Top 10 Tips to Rank Your Business High on Google Maps

About 13% of all the searches on Google are related to Google Maps. The introduction of features like “near me” searches and quick search buttons for restaurants, shops, etc., in Google Maps, makes it significantly beneficial for any online business.

If you want to leverage the advantages of this untapped area of online visibility, you need to practice a lot more than just content optimization. Along with extensive Off-page SEO efforts, you need to utilize Google My Business tips to secure a higher ranking on the search results of Google Maps.

Take a look!

TIPS TO RANK HIGHER ON GOOGLE MAPS

Tip 1: Dedicate Efforts on Building Quality Local Backlinks

Like any other aspect of Google, its Maps feature also prefers quality backlinks and is biased towards websites with many such leads. But, overdoing it will lead to no significant impact and create issues instead.

Thus, you must conduct routine citation audits to only keep the working links and maintain the number of leads pointing towards your site. While building links for your site, keep the following things in mind:

• The backlinks should be natural and within high-quality content
• These contents are published in highly authoritative publications
• The anchor texts are contextually relevant and in-content

High authority backlinks can significantly improve your site’s overall position on both Google Maps and SERPs by itself.

Tip 2: Google My Business Optimization

About 1 billion searchers use Google Maps monthly to find a specific place or a nearby solution for a particular requirement. While you can hardly do anything about the specific searches, the local ones are what you need to aim for.

Google My Business signals the very specific details about your business and improves its ranking on related local searches. Some other pointers to keep in mind while optimizing GMB are listed below:

• Keeps the hours updated
• Add images to the listing
• Be consistent with the business name and address
• Use your local, tracked and main number
• Write a clear business description
• Accurately categorize your business

Make sure not to skip any of these; rather, it is better if you pay more attention to every detail of your business listing.

Tip 3: Add the Necessary Categories to GMB

Using categories will prevent misinterpretation and will help your business rank for multiple search queries. For example, a departmental store called “A” can have other categories of shops within it, like a pharmacy or a furniture section. These two are searches that users look for separately, and not ranking for both of these will just reduce the departmental store’s profit.

The owner of “A” can utilize the subcategory option of GMB and enter all the relevant subcategories in it. So, the search results for pharmacy, furniture, and departmental store all show “A” on their lists. This is one of the Google My Business tips that only work when you have multiple franchises under one umbrella; otherwise, it is unnecessary.

Tip 4: Make Proper Use of Schema Markup

The search engine bots use artificial intelligence to crawl and understand the context of all web pages. Thus, they have developed a language or structural protocol that streamlines this process for AI.

This is an important part of local SEO and can send high-quality signals to the search engines. It is because you can wrap the NAP of your business in Schema and strengthen the signals you send to Google and other search engines. Help search engines determine the data sets within your webpage, and it will rank it in Maps search results to garner the most traffic.

Tip 5: Building Local Business Citations

Along with following Google My Business tips, you also need to register the business on other citations. This obviously will increase your business’s visibility and create avenues to gain more feedback.

One thing you need to keep in mind is to stay consistent and remove any volatility from these citations. If your information varies from one directory to another, it can confuse both the users and the search engine. Stick to one Name, Address, and Phone number (the one you used in GMB) to connect all these as one entity.

If you are unsure about where the volatility exists across all the citations, conduct analysis across the web and compare the information you have put in them.

Tip 6: Get Positive Google Reviews

As of 2020, about 91% of young adults believe in reviews. Considering a major part of online traffic belongs to this demography, positive reviews can significantly affect your website. Moreover, it is not just about good reviews; your website should have a healthy balance of both negative and positive.

A 2016 report by PowerReviews states that about 82% of shoppers look for negative reviews, and the sites with a good amount of these can improve their conversion rates. Reviews can also improve website interaction and dwell time significantly, affecting your Google Maps ranking positively. If you do not see an organic influx of reviews on your site, you should actively ask for them.

Tip 7: Make Use of Google Posts

You can also consider this as one of the Google My Business tips, as all these posts are published there. Some examples of these are posts by local restaurants, coaching centers, etc. A few things to keep in mind while creating these posts are:

• The pictures should be of high quality and should have comprehensive content.
• Keep the content short and just like the images, keep them direct. Users should gain valuable information about your business.

Active posting also helps Google relate your content with your business, and your Google Maps ranking will reflect that.

Tip 8: Embed Google Maps on Your Site

An ideal way to rank higher on Google Maps is to embed a Google Maps on your website. This will confirm to Google that your business indeed exists where you have stated on your GMB listing.

Like most sites already practice, the best place to embed a Google Maps is your contact page along with the address. Make sure you are using the exact address as all your citations and GMB listing. To embed a map, search your business on Google Maps, click on its share option, select “embed a map”, and copy the given link on your contact page.

Tip 9: Optimize Your Website and Homepage

The website associated with your Google Maps listing directly influences its ranking, especially the webpage’s URL that you put on the listing. The most common and best page to link is your site’s Home page.

Hence, you need to pay special attention to your Home page optimization. Some key parts to optimize are:

• Description Tag
• Title/H1 content
• Onsite content

Apart from the home page, you need to optimize the other pages of your site properly as well. The people that visit will also browse through them and influence the Google Maps listing.

Tip 10: Go All Out with Your SEO

Continuing with the previous point, in the end, if your website itself ranks high on the SERPs, Google will automatically prefer it more on other search results as well. So, go all out when optimizing your website and create the best and most updated version of it.

As a business owner, you might find it difficult to manage both extensive optimization practices and your core business operations. It is better to outsource your SEO services, which is both cost-effective and more beneficial. An expert can provide you with industry-specific Google My Business tips that will considerably affect your Google Maps search result rankings.

BENEFITS OF SHOWING UP AT A HIGHER POSITION ON GOOGLE MAPS

Having significant exposure and visibility on Google Maps can significantly improve the influx of potential customers. According to Think With Google, about 50% of users who search on Google Maps visit a physical store that very day.

Moreover, the founder of Website Fixer, Kyle Cramer states that a local business without a Google Maps listing is just a ghost website. With each passing day, local intent searches are increasing in number, and hence, it is crucial that you use measures like Google My Business tips to improve your website’s position on Google Maps.

CONCLUSION

The tips discussed above are highly effective and will substantially improve your brand’s local search ranking. But, you need to understand that it is like any other optimization approach, which takes time but provides organic benefits. So, you need to patiently practice them for some time to see a significant difference.

What’s your take on this?

Let us know in the comments section below.