Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Flipboard 0 We speak to several small business owners and they will often say, “I need to rank higher for some of my keywords – what position can you get these keywords to in Google?” They are completely focused on the ranking of their keywords when that is not what they should be paying attention to. Part of the blame can be placed on their previous SEO company, as they more than likely just sent them a keyword ranking report every month. When it comes down to it rankings alone don’t dictate the success of a local SEO campaign, organic traffic does! What if you had a keyword ranking in the #2 position but it only delivered 20 visitors a month, and then a keyword that was ranking in the #8 position that was delivering 800 visitors a month? What stat is more beneficial to the business owner, the rankings or the traffic numbers? Traffic wins every single time! There are plenty of SEO metrics to focus on that carry more weight than keyword rankings. Sure, keyword rankings can be made to look pretty and they give you something to physically hold in your hand to see that progress is being made on your local SEO campaign. Forget the big PDF ranking reports – the data that really matters can be seen in your Google Analytics and Google My Business dashboard. many SEO companies want you to focus on the rankings, we are going to show you some more important SEO metrics you need to focus on. Google My Business Views Your Google My Business dashboard will show you an approximate number of impressions that your Google Business listing received by clicking on the Insights tab. It is important to understand that this number is impressions – how many times someone was shown your local listing. This doesn’t mean that all of these people clicked over to your website. In fact, many local searches don’t result in a website visit. Instead the individual calls the business or they physically visit the business. You should be looking at this data over time to see if your impressions are increasing on a regular and steady basis. If they are then it is a good indication that you have local SEO success that is producing a good ROI. Driving Direction Requests This data can be seen in the same Insights tab within your Google My Business dashboard. This data represents how many times someone clicked to receive driving directions to your business location. An increase of clicks shows that the local SEO is working and more customers are finding the business through local search. The data will also show you what local zip codes the driving direction requests came from. This will really allow you to determine if the campaign is paying off if you are targeting a particular region. Organic Search Traffic It is amazing that so many local SEO companies will give their clients a ranking report but not show them what kind of traffic volume resulted in those rankings. As we mentioned above, rankings don’t men anything unless they are driving traffic to the website. It is important that you understand how to identify your organic traffic in your Analytics account. In the image below you can see the traffic volume that this small business received from Google’s organic search results over a period of one week. While there are several traffic sources, we want to ignore the social media traffic and referral traffic for this purpose. Ok, so organic traffic is great, but looking at traffic numbers alone doesn’t do much to determine if specific ROI goals are being met. This is where our last SEO metric comes into play. Organic Search Conversions This is the metric that is going to let you know what kind of revenue your local SEO is responsible for. Rankings alone, just like traffic alone won’t translate into a successful local search campaign, but your conversions will! If your organic traffic converting? Are they signing up for your email newsletter? Are they completing your contact form? Are they downloading coupons? Are they making purchases online? Every possible conversion can be tracked, and you can also assign a dollar value to your conversions to help you determine your ROI. Conversion numbers don’t lie. They show you what REALLY is happening in your campaign. What if a SEO company had you ranking #1 for a handful of keywords and all they did was send you a ranking report each month showing some keywords ranked at top? Many business owners would assume everything was great – but they only way to know whether or not the effort is paying off is to dive into the SEO metrics discussed above. Useless reports full of graphs, data, and rankings are not the metrics that matter when determining how effective a local SEO campaign is. The metrics mentioned above provide you with real insight, allowing you to determine whether or not the SEO is working according to plan. While rankings look nice on a report, they don’t necessarily mean a ROI was produced. Twitter Tweet Facebook Share Email This article originally appeared on Market Domination Media and has been republished with permission.Find out how to syndicate your content with B2C Author: Kane Pepi Kane Pepi is an experienced financial and cryptocurrency writer with over 2,000+ published articles, guides, and market insights in the public domain. Expert niche subjects include asset valuation and analysis, portfolio management, and the prevention of financial crime. Kane is particularly skilled in explaining complex financial topics in a user-friendly … View full profile ›More by this author:VoIP Basics: Everything Beginners Should Know!Bitcoin Investment, Trading & Mining: The Ultimate Guide for BeginnersIs This a Better Way to Set Your 2020 Goals and Resolutions?