Google My Business (GMB) is one of the most powerful tools you can use to improve your Local SEO and online visibility.
If you’re a local business, it’s not enough to just claim your GMB listing.
By optimising your listing to appear when consumers in your local area search for products and services online, you can generate free exposure that drives both website traffic and foot traffic.
Take a look at Brisbane based car servicing and repair team, Classy Cars, to see how important it is to optimise your GMB if you want to boost your local SEO results and generate leads through your listing.
Local SEO Case Study: Classy Cars
Did you know that businesses with a complete and accurate GMB listing are:
- 2.7x more likely to be viewed as reputable
- Get 7x more clicks
- 70% more likely to attract in-store visits
- Twice as likely to lead to a purchase
By optimising for local SEO, your potential customers will be able to see:
- Your business name
- Your business address
- Your business phone number
- Photos of your business
- Online reviews
- Directions on Google Maps
This makes it easy for people to call, email or visit your brick and mortar store. All without ever having visited your website.
We optimised Classy Cars’ GMB through completing their listing in full, perfecting their description, uploading compelling photos, and collecting 5-star Google reviews.
Here’s what happened…
This is how customers found their listing…
This data shows how many people were able to find Classy Cars across a 3-month period.
Their GMB listing was displayed across 16,323 searches.
This is broken down into 3 categories:
- Direct: Customers who found their listing searching for their business name or address
- Discovery: Customers who found their listing searching for a category, product or service.
- Branded: Customers who found their listing searching for a brand related to their business.
Across a 3-month period, 3,259 people found Classy Cars by searching for their name or address directly, or 70.5% of total searches during that period. Brand name searches help to improve their chance of turning a lead into a sale. People looking for their brand are likely deeper in the sales funnel, with Google research showing branded keywords have over two times higher conversion rates when compared to non-branded terms.
Classy Cars also saw 1,170 people finding them by searching for the products and services they provide, or 25.3% of total searches during that period. Discovery searches represent potential customers who would never have heard of their business without our highly effective local SEO campaign.
A further 195 people, or 4.2% of all searches, found Classy Cars through branded search. Branded search gives them the chance to take traffic away from their competitors.
This is what customers searched for to find their listing…
These data reflects the search terms people entered into Google to find Classy Cars’ GMB listing.
By optimising their listing to reflect the services and locations they wanted to target, we were able to drive website traffic and foot traffic through local SEO.
Outside of searches for their brand name, we were able to help Classy Cars appear for competitive searches like, ‘saab‘ (485 searches), ‘car’ (122 searches), and ‘mechanic‘ (91 searches).
When optimised effectively, a GMB listing can be used in the same way as organic SEO, attracting leads through local SEO search terms.
This is where customers viewed their business on Google…
This data shows whether Classy Cars’ customers were finding them through a traditional Google search or through a Google Maps search. In total this added up to 33.8 thousand views.
High traffic from Google maps means that people are looking for Classy Cars using their mobiles. And with 78% of local mobile searches resulting in either an in-store or online purchase, that’s great for business.
This is how customers interacted with their listing…
This data is broken down into action type, split between:
- Website visits
- Direction requests
- Phone calls
With 72 visits to their website, 83 directions on Google Maps, and 119 phone calls across a 3-month period, we helped Classy Cars leverage their GMB listing into real, qualified leads.
This is where customers requested directions from…
This data displays the locations and number of people who requested directions to Classy Cars’ business address.
This valuable information shows that areas where people are actively searching for their products and services and can be used by Classy Cars to target specific areas and postcodes in their future marketing efforts.
This will reduce future marketing spend by concentrating their resources on the locations proven to be driving traffic. In doing so, Classy Cars will work towards lowering their marketing costs, improving their conversion rates, and maximising their ROI.
This is how many and how often customers contacted them via phone…
This data shows how many times a customer called Classy Cars, broken down by day, across a 3-month period.
The graph shows when customers were reaching out to Classy Cars the most, with Wednesday being the most popular time to get in contact, across 130 total phone calls.
This is how many photo views they had…
This data shows how many times Classy Cars’ photos were viewed across a 3-month period.
Businesses with photos on their listing receive 42% more direction requests and 35% more click throughs to their website than GMB listings without photos.
As Classy Cars operates in a competitive market, the number of photos views for businesses similar to them is also displayed.
In this case we were able to help Classy Cars’ images receive 1,000 thousand more photo views than the industry average, or an increase of 22%.
This is how many photos they uploaded compared to their competitors…
This data shows the number of photos we helped upload to Classy Cars’ GMB listing compared to those uploaded by their competitors.
We helped Classy Cars to beat their industry median for images uploaded, creating a GMB listing that is visual and highly engaging.
Is your business making the most of Local SEO yet?
Here are a few stats to show you just how important local search is for Australian businesses.
- According to Google, 46% of all searches have a local intent. That’s almost 1 out of every 2 searches looking for local products and services.
- 50% of people who conducted a local search ended up visiting a physical store within 24 hours.
- 92% of people will choose a business on the first page of local search results.
If you haven’t started optimising your website or GMB for Local SEO, you’re missing out on valuable traffic that can help your business grow.
So, what are you going to do today to put your business in front of ‘ready to buy’ customers tomorrow?
