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 Melbourne based naturopath, Janine Brundle, 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: Janine Brundle
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 Janine Brundle’s GMB through completing her listing in full, perfecting her description, uploading compelling photos, and collecting 5-star Google reviews.
Here’s what happened…
This is how customers found her listing…
This data shows how many people were able to find Janine Brundle across a 3-month period.
Her GMB listing was displayed across 5,289 searches.
This is broken down into 3 categories:
- Direct: Customers who found her listing searching for her business name or address
- Discovery: Customers who found her listing searching for a category, product or service.
- Branded: Customers who found her listing searching for a brand related to her business.
Across a 3-month period, 2,653 people found Janine Brundle by searching for her name or address directly, or 50.2% of total searches during that period. Brand name searches help to improve her chance of turning a lead into a sale. People looking for her 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.
Janine Brundle also saw 2,543 people finding her by searching for the products and services she provides, or 48.1% of total searches during that period. Discovery searches represent potential customers who would never have heard of her business without our highly effective local SEO campaign.
A further 93 people, or 1.8% of all searches, found Janine Brundle through branded search. Branded search gives her the chance to take traffic away from her competitors.
This is what customers searched for to find her listing…
These data reflects the search terms people entered into Google to find Janine Brundle’s GMB listing.
By optimising her listing to reflect the services and locations she wanted to target, we were able to drive website traffic and foot traffic through local SEO.
Outside of searches for her brand name, we were able to help Janine Brundle appear for competitive searches like, ‘naturopath‘ (41 searches), ‘naturopath melbourne’ (17 searches), and ‘where can I buy homeopathic medicine near me‘ (16 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 her business on Google…
This data shows whether Janine Brundle’s customers were finding her through a traditional Google search or through a Google Maps search. In total this added up to 5.76 thousand views.
High traffic from Google maps means that people are looking for Janine Brundle 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 her listing…
This data is broken down into action type, split between:
- Website visits
- Direction requests
- Phone calls
With 47 visits to her website, 251 directions on Google Maps, and 13 phone calls across a 3-month period, we helped Janine Brundle leverage her 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 Janine Brundle’s business address.
This valuable information shows that areas where people are actively searching for her products and services and can be used by Janine Brundle to target specific areas and postcodes in her future marketing efforts.
This will reduce future marketing spend by concentrating her resources on the locations proven to be driving traffic. In doing so, Janine Brundle will work towards lowering her marketing costs, improving her conversion rates, and maximising her ROI.
This is how many and how often customers contacted her via phone…
This data shows how many times a customer called Janine Brundle, broken down by day, across a 3-month period.
The graph shows when customers were reaching out to Janine Brundle the most, with Monday and Tuesday being the most popular time to get in contact, across 12 total phone calls.
This is how many photo views she had…
This data shows how many times Janine Brundle’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 Janine Brundle operates in a competitive market, the number of photos views for businesses similar to her is also displayed.
In this case we were able to help Janine Brundle’s images receive 300 more photo views than the industry average, or an increase of 8.6%.
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?
