How to track rankings, conversions and calls

Measuring and reporting the success of your local SEO efforts is critical to improving your strategy. While the main goal is usually to increase leads and revenue, it's also important to track progress incrementally through rankings, traffic, and conversions.

This article provides tips on how to set up and use data from rank tracking tools, website analytics, and call tracking to discover opportunities and accurately quantify local SEO results.

Configuring local ranking reports

The first thing local SEOs need to know is how to set up local rank tracking using a tool with geogrid map functionality.

Local Falcon and Places Scout are daily favorites for this task. These tools accurately measure local business rankings across any service area. Local Falcon focuses on Google Maps, and Places Scout covers both Google Maps and organic search.

When setting up this report, you will need to use various keywords. Don’t just focus on one version of your top keywords.

For a better representation, add a long tail version. Specifically, make sure you're tracking so-called explicit and implicit keywords.

When curating your keyword list, make sure your local keywords have map packs in the SERPs. If Google is not fully aware of search intent localization, some implicit searches may not include map packs.

This can change over time, so check your keyword's SERP screenshots regularly to monitor when map packs appear and when Google stops showing map packs. please.

Track the keywords that are already driving traffic to your website.

Ranking high for relevant headwords is important, but if you're not generating traffic for relevant searches, reconsider tracking that ranking. Use Google Search Console to verify that the keywords you target in your map are receiving organic search traffic.

This is a new consideration as Google recently adjusted its local algorithm to include business hours as a ranking factor.

Once your Google Business Profile shows your business as open, be sure to run a ranking scan for your business. Your ranking grid can look very different if your business is closed versus open.

Setting the radius for grid rank tracking

Adjust the rank tracking grid size to suit your business needs.

For example, if you're a real estate agent who operates within a 100-mile radius, don't set up a grid across that distance. This is because your property may not rank that high.

Similarly, avoid setting a large radius in a highly competitive area like Phoenix, as this can prevent you from accurately analyzing ranking performance across cities.

During the first scan, if you see too many red pins like in this example, you may have zoomed out too much and need to change the radius back.

On the other hand, if there's too much green, you might want to zoom out and see where your ranking is dropping. This is a way to identify where there are opportunities to improve your rankings.

Analyze local search ranking grids to find opportunities

Now that you have established an effective rank tracking grid, how do you use it to guide your local SEO strategy?

Start by researching your competitors by checking out which companies are ranking higher than you for important keywords. Compare your listings to those of other companies, considering factors known to influence rankings, such as:

• Number of reviews and ratings.
• Keywords for your business name.
• The main categories they use.
• Secondary categories they use. (I'm using the PlePer Local SEO Tools extension to verify this)
• attributes they have.

If you can improve your listing with any of the above, prioritize those enhancements and treat them as low-hanging fruit. Next, assess the quality of your website/GBP landing page by asking questions such as:

• Are you linking to your homepage or an internal page?
• What keywords and locations should you focus on on your GBP landing page?
• Is it quality content?
• Do you have quality internal links with keyword-rich anchor text throughout your site?

Perform keyword analysis to see the potential to improve local rankings for your target keywords. Local Falcon examines each competitor's Share of Local Voice (SoLV) for each keyword to see if any of them “dominate” the area for that keyword.

You can tell this by looking at whether your SoLV score is high or low. The higher the score, the more you'll appear in local finders for that keyword.

If some of your competitors are excelling with high SoLV scores, you may be able to improve your score with some SEO efforts.

On the other hand, if there are no competitors that achieve a high SoLV score, it may be practical to stop optimizing for that keyword. Data shows that influencing rankings for specific keywords is not that simple.

Success beyond the map: Local organic search

If you feel stuck improving your GBP listing on Maps, don't worry. Local SEO should prioritize increasing your website's organic visibility as much, if not more, than its GBP visibility within the map.

Focus on organic search to increase visibility of high-volume, competitive, and implicit searches.

Don't just work on your homepage, even if it's the page you're optimizing for your most important keywords. Establish local service authority by taking the time to optimize your service pages, location pages, and blog posts.

Make sure each page has a clear keyword and location focus, and make sure you're tracking organic rankings using a grid tracking tool just like you would for map rankings (Places Scout does this ).

This helps you measure the reach of every page on your site and determines if you need to adjust your content strategy to include more location-specific content in your desired service area.

Drive-time pages greatly increase organic visibility in large-scale drive-time areas. A well-written service area page can even outperform a GBP landing page in terms of total traffic and conversions.

If you're having trouble generating enough leads with GBP alone, consider investing in service area pages that show up in cities and towns you don't currently see.

Let's dig deeper: Optimize local landing pages for search: 8 best practices

Measure and report conversions

You're already using grid tracking tools to effectively power your local SEO strategy.

We prioritize maps and organic to optimize search visibility and also monitor SEO success through improved rankings and increased traffic.

But don't forget to track the conversions that result from these efforts.

Having a reliable source of conversion data is important here. Despite the backlash when it first came out, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a great platform that allows you to better track all events on your website.

First, make sure that GA4 is configured for accurate data tracking by adjusting your backend settings. Adjust factors such as data retention, session timeouts, and cross-platform tracking to maximize accuracy.

Using GA4 Expert for this is very valuable. There are many nuances in the platform, so working with someone experienced in setting up his GA4 for local traffic will avoid major problems down the road.

Once you're confident in the data you're recording, take some time to explore the site and check the following: all The following sources of leads are tracked:

• phone
• text
• chatbot
• Inquiry form
• Email
• Online scheduler/reservation tool

Think of all the ways users can contact your business through your website. This must be configured as an event in GA4.

GA4 also allows you to attribute conversions on other domains/platforms to the original source/medium if they arrive on your website first, known as cross-domain tracking.

So if you or your clients use third-party booking tools, make sure you set them up so you can get the credit they deserve for those conversions.

Importance of call tracking

Call tracking is beneficial for most businesses. I recommend setting up call tracking instead of relying on “click to call” metrics. There's no need to hesitate.

Yes, there will be an additional cost. Some might argue that what's the point, since GA4 automatically tracks anyone who clicks a call button or link?

My counter: Click-to-call data tells me there is nothing There are also issues with the quality of the calls, and the charges are overestimated as well, as there is no way to not track accidental clicks through that event.

We recommend setting up call tracking to see for yourself the differences in reporting these two events.

Using call tracking software to track calls from GBP and websites is a game-changer for reporting. Use a service that allows you to dynamically change the phone number on your page based on where the user is calling from.

I like using CallRail because it has a clean UX and you get a ton of data that you can access directly on the platform. The GA4 connector is also easy to set up and allows you to see call data reports directly on GA4.

If you're using UTM to track GBP traffic (which you should be), you'll receive onsite calls from users who clicked on your website from GBP, as well as onsite calls from users who found you through organic search. can be associated.

This will help you strategize where to focus your SEO efforts (organic vs. maps) depending on the volume and quality of calls.

Additionally, when you use call tracking numbers with GBP, you will be able to see the following data: all In addition to mobile click-to-calls, all incoming calls from GBP are tracked in GBP Insights.

Additionally, you can categorize first-time and repeat callers to better communicate how well GBP is converting new customers.

Start reporting early and reap the benefits later

Start collecting data early for a more reliable year-over-year report. Month-to-month fluctuations can be misleading, especially for seasonal businesses.

Don't delay setting up data tracking for your project. Month-over-month increases are positive, but don't be discouraged if you see occasional declines. Stay focused on your goals and let data, not opinions, guide your tactics.