What impact can better local rankings have?

Moving into a Local Pack from a Local Finder – the listings accessible via the More Places link (i.e. the businesses listed outside the top three – can have a huge impact on the number of people that contact a business with an enquiry.

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Micro-moves in a Local Pack – for example from positions 2 or 3 to position 1 – can have a big impact too.

Let’s say your business is ranking in position 3 on a Google Local Pack for the search term [plastic surgeon Bristol] which generates on average 80 searches a month.

Sadly there is no reliable data to suggest how many people click on specific areas of a search engine’s results pages.

We have developed our own sliding scale to communicate the benefits of improved rankings in the Local Pack.

On a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) with no Ads above the Local Pack we estimate that 60% would either click on the listing in position 1 or perform an ‘action’ e.g. calling the business or visiting their website, 25% for position 2 and 15% for position 3.

Let’s assume 50% of the 80 searches result in a click or action related to a business on a Local Pack. To keep things simple when I say clicks I actually mean they either clicked through to the business profile, or performed an action.

Position 1 would receive 24 clicks a month.

Let’s say a third of those clicks – be they visits to the website, visits to the business itself or a phone call – resulted in a conversion.

That’s eight conversions a month.

Making the same assumptions, the listing in position three would receive just two conversions.

These are pretty crude numbers, but I think this demonstrates the potential benefits of moving up the Local Pack.

And moving into a Local Pack from the Local Finder will have a big impact too, as the business listings in the Local Finder receive next to no clicks.

Finally if you consider these are just conversions from one keyword, in one month, and if you think about the potential lifetime value of a new customer – then you start to understand how important it is for your business to rank well on Local Packs.