Every modern business that operates in the online world should aim at reaching higher positions on SERPs. Luckily, with the help of SEO, this is nowadays easier to achieve than it ever was.
One of the crucial areas of SEO many businesses unfortunately overlook is local SEO. By boosting your local SEO, you’ll be able to reach a higher position on Google Maps. Needless to say, this will help you increase your business’s online visibility even further.
However, simply creating a business profile on Google Maps – while useful – won’t really be enough.
That’s why you’ll need to find ways to boost your Google Maps rankings, which will – in turn – bring in more traffic and attract the local audience.
With that in mind, here are some factors you’ll need to take care of if you wish to rank your business higher on Google Maps.
#1 Verify your Google listing
If you haven’t already listed your business on Google My Business, this will be an excellent starting point. According to the Local Marketing Institute, local businesses that have claimed their listings on this platform round up to less than 44% of businesses.
However, if your business is already present on Google Maps, you should ensure that you also claim your listing. Listing your business on Google Maps will enable you to highlight your business’s name, location and category.
In order to verify your listing, you’ll be required to provide accurate and detailed information about your business. The more attention you pay to this step, by making sure you include all relevant and detailed information about your business, the greater your chances of reaching a top ranking.
Therefore, you will need to provide a detailed description of what your business is all about – including your offer – as well as add all the contact information.
This way, any online user that comes across your business listing has the potential to become a visitor of your website and – ultimately – a paying customer. But make sure you don’t overstuff your description with excess information to avoid deterring any potential customers.
You can also expand your description to include your official website, your working hours and even a Q&A section. This will provide more information to any potential customers, which will encourage engagement.
On top of that, by personalizing your description, you’ll be able to set your business apart from the rest of the crowd.
#2 Add target keywords to your Google My Business profile
You are probably already aware of the importance of keywords in the world of SEO. So, it’s only natural that including your target keywords in your Google My Business profile will significantly aid your local SEO efforts as well.
You should include your target keywords (e.g. SEO for florists) in your business description, the product or services area, in the picture of your business location, as well as the post itself.
By doing so, you’ll enable all the potential users that are looking for the things you’re offering to find your business more easily. For instance, if a user is looking for a great pizza place, they’re likely to include their location or the phrase “near me” in their search.
So, by adding such or similar phrases to your main keyword – in this example it is “pizza” – not only will you rank better on Google, but you’ll also offer your local audience more value.
Therefore, the main goal here is to include your main keyword in all the relevant places and add location-specific phrases so your local audience can find your business more easily. But make sure you don’t overdo it so as to not come off as spammy.
#3 Get citations and build up your local relevance
Citations and local relevance also play a huge role in SEO. When it comes to citations, you need to make sure that your business is being mentioned on various platforms. A top ranking local business has 81 citations on average, from top-level domains.
Here, you can try to secure clickable backlinks that will lead directly to your website or simply have your business mentioned in blog and social media posts (or even YouTube videos).
Whichever type of citations you get, do know that they will positively affect Google Local rankings, which will enable you to rank higher on Google Maps.
Getting citations will also help you secure a major visibility boost. The more mentions (citations) you secure, the more people will hear about your business. So, more users will be interested in checking your business out.
On top of that, citations will also help boost your local relevance and reputation, as they will help eliminate the uncertainty of whether or not your business is legit.
Moreover, experts from a reputable website design agency from New York even emphasize that citations can help businesses attract potential business partners. This is particularly good news for small businesses and startups.
Keep in mind, however, that aside from all of the perks citations will bring to your business, you still need to be careful not to overdo it. That’s why you need to conduct a frequent citations audit to ensure that everything is balanced. What this means is that once you manage to establish your business and rank on Google Maps, there really is no reason to continue building citations.
Some other factors you also need to pay attention to include:
- The quality of your backlinks is up to par
- The content where your business is mentioned is authoritative and highly-relevant
- The context in which your business is mentioned is relevant
- The backlinks are likely to attract relevant and valuable traffic
#4 Use the right images
When trying to rank higher on Google, aside from your content and the overall quality of your website, Google will also pay attention to the type of visuals you use.
Since Google relies on photo-recognition technology when analyzing local search listings, not adding one to yours simply won’t make much sense.
That’s why you need to make sure you include high-quality images in your profile. These will not only help your business appeal more to Google but also to customers.
Generally speaking, customers prefer being able to visually see your offer, aside from simply reading about it. And, it takes less time to process an image than it does to read a full product description, for instance.
Additionally, if you have a brick-and-mortar business location as well, adding an image of your storefront to your Google My Business profile will make it easier for your potential customers to find it.
Even just republishing your old blog posts with new content or images can increase organic traffic by as much as 106%.
#5 Optimize your homepage
With Google Maps, it’s all about how you manage to present your business. However, you can’t really expect to be able to rank high on Google Maps if your business is not ranked high in Google itself. That’s why you need to make sure you pay special attention to your website as well.
When you add your website’s URL to your Google My Business profile, you will create a landing page for your Google Maps listing. So, naturally, any interested website users will follow the link to further explore your business.
To achieve the best performance, you should consider optimizing your:
Title tags
Your title tags should basically highlight the most important details about your business. They should include your business name, category in which your business operates as well as your local area. So, a good example of a title tag done right should look something like “Penang Pizza Place.” If your title tags don’t include these crucial elements, it’s time to optimize them.
Meta description
Your meta description tag should match your title tag. Here, you also need to use your business name, category and location, but you will have a bit more room to further describe your offer.
For instance, “The best pizza place in Penang that offers great food, hospitable staff and a family-friendly atmosphere.”
On-site content
All of the content you choose to include and feature on your website needs to be well optimized to cater to SEO rules. Otherwise, you won’t be able to secure high search engine rankings if your website is not search-engine-friendly in the first place. You can use a Google SERP API to get the real-time performance of your content.
#6 UI and UX
User interface (UI) and user experience (UX) are extremely important when it comes to proper website optimization. Both of these Google ranking factors need to be properly taken care of if you wish to boost your rankings.
Aside from catering to Google’s standards, they also ensure you cater to your visitors’ needs and preferences. And the better the experience your users have while exploring your business’s website, the more likely they’ll be to convert.
Additionally, optimizing your UI and UX will also lead to a greater sales volume and improved customer loyalty.
Conclusion
Since the online business world can be quite a volatile environment, any business that’s looking to establish itself on the market needs to find a way to stand out from the sea of similar businesses. That’s why improving your local SEO by listing your business on Google Maps is extremely important.
Being able to attract local customers will bring numerous benefits to your business, so make sure you keep these tips in mind when optimizing your business for local SEO.
Author bio
Rick Seidl is a digital marketing specialist with a bachelor’s degree in Digital Media and Communications, based in Portland, Oregon. With a burning passion for digital marketing, social media, small business development and establishing its presence in a digital world, currently quenching his thirst through writing about digital marketing and business strategies for Digital Strategy One.
