Those of us "in the know" about local SEO understand exactly how important it is for local businesses to invest in continuously improving their local search visibility.
However, despite its clear benefits, it can sometimes be hard to explain local SEO ROI to those who are less savvy in the field, whether they're your clients or employers. This is why it's so important to start tracking ROI from your local SEO efforts from day one.
Being able to report on and prove a higher ROI for local SEO will help increase buy-in over time, ultimately contributing to even better results for you and the businesses you serve alike.
5 Tips To Help Show ROI From Local SEO
1. Use a Geo-Grid Rank Tracker To Show ROI From Your Local SEO Efforts
The first thing you'll need in order to be able to show local SEO ROI, for a small business, an enterprise, or anything in between, is a local rank tracker. More specifically, you should be using a geo-grid rank tracking tool.
Geo-grid rank tracking allows you and your clients or employers to visualize local search performance at a granular level, seeing exactly how any given business location stacks up against its competitors at specific points on the local search grid.
Compared to traditional rank trackers, which just show an average ranking over a broad geographic area, a geo-grid rank tracker shows your rankings at the hyperlocal level. The color-coded ranking heatmap makes it easy for anyone to see exactly how their business's rankings are improving over time, helping you visually demonstrate local SEO ROI and prove the value of your services and strategies.
In simple terms, more green points on the geo-grid heatmap = more visibility in local search, which directly translates into more website visits, phone calls, appointment bookings, or visits for local businesses.
2. Monitor Key GBP Performance Metrics To Prove Local SEO ROI
Rankings themselves are one of the most important performance metrics for local SEO, but they aren't the only one.
The ultimate goal of local SEO is to drive customers to take desirable actions, such as visiting a business's website, calling, booking a service appointment, making a reservation, or going to the business in person.
Google Business Profile allows you to track all these types of interactions, showing you how many customers click on the website link, click to call, or request directions directly from a business's GBP listing.
However, it's important to note that these metrics aren't stored forever in Google Business Profile, and extracting the data to get it into your own reporting can be overly complex or require expensive third-party tools.
That's why we recommend using Falcon Guard, which not only protects your GBP against unwanted edits, but also shows you key Google Business Profile performance metrics right in your Guard Reports.
Falcon Guard makes it easier than ever to include GBP engagement insights alongside your rank tracking reports, helping you demonstrate local SEO ROI to stakeholders and even correlate changes in performance with specific GBP edits.
3. Track Website Traffic From Local Search With UTM Parameters
To connect the dots between your local SEO efforts and website activity, you'll want to track how much traffic is coming directly from Google Business Profile.
As we mentioned above, you can see website visits directly in the Performance Metrics section of GBP (formerly Insights) or Falcon Guard Reports. But if you're also using a tool like Google Analytics to track overall website traffic, it's also worth using UTM parameters on your GBP links.
By tagging these URLs, you'll be able to isolate local traffic sources inside tools like Google Analytics, giving you insight into how many sessions result from local search activity. This data helps you go beyond rankings and engagement to show real local SEO ROI in terms of lead generation, as customers who visit the website are going deeper into the purchase decision-making process.
For even more clarity, you can segment this traffic by campaign or location, helping you tie local SEO efforts to specific outcomes for each individual business location.
4. Tie Local SEO Efforts to Real-World Outcomes with Lead and Conversion Tracking
To fully demonstrate the ROI of local SEO, it's crucial to connect online visibility to actions that indicate leads and conversions, especially things like form submissions and appointment bookings. Consider implementing tools that allow you to track which leads or conversions are coming directly from local landing pages.
For example, with lead tracking tied specifically to a consultation-request form on a local landing page, you can measure how many people are filling out the form after visiting that page via local search results.
When you can report that your local SEO efforts brought in 35 new form-based leads this month, up from 20 the month before, it becomes much easier to justify your strategies and continued investment in local SEO.
5. Benchmark Against Competitors To Show Strategic Wins
Often, the most compelling proof of ROI is outperforming the competition. By benchmarking your local SEO performance against nearby competitors, you can show exactly where your efforts are making a difference.
Using tools like Local Falcon's Competitor Reports, you can compare visibility across the geo-grid and track how your rankings improve relative to other businesses in the area. If your client was previously buried behind 4 or 5 competitors on most of the map, and now shows up in the top 3 positions across key areas, that's a win worth celebrating and reporting!
These comparisons not only help prove local SEO ROI, but they also provide strategic insights that can guide future SEO efforts and help businesses maintain or expand their local market share.
How To Actually Calculate Your Local SEO ROI
Of course, ROI is ultimately about numbers, so here's a simple formula and example of how to actually calculate your local SEO ROI:
Local SEO ROI = (Revenue from Local SEO - Cost of Local SEO) / Cost of Local SEO x 100
Let's say you're doing local SEO for a home services business, such as a local HVAC contractor, and they're investing $750/month in your local SEO services. That month, you get 3 new service appointments from people who found the business on Google Maps and called the business, with each job averaging $1,000 in revenue:
$1,000 x 3 = $3,000 from local SEO-driven leads
ROI = ($3,000 - $750) / $750 x 100 = 300%
That's a 300% ROI, meaning for every dollar spent by your client, you're generating $4 in return ($3 profit + the original $1).
This kind of clear, bottom-line math helps take the guesswork out of your clients' local SEO investment. It also makes it easier to justify ramping up your efforts when things are working, or pivoting when they're not.
Keep in mind that it's not always possible to directly link specific business transactions with local search visibility, but you can always show general correlations between better local search performance and increased revenue. That's where the tips to help show ROI from local SEO discussed above come in.
For example, if you increase a client's rankings across 20% of the geo-grid, and their revenue increases by around 20% the following month, that's a pretty strong indicator of local SEO's impact!
Wrapping Up
Local SEO is one of the highest-ROI investments a local business of any size can make, but it's important to clearly track and demonstrate the results. Whether you're reporting to clients, leadership, or just managing your own business, the ability to connect efforts to increased local search visibility and real business outcomes is what drives confidence and continued growth.
Make sure to use the right tools, monitor actual customer actions, and benchmark against the competition, then take it a step further and actually do the math. When you can confidently say, "We made X dollars from local search this month," you've gone from simply doing local SEO to proving it's working!
