How to Boost Local Business Marketing with SERP APIs

Not that long ago, local businesses only had to worry about competition from other businesses in their geographic area. Now, every major brand has a local presence online. Even if they aren’t physically located in your small town, you can bet they are showing up in the search result pages (SERPs) and stealing your customer base. 

Savvy business owners know they need to use every tool at their disposal to stay ahead of the competition. One of these emerging tools is a SERP API. Let’s delve into how SERP APIs can help bolster local business marketing.

What Is a SERP API?

An API, or Application Programming Interface, is a tool that allows one application to access data from another application. APIs are quietly running in the background of many applications we commonly use, such as weather apps, map searches, and payment processing. SERP APIs are programmed to retrieve data from search engine results pages. 

Here’s how SERP APIs work:

1. 1. Request: The user submits a query request. 

• Processing: The SERP API interacts with search engines like Google and Bing. It fetches results. In order to do this, the SERP API must be able to solve CAPTCHAs.

• Results Formatting: The SERP API translates the data into the designated format, usually JSON or XML. 

What Information Can You Get with SERP APIs? 

APIs can potentially retrieve anything on a SERP page, such as:

• Organic results
• Paid results
• Answer box
• Related searches
• Local pack
• Hotel pack
• Video results 
• Reviews

For example, the Hasdata SERP API scraper tool lets you enter a query like “pizza in New York.” Because SERP results change depending on the searcher’s location, the tool also lets you set a location for your search. You hit “scrape” and immediately get real-time results that you can download in Excel, CSV, or JSON format. 

It is possible to do this research yourself without a SERP API. However, it would take a vast amount of time to input the data in a spreadsheet. You would also need a VPN in order to perform searches outside of your geographic location.  

How Local Businesses Can Use SERP APIs for Marketing

SERP APIs have the potential to provide local businesses with vast amounts of information. And, when it comes to local business marketing, information is powerful. Here’s how the data from SERP APIs can help local marketing efforts.

SEO

This is the most common use for SERP APIs. They allow local business owners to understand how well their website is ranking for specific terms. Just as importantly, it lets them understand which terms their competitors are ranking for, allowing them to craft more effective SEO strategies, such as choosing the right keywords, deciding what content to create, and where to build links.

Advertising

Some SERP APIs give you information about paid search results. Business owners can use this information to better understand where any paid ads they create might show up as well as what type of adverts most resonate with their audience. The result is more targeted ad campaigns and better ROI for advertising spend. 

Market Research

SERP results can provide valuable information about market trends, such as what customers are looking for and what competitors are doing. This information can help businesses determine if there are any gaps in what they offer. Geographic queries also help businesses decide whether to enter new markets. 

Reputation and Brand Management 

SERP APIs can be used to help businesses monitor their brand name across many platforms. This allows them to respond to negative reviews quickly and fix the problems which led to those bad reviews. SERP APIs also allow businesses to quickly identify instances of brand misuse, such as unauthorized use of their brand name or images, so they can take action.

Lead Generation for Local B2B

B2B businesses can use SERP APIs to generate leads. For example, they can scrape names and phone numbers of potential leads from Google Maps and then use cold calls or emails to contact them. 

Obstacles Preventing Local Businesses from Utilizing SERP APIs

APIs that scrape SERP data have been around for well over a decade. However, very few local businesses use SERP APIs. The main obstacles are cost, data usability, and inadequate marketing strategy.

Cost

In the past, large companies would have to develop their own custom APIs for scraping search results–a cost that was not possible for small or even medium sized businesses. In December 2023, Google released a SERP API tool, but even this ends up being very expensive. Currently, it costs $5 per 1000 queries. 

Luckily, this is starting to change. There are now several companies that offer affordable SERP API scrapers for fixed monthly costs.

Data Usability 

It isn’t enough to just have data from the search result pages. You also need to be able to utilize it. Many SERP API scrapers return unstructured data in a way that is impossible for non-tech people to understand. Thus, it’s important that any SERP API tool your local business uses returns data in a structured, readable manner.

Inadequate Marketing Strategy

Even though the data that SERP APIs provide can be very powerful, it is useless if the business owner doesn’t take time to interpret it and apply it to the marketing efforts. Most small businesses are reluctant to spend money to outsource tasks and instead try to do everything themselves. As a result, marketing often takes a backseat to day-to-day tasks and the marketing strategy–if any–ends up being half-baked and poorly implemented.

Final Words

SERP APIs are a tool with huge potential for boosting small business marketing efforts. However, because small business owners are already stretched so thin, it’s unlikely that they will directly utilize them. Instead, marketing companies, and not business owners, are more likely to use SERP APIs. Business owners can get a competitive advantage by making sure they hire a marketing or SEO company which is utilizing SERP APIs.