By the year 2024 if the business owner wishes the business to grow he/she must incorporate integrated advanced local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to target the local consumers.
Since you see businesses near you are listing their business on Google Maps, you also desire to see your business on Google Maps.
It is a dream for every firm to ensure that their business is featured in Google Maps searches. This strikes me as that when your business is on Google Maps, your business listing will stand a better shot at Google’s locals.
If your listing is among the first then there are high probability that the customers will be convinced to make the purchase. No, the question that you should be struggling to find the answer to, at this point, is how to rank higher in Google Maps.
In this post, we will discuss how your business can show up in the local search results and also discuss the factors that will help your business to rank higher on Google maps
Keyword Research:
Before you list your product or service on Google Maps, you need to find the best keywords that are related to your business and have low keyword difficulty.
Do keyword research to find out how people are searching for the services or products you provide in your market. Add those keywords to the page on your website your Google Business Profile is linked to.
The better you rank in the business listing, the more trustworthy you become. The more trust you gain, the stronger your business’s impact on the targeted audience.
As I mentioned Google looks at the presence of the keywords on the page that you’re linking to in your profile as a relevancy that also includes the name of the city where you’re located.
So, if you’re Home Cleaning Agency in Tampa Florida the H1 of the page that you link to from your Google business profile should say “Home Cleaning Agency Tampa Florida somewhere”. You should try to work it in as many times as you can naturally get it into the copy on that page.
Local citation:
Doing local citations is the easiest method. You don’t need to sign up for some expensive service. I prefer Bright Local Moz Local is also a reasonably priced
Do an SEO Competitor Analysis:
Use a tool like Bright Local to see what categories all of your competitors are using. Check out what those other categories are that your competitors are using. But at the same time whatever the main thing is that you should do, that should be your primary category.
Get Reviews:
Get some reviews from your customers and try to coax them to include relevant keywords. Anyone who’s doing local SEO will be able to tell you that the presence of target keywords in real customer reviews from real active Google accounts will help you to start ranking for those keywords.
Sometimes it can be as easy as asking them to say this thing but in most cases, you probably just going to have to prompt them to mention what it is that you did for them and if you’re doing a great job you know share with them, let them know” hey! this thing helped me on Google if you mention what it was that I did or the type of business that we have. If your customers are happy they’re going to want to help you.
Build Backlinks:
I know this is going to be the hardest one for you to do all on your own but if you do sponsor a local Little League or you interact with any other types of local businesses where you know they manage their website themselves see what you can do to get backlinks from them if you sponsor a local soccer league for example they probably have a website ask if they would be willing to add a sponsor section somewhere on the website.
Locally relevant backlinks will help you to rank better not only in the map results but also in the Blue link results below.
Get Profile Engagement:
In my opinion, the most important factor is to get profile engagement by adding pictures, and products, filling out all the services that you can, add FAQs. Put as much as you can on the profile to get people to engage with it.
It’s pretty much a sure thing that Google systems are tracking whether people seem to like click around your pictures if they seem to click around on your products and ultimately Google wants to show profiles that people like engaging with those signals critically important just like Tik Tok will push out a video to more people if lots of people watch it or a YouTube video gets more visibility if lots of people like it, leave comments and watch till the end. Here’s the plug to give us a hand maybe throw us a like if you want to help us out.
Google business profile does the same thing if people are scrolling through your pictures and reading your FAQs and you have engaging stuff a reason why someone will want to engage with your profile and click through to the website, it’s going to help your visibility long term.
One of the biggest wins we had this year was for an attorney whose Google business profile had a picture of one of the main streets in the city where the practices we swapped that out, got some pictures of him and some of his associates we added some infographics that provided some interesting information about family law in the state he practices and even with a small budget he is now well positioned in the map results for all his target keywords in the city where practices.
FAQs
How to increase rating in Google Maps
There are several strategies for raising the Google Maps rating, the above-mentioned steps leading to the change in the general customers’ attitude to the business.
