Monetary value of Local SEO

[Zhanna]

Hi SEO ninjas!

I am trying to estimate the monetary value of Local SEO services for the restaurant. The business has been heavily investing in social ads campaigns as well as smm. I can see in GSC, that lots of visitors find the business using the brand name.
GMB analytics says, that the percentage of discovery searches is 61%. But, if I export GSC queries and cut the brand name searches, the ratio of discovery searches turns to be just 10%.
The question is, what data I should rely on?
*there is no end-to-end analytics in place


Thank you!
Best regards,
Zhanna

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hi Zhanna,

Great question. Check this out Why Doesn't GMB Insights Data Match Search Console: A Case Study of 78 Listings & 1,560 Keywords - Sterling Sky Inc

 

[Zhanna]

This is an excellent article! Thank you very much @Colan Nielsen

 

[Andrew Scherer]

You can show value of your SEO efforts over time but it is difficult to forecast this kind of value to a local business in order to sell them your services.

Businesses can easily understand paying for ads and getting leads for their money, but the fact that local SEO is a future investment that isn't really guaranteed and involves some smoke and mirrors turns a lot of business owners off. And rightfully so.

Make your service offerings as simple to understand as you can.

Talk about leads, don't talk about local SEO.
Talk about brand building and local prominence, specific keywords (clients love searching for a keyword and seeing their business, this is great proof), search volumes.

SEO is a hard sell, it doesn't have deliverables like web design does.