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 customers 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 Hobart based beauticians, Skindulgence, 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: Skindulgence
Did you know that businesses with a complete and accurate GMB listing are:
- 2.7x more likely to be viewed as reputable
- 7x more clicked
- 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.
As part of a wider local SEO campaign, we optimised Skindulgence’s GMB through completing their listing in full, adding relevant services, 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 Skindulgence across a 3-month period.
Their GMB listing was displayed across 16,358 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, 380 people found Skindulgence by searching for their name or address directly, or 9.7% 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.
Skindulgence also saw 3,522 people finding them by searching for the products and services they provide, or 89.8% 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.
This is what customers searched for to find their listing…
This data reflects the search terms people entered into Google to find Skindulgence’s 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 Skindulgence appear for competitive searches like ‘nail salon hobart‘ (324 searches), ‘eyelash extensions hobart‘ (290 searches), and ‘nails hobart’ (235 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 Skindulgence’s customers were finding them through a traditional Google search or through a Google Maps search. In total this added up to 18.9 thousand views.
High traffic from Google Maps means that people are looking for Skindulgence 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 808 visits to their website, 143 direction requests on Google Maps, and 429 phone calls across a 3-month period, we helped Skindulgence leverage their GMB listing into real, qualified leads.
This is where customers requested directions from…
This data displays the locations of people who requested directions to Skindulgence’s business address.
This valuable information shows the areas where people are actively searching for Skindulgence’s products and services. This can then be used by Skindulgence 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 Skindulgence 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 Skindulgence, broken down by day, across a 3-month period.
The graph shows when customers were reaching out to Skindulgence the most, with Friday being the most popular time to get in contact, across 424 total phone calls.
This is how many photo views they had…
This data shows how many times Skindulgence’s 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 Skindulgence 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 Skindulgence’s images receive 11,220 more photo views than the industry average, or an increase of 167%.
This is how many photos they uploaded compared to their competitors…
This data shows the number of photos we helped upload to Skindulgence’s GMB listing compared to similar businesses in their industry.
Also shown are the number of photos uploaded by their customers, compared to the industry average.
GMB listings allow for shoppers to upload images to help people understand what each business looks like. A high number of photos uploaded by shoppers reflects a stronger relationship between a business and their audience, which will help to increase the number of positive reviews, increase conversions and reduce marketing spend.
We helped Skindulgence to beat the industry median for images uploaded by over 400%, 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?
