New Research Reveals Strategies for Winning in Local Search

New research from Silicon Valley agency Milestone Inc reveals that local and organic search generate more traffic, produce higher engagement rates, and convert at higher revenue rates per transaction compared to other channels.

Methodology: Millions of Sessions and Page Views Analyzed

The Milestone Inc research paper analyzed 500 location-based businesses, their sessions, and page views to understand which channels produced more earnings with the best ROI.

Top Performing Channels

Organic search was the top-performing channel, followed by local search. Interestingly, referral traffic came in third. Referral traffic includes traffic from sites like Angi (formerly Angie’s List), Yelp, Home Advisor, etc.

Brett Tabke, founder of PubCon, a search marketing conference, has noted that referral traffic from trusted sources can convert at higher rates and generate more enthusiasm among customers. My professional experience validates this observation.

Obtaining quality recommendations from trusted third-party websites can be an effective strategy for increasing traffic, as visitors are often ready to embrace the site before they even visit it.

Referral Results in More Page Views

An interesting finding was that referral traffic led to higher engagement rates.

Milestone Inc’s research showed that referral traffic accounted for nearly 10% of all traffic. Optimizing for third-party referrals is therefore an important channel to consider.

According to the research paper:

"Referral traffic is the 3rd largest contributor to website traffic with 9.4% of overall traffic. Referral traffic is the visits to your website from links on different sites. It is a recommendation from one website to another.
The data indicates that generating quality backlinks and external sources is a good source to generate web traffic."

Channel Rankings for Traffic:

• Organic: 46.5%
• Local: 22.6%
• Referral: 9.4%
• Paid Search: 8%
• Other: 13.6%

Research Takeaways:

A key takeaway is that local search deserves full optimization by leveraging Google My Business (GMB), building third-party referrals, improving SEO, and utilizing every opportunity to increase visibility in search.

Milestone Inc’s researchers noted:

"Organic and Local Search together is the best combination for driving website traffic with 69% session share and 73% page view share. But given the data, they turn out to be the most reliable, resilient, and high-performing channels. Local gives the best ROI with the highest page views per session compared to other channels."

Ten Tips for Optimizing Local Search Visibility:

1. Complete and optimize your Google My Business (GMB) Profile
2. Ensure business name, URL, address information is consistent across all channels
3. Add Schema structured data
4. Focus on mobile user experience:
   • Optimize for core web vitals
   • Ensure the mobile version is familiar and easy to use
5. Voice Optimization (actions and skills on Google Assistant and Alexa)
6. Add FAQs:
   • Identify common questions and answer them on the website
   • Use FAQ schema structured data for rich results
7. Search optimization:
   • Include promoting the local business as expert, trustworthy, and authoritative
8. Clear CTAs (Call to Actions):
   • Ensure ease of contact for mobile users
9. Make the site accessible:
   • Consider factors like color choice to accommodate color-blind users
10. Event calendar

Citation

Read the full article and download the research paper: Organic Search and Local Drive 69% of Digital Traffic for Location-Based Businesses.