior?

One of the most effective ways to ensure your local business ranks on top is to curate and update your local online presence. Because corporate-level digital marketing on its own is not enough anymore.

Multi-location businesses must optimize their online content across the board. And this so-called “Local 3.0”, according to Search Engine Land, involves everything from images to product inventories on your profiles.

Make your assets discoverable across all channels, and, most of all, measure customer engagement. Although it’s about more than just having a presence; you need to make sure it stays up-to-date, complete, and optimized.

It can be a challenge to stay on top of this information for all of your locations, which is why many multi-location businesses choose an AI-powered platform such as Uberall to enable location marketing at scale.