What is a Local SEO report?
A Local SEO report is a tool that consolidates data from multiple sources (e.g., Google My Business, Yelp, Moz Local) to track and display key performance indicators (KPIs) (e.g., local search rankings, customer reviews, citation consistency), enabling businesses and agencies to monitor local search performance and create presentations for clients and executives.
Local SEO reports are typically built using flexible tools like Google Looker Studio, Power BI, Google Sheets, or platform-specific solutions to enable high customization and integration of multiple data sources.
What to include in a Local SEO report?
An actionable Local SEO report balances context and specificity based on the audience (executives, managers, and analysts) and their use cases.
Executive Local SEO reports
Executive reports for CMOs, CEOs, and clients show Local SEO's bottom-line impact. Reviewed weekly, monthly, or quarterly, they include:
- Local SEO ROI analysis: by location, using attribution for large budgets.
- Customer review analysis: sentiment, volume, and response rate
- Citation analysis: consistency and accuracy across directories
- Add text for additional context to translate metrics for non-technical audiences. Present in slide decks and simplified Looker Studio reports.
Local SEO manager reports
Manager reports have cross-location views with drill-downs to see performance by location, region, team member, and campaign. They help align teams, define tactics, and include:
- Cross-location reporting: overall performance, client, or region reporting across locations
- Goal tracking: compare current performance vs objectives
- Audits for prioritization and spotting issues
- Competitive analysis for local search and tactic mapping
- Local keyword and content research
Operational Local SEO reports
Operational reports for analysts and local SEO managers have granular, customizable KPIs to solve technical issues. Monitored hourly, daily, or weekly, they cover:
- Local search rankings: keyword performance, map pack visibility
- Review management: review volume, sentiment analysis, response tracking
- Citation management: consistency, accuracy, and completeness
- Website performance: local landing page speed, errors, and backlinks
Operational Local SEO reports are highly customized, built in flexible tools like Google Sheets or Looker Studio to enable data cleaning, blending, annotations, and integrating multiple sources.
How to build a Local SEO report?
To build a Local SEO report, connect your data sources, choose a template on Looker Studio or Sheets, build your queries by selecting metrics and dimensions, choose charts to visualize your data, customize the report, design and share via link, PDF or email.
Here’s the breakdown:
Connect data sources
Define and connect the data sources to bring to your report. Common sources are Google My Business for local listings, Yelp for reviews, Moz Local for citation management, and Google Analytics for website performance.
To connect your data sources, go to portermetrics.com, choose the data sources to bring to your report.
You can follow these tutorials on connecting your data:
Choose a template
Choose from dozens of Local SEO report templates in Google Sheets or Looker Studio, designed for use cases like local search monitoring, review management, and citation tracking.
Learn to copy Looker Studio templates.
While templates are the starting point. Make them specific for your business or agency. Map your specific metrics, especially local search rankings, review data, and citation consistency.
Depending on your reporting tool—Google Sheets or Google Looker Studio, pick any of the dozens of templates created by our team and customers to solve your Local SEO reporting use cases, such as local search monitoring, review management, and citation tracking.
Select metrics, dimensions, and charts
Once your report template is downloaded, you may 1)modify it or 2) create a blank page to build it from scratch. Whatever the case, setting up a query always follows these steps:
- Select the data source and the account connected to it
- Choose metrics (e.g. local search rankings, review count, citation accuracy, etc.).
- Choose breakdowns to segment your data (e.g. by date, location, review source, etc.)
You can follow these tutorials on adding data to your reports
Design
To make your Local SEO reports truly white-label you can add logos, colors, fonts, and styling to mirror your brand.
Follow these tutorials to design your Local SEO reports:
Share
Share your Local SEO reports via links, PDF, schedule emails, and control permissions.
KPIs to include in a Local SEO report?
Local SEO reports should include a mix of visibility, engagement, conversion, efficiency, effectiveness, and cost metrics and KPIs to fully understand the performance of local search efforts towards business goals. They include:
Local SEO funnel KPIs measure the local search process, regardless of the channel:
- Visibility metrics: local search rankings, map pack appearances, citation presence
- Engagement metrics: clicks, calls, direction requests, review interactions
- Conversion metrics: store visits, bookings, lead submissions
Efficiency KPIs compare your local SEO outputs to the cost, including:
- Visibility: cost per impression
- Engagement: cost per click
- Conversion: cost per acquisition
Effectiveness KPIs compare the input with the output from one funnel stage to another
- Visibility: frequency of local search appearances
- Engagement: click-through rate, engagement rate
- Conversion: conversion rate
Sales and cost KPIs show the bottom-line impact of your local SEO performance:
- Sales: customers, revenue
- Cost: local SEO spend, operational expenses
- Efficiency: ROI, cost per lead
- Effectiveness: average order value
To analyze these Local SEO KPIs, segment them by:
- Location: city, neighborhood, branch
- Time: Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly
- Campaign: local promotion, event
- Business: client, branch, region
- Audience: geo, demographics, interests, behavior
- Content: local content, format, topic, keyword
