Author: Nick Petty
02/10/2025
Article

How Many Leads Should a Local Business Get Through its Website?

You’ve invested time and money into your website, and you’ve dabbled in SEO. The homepage looks good and appears to be ranking okay for the right keywords. But you still have a nagging concern: Is the website generating enough leads?

Every business is different, and so are the number of leads each business can – and needs – to generate. A roofing company might max out at four or five big projects a month for its catchment area, whereas a dog-grooming salon might need dozens of smaller bookings every week for a healthy balance sheet. There isn’t a magic number that guarantees success.

So how do you figure out whether your website is pulling its weight? As a local digital marketing agency, we’ve managed the websites of hundreds of local businesses. When it comes to lead generation, we know what constitutes ‘good’ and ‘not so good’.

In this blog post, we give some industry estimates and explain a couple of methods to calculate the number of leads you should be getting.

What Counts as a Lead?

At its simplest, a lead is anyone who shows a genuine interest in your services. It could be:

A homeowner filling out your contact form to ask for a quote
Someone calling the number listed on your site
An enquiry sent via WhatsApp or Messenger
A customer who books directly through an online calendar

Not every lead becomes a paying customer. Some are just browsing, some are looking for price comparisons, and we’ve all been ghosted after making the quote. That said, every lead is an opportunity. The more opportunities you get, the more you score.

How Many Leads Should a Local Business's Website Generate Per Month?

Using the methods detailed below this section, combined with sample traffic data sourced from Ahrefs, we put together the below table showing how many leads a local business can expect per month from its website.

It goes without saying that all of these estimates should be taken with a pinch of salt.

	Rural / Small town (few-thousand catchment)	Medium–Large town (20k–100k catchment)	City Suburb (100k+ catchment)
Trade business (plumber, roofer, electrician)	5 – 10	20 – 40	30 – 70
Catering (restaurant)	10 – 35	30 – 110	50 – 200
Salon (hair, dog-grooming)	5 – 20	20 – 80	40 – 120
Professional services (accountant, lawyer)	2 – 10	12 – 50	25 – 100
Home services (cleaners, gardeners)	5 – 25	25 – 100	40 – 100

Every business and catchment area is different. For estimates specific to your business, try the calculations detailed below (we recommend it!)

Sticking to the numbers above? Then don’t forget your pinch of salt.

Calculating How Many Leads is ‘Good’ for a Local Business

There are two ways to calculate what constitutes a ‘good’ amount of leads for your business.

The first is to build from the ground up: Estimate how much traffic your website should be receiving and use a conversion percentage to calculate the number of leads.

The second is to build from the top down. Apply a typical ROI (Return on Investment) to your marketing investment, divide by the average cost of a job and work back to the leads from there.

Let’s look at each calculation method in turn.

Method 1: Traffic and Conversion Estimates

The number of leads your website generates is determined by two key factors: the amount of traffic it receives and the proportion of that traffic it converts into leads.

The latter is easy to benchmark: A well-structured website for a local or trade business should have a 5% conversion rate.

The traffic, however, is a little trickier. It’s not as simple as applying the conversion rate to your current traffic, as low traffic might be a cause of subpar leads. Instead, you need to estimate the traffic you should be getting. Follow these three steps to do so:

1. Determine the organic traffic of your top search competitor. Look up your top search competitor for each of your chosen keywords in an SEO monitoring tool such as Ahrefs or SEMrush. Add up the organic traffic they receive for your chosen keywords.

2. Apply a ratio, based on a projected or desired search position, to determine your expected traffic. The top search result receives the most clicks and those beneath it receive fewer and fewer. Choose which ranking you think is reasonable for your business and apply the ratios below to your top competitors’ organic traffic.

Your Target Ranking	Percentage of Clicks Received for this Ranking(s)	Ratio to Apply to Competitor’s Traffic
1	30%	1
2	20%	0.66
3	15%	0.5
4-6	5%	0.17

3. Add 30% to this number to account for direct and referred traffic (i.e., people typing your website into an address bar or following a link from a directory). This is a reasonable industry estimate.

