Measuring Local SEO Success
A business owner opens his monthly SEO report and finds a graph climbing from the bottom left corner to the top right, with big numbers sitting beside it: thousands of impressions, hundreds of clicks, cheerful colours filling the page. It looks excellent on screen. Then he closes the report without an answer to the only question he actually cares about. Did more customers reach him this month?
Most reports lead with numbers that cannot be spent. This is the order those numbers should actually be read in, from the one that matters most to the one that matters least, and it is the same order any report you pay for should follow.
The number that matters: calls and WhatsApp messages from search
A service business does not sell clicks. It sells a service to a customer who calls or messages. The number that should lead any report is the count of calls and WhatsApp messages that reached you because somebody searched for you and found you, not every call that reaches you from any source. The simplest way to know a call came from search specifically is to ask the customer directly how he found you, and that question is worth turning into a habit. The more precise way is to have a phone number that only appears to people reaching you through your website or your Google profile, separate from the number printed on your cards and your shopfront. When that specific number rings, you know the source without asking anybody.
Impressions and clicks: supporting evidence, not the headline
Impressions are how many times your page appeared in search results, and clicks are how many people tapped it afterward. Both numbers are useful, but they are evidence that the work is moving in the right direction, not evidence that a result has actually reached your business. A page with many impressions and few clicks tells you the title or description people see in the results is not convincing them to open it. A page with many clicks tells you that title is working. Neither number tells you whether anybody picked up the phone afterward, and that is exactly what makes them supporting evidence to read after the first number, not a headline that opens the report.
Average position: the weakest of the three numbers
Average position is a number that tries to summarise where your site shows up in search results, averaged across dozens of the terms it might appear for. It is the weakest number in any report, because it moves for reasons that have nothing to do with your business at all. A new search term entering the count this month, a competitor launching an ad campaign, or even a temporary change in how Google displays its own results can shift it. A number that improves or worsens for reasons this disconnected from your day to day work does not deserve to be the headline your report opens with.
The search terms report says what a position number cannot
The search terms report shows the actual sentences people typed before they reached your site. This is where you find the real answer to two questions a single number cannot answer: which questions Google is actually finding you for, and which questions close to your business are being searched for while you never show up in them at all. The position number says nothing about either one, because it hides the detail inside one average. Anybody who wants to know where the next opportunity sits should look here, at the actual sentences, not at one number with no name attached to it.
Compare a month to the same month last year
A service business moves with the seasons. Demand for AC repair rises in summer. Demand for cleaning rises before holidays. Comparing a month to the one right before it shows a rise or a drop that may mean nothing about your business at all, because it is seasonal by nature and happens to almost every business in your sector at the same time. The comparison that actually tells you something is between a month and the same month a year earlier, because that compares one season against the same season. That is the comparison that tells you whether you are genuinely improving or simply repeating a season that comes back every year regardless of any work done.
Where to start: how to read your next report
A good report is short. A small number of honest numbers, calls and WhatsApp messages from search leading the page, then impressions and clicks as supporting evidence, with the actual work done that month sitting right beside them: a page that was written, a technical fault that was fixed, a field in the profile that improved. Be wary of any report where every number climbs every single month with no exception at all. A real business dips sometimes for reasons that have nothing to do with the work, and a report that never admits that is a report that is less honest than it is good.