Here are some effective steps you can take:
Provide Excellent Service: The first and easiest essential would be a better customer experience. This includes making available first-class products/services, considering customer needs, and taking care of complaints.
Encourage Reviews: Remind those customers to go leave a comment on Google Maps if they had a good experience.
This can be either done orally by asking them at the time they are leaving after their visit or after their transactions.
It is recommended to reply to the comments, be it positive or negative to commiserate the feelings of the customers.
Optimize Your Google My Business Profile: The Google My Business GMB account should also be set and properly optimized by providing all the relevant information about the business in the account.
Fill in details like business operating time, business phone number, link to your business website, and business photos.
Use Photos and Videos: Visual content essentially has the potential to influence the perception that prospective customers have about the business.
Include good-quality photos and videos featuring your products, services, and the environment within the business.
Engage with Customers: Address the concerns made by customers or any negative comments given to your product promptly. This shows that you still converse with your customers and value their opinions.
Promote Positive Reviews: If the review is very positive, you may feel that it would be best to post it on your social media pages, or even on your website. Thus, word-of-mouth that contains only positive messages can increase customers.
Monitor Your Ratings: You should therefore monitor your ratings and reviews on Google Maps often. Professionally treat all complaints and do all that is possible to change the situation.
Local SEO Optimization: There is nothing more important than getting local SEO and ranking high in local search engine results.
This can involve such tactics as incorporating local keywords into your website, getting backlinks from local resources, and maintaining uniformity in your business’s information that is presented online.
Offer Special Promotions: It might be worth additionally providing extra bonuses or discounts for people who left feedback on Google Maps. This can encourage more customers to give feedback.
Improve Accessibility and Convenience: You should ensure that it is easy to locate your business and get there.
This could include addressing issues to do with parking by developing better parking areas; giving proper directions to the place or even organizing for online bookings.
What is the most important factor for ranking in Google Maps?
Assuming you are a local business here are the top ranking factors used by Google to enable local businesses to rank in Google Maps:
The most crucial factor is relevance. That is why users should see more suitable and helpful information according to their inquiry and location in the Google search.
Here’s why relevance matters:
Relevance to Search Query: Google Maps sorts the businesses according to the relevance of the terms that users type in the search bar. Here it involves the business name, its category as well as a brief description.
Location Relevance: When a user enters a search query containing a location (for example ‘restaurants near me”), Google will favor the businesses that are proximate to the user.
Relevance of Information: That is why, information about your business that you complete and provide in the Google My Business (GMB) profile is critical.
This comprises your business name/location/telephone number (NAP), business classification, and characteristics.
Keywords and Reviews: Other factors, such as words used in your business description, reviews, and or user-generated content can also affect the level of relevance.
Check that your information has key terms that your clients could input into a search engine.
Can you pay Google to rank higher?
No, you cannot directly pay Google to rank higher in organic search results, they include Google Maps.
Google’s organic search engine algorithms are geared toward the ranking of websites and businesses on the relevance of the content, its usefulness, and other attributes that shape the quality of the experience pulled up by the search engine.
This is also apparent for both the Google search engine and Google Maps. Nevertheless, there are opportunities for advertising on Google that help to raise the visibility level of responses.
These are generally grouped and referred to as ‘Ads’ and are found different from the organic search results.
As for Google Maps, it is possible to turn to Google Ads and advertise your business location, and therefore be featured on the map for the queries connected with your region.
The analysis of preferences is made for Google by using tailored local advertising, for example, Local Campaigns or location extensions in ordinary Google AdWords campaigns.
In summary, while it is important that you cannot pay Google to get a better rank in Google Maps organically, the good news is that you can use Google Maps Advertising to increase the prominence of your business via the paid ads available.
Unlike paid ads, the ranking of businesses in Google Maps depends on factors such as relevancy, distance, and prominence.