Now that you have estimated the traffic you should be getting, apply the conversion percentage to get the total number of leads.

Note: You can also repeat step 2 for all potential search rankings to calculate a range of leads dependent on the results you achieve.

Example calculation:

Top search competitors’ traffic = 800 visits per month.
Your target ranking is third. 800 x 0.5 = 400 visits per month.
Add 30% direct & referred traffic: 400 x 1.3 = 533 visits per month

Apply conversion rate: 533 x 0.05 = 27 leads per month.

Method 2: ROI

Another way to determine how many leads your marketing efforts should be generating is by reverse-engineering the ROI. Essentially, you are asking the question: If I’m spending X amount on my website and SEO, how much business should I be getting and is that reflected in reality?

As the ROI varies for each type of business, we’ll use a range of typical results for a local company with a solid marketing foundation. This range of ROIs is anywhere between 200% and 500%.

We will also assume that about 10% of leads convert to paying customers.

To perform the calculation, take the following steps.

Add up your total marketing spend for your website and SEO combined.
Multiply by the typical marketing ROI – this tells you how much income your website should be generating.
Divide by the average revenue from a job to get the number of jobs this equates to.
Divide by a lead to acquisition conversion of 10% to get the number of leads this equates to.

Example calculation:

A business spends £600 per month on its website and SEO, with an average job revenue of £500.

Website & SEO spend = £600 per month.
Predicted income = 600 x 200% to 600 x 500% = £1200 to £3000.
Average job cost = £500.
Number of target acquisitions = 1200/500 to 3000/500 = 2.4 – 6.

Total number of leads = 2.4/0.1 to 6/0.1 = 24 to 60 leads per month.

Still Not Sure?

Then ask yourself the following questions:

Am I getting enough leads to fill my schedule?
Am I getting enough leads to turn a healthy revenue and profit?
Am I getting enough leads to meet the business’s growth targets?

If the answer to these questions is no, or you’ve simply got the queasy feeling your website is just not living up to its potential, it may be time to make a few tweaks to your marketing strategy.

Quick Ways to Get More Leads

Dissatisfied with the number of leads your website is generating? There are two ways to dial them up: Increase the traffic and increase the conversion rate.

Here are some quick ways to generate more leads…

1. Improve Your Organic Traffic with Basic SEO

Improve your SEO and rise up the search rankings to secure a lucrative top spot in the results pages. We’ve got a whole raft of information in our blog posts about how to do SEO for local businesses, but in summary:

Make sure you’re targeting the right keywords
Optimise your site by including keywords in headings and the copy
Obtain citations by entering your site into the best directories for SEO and get backlinks from guest blogs and local organisations
Check the technical aspects are right – loading speed and mobile usability in particular

2. Make Your Website Convert

It’s one thing to get the customer to your website; it’s another to make them fill out a form or make a call. Your website is more likely to convert traffic to leads if it:

Contains the information they require (but not too much to be overwhelming)
Has prominent call-to-action buttons, asking them to get in touch or make an appointment
Shows verifiable testimonials (e.g., embedded Google reviews) from satisfied customers
Is generally eye-catching and appealing, for example, featuring before-and-after photos

3. Optimise Your Google Business Profile

Many customers reach your website via your Google Business Profile. Make sure it shows up in the search results by providing comprehensive information, posting regularly and obtaining lots of positive reviews. A well-optimised Google Business Profile will generate its fair share of leads directly, too.

4. Write a Blog

Drive more potential customers to your site by writing a regular blog. Think how-to guides, FAQs and employee profiles to add a personal touch. A blog targets extra keywords and demonstrates your expertise. Include call-to-action buttons to capture the lead.

Number of Leads for a Local Business’s Website: Final Thoughts

A snazzy website and a shiny digital marketing strategy are only as good as the number of leads they generate.

By combining the available search data with your objectives and budget, you can figure out what constitutes a ‘good’ and ‘not so good’ number of leads for your website in your specific trade and area.

Above all, ask yourself if your website is fulfilling your ambitions as a business owner. If the answer is ‘yes’, terrific. If the answer is ‘no’, you’ve got plenty of levers to pull.