How Optimising Google My Business Increased Foot Traffic for a Local Café

In today's digital landscape, local cafés must use online marketing strategies in order to reach and attract more customers. An effective method is local SEO, especially optimising your Google Business Profile. A local café in London recently experienced an 80% increase in foot traffic by optimising their Google Business Profile with Genie Crawls help, transforming their online presence, and increasing sales.

Located in bustling London, this local café offered great coffee, pastries, and light meals. While it offered such a great ambience and friendly staff, it struggled to attract new customers due to poor online visibility. Despite their great service and superior coffee, they relied on word of mouth marketing. When the owners approached Genie Crawl for the first time, they were not appearing in Google search result, their Google Business Profile was incomplete, and they had inconsistent online information with different directories giving different addresses, and phone numbers. In addition to this, they had very few Google reviews that was not supporting their local SEO campaign.

Our approach was clear from the start. We knew we had to focus on the clients Google Business Profile as quickly as possible to start improving online visibility and generating more foot traffic. We optimised their Google Business Profile, ensuring their Name, Address, Phone number (NAP) was accurate, while incorporating high quality images, and writing a compelling and optimised business description, using local keywords. This involved working with the client to encourage reviews from customers, offering discounts on their next coffee when they left a review. We also focused on using long-tail local keywords that have lower search volume, but higher conversion rates. We visited all the citations that the client had built, updating them with accurate NAP information, ensuring consistency across all directories, making it easier for new customers to find them.

We started this project six months ago and are already seeing excellent results. Our client has improved in Google rankings in the top three spots for key search terms, while their foot traffic has increased by 80%. Their monthly revenue has also increased by more than 100%, and their social media is experiencing more engagement. Optimising Google Business Profile proved an effective solution for this small local café, helping them attract more customers, while also helping them appear in the Google Maps Pack when clients search for a café in their location. With a boost in online visibility, this café is now growing strength to strength.