Google Maps marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach your audience in local search. When searching for a business in Google’s local search results, you may see a box showing Google Maps’ 3 top choices for you. This is known as the local pack or the Google “snack pack.” As a business owner, you need your business to be in one of those top three spots, and the only way to do that is to fully understand the local search ranking signals and then optimize everything about your business for local SEO. Your first step: claim your Google My Business listing. Once you have done that, consider these helpful tips to bring your business to the top of local search results pages.
1. Proximity
When a consumer is searching for something on Google or other search engines such as Bing, 40% of the time they are looking for something local. Proximity searches can be lumped into two categories: geo-modified and non-geo modified searches. Remember when we would all search for something and write near me at the end of it? Nowadays, it is implied that consumers are searching for local businesses, so they do not need to include the near me. This is what is called non-geo modified searches.
Non-geo modified searches are searches that do not include a location at the end of the keyword(s). If somebody were searching for coffee shops and just typed “coffee shops” into Google, they would automatically get results that are closest to them, as search engines heavily rely on proximity when a location is not specified.
If a consumer is searching for coffee shops in a specific area, and they state which area they are looking in (i.e., coffee shops in Erie, PA), they will get all of the coffee shops listed in that area, in order of who has the strongest relevance and prominence, not necessarily the ones that are closest to them. These are called geo-modified searches.
2. Prominence
With prominence being a significant factor when it comes to local SEO, you need to know how well-known your business is to the community. The best way to create online presence and visibility for your business is to receive Google reviews from your customers and to utilize online citations.
Reviews can make or break a business. A consumer is more willing to do business with someone who has 100 reviews rather than someone with 10. This builds on the idea of trust and authority. Not only should you encourage customers to review your company, but you also should respond to any reviews left, positive or negative. Read one of our previous blog posts for tips on how to respond to negative reviews.
Citations are another great way to improve your prominence on the web. A citation is any mention of your business’ NAPW (name, address, phone number, and website). It does not have to include all four aspects of the NAPW; however, if it does, you’re going to get the most out of that citation. There are many ways to get citations, whether they are in directories or mentions on blog sites and more. If this seems to be a bit much, our experts at ASAPmaps can help clean up your business’ citations.
3. Relevance
Relevance has a ton of aspects to it, so we will just cover the basics. Relevance can deal with your Google My Business listing, content on your website, and much more. Hopefully, these tips will help you keep your business relevant in the eyes of search engines.
When creating and/or optimizing your Google My Business listing, make sure the selected category best fits your company. You wouldn’t want to own a laundromat and have your listing come up under searches for department stores, so be sure that you only select categories that are most relevant to your business. Another important factor when first creating your Google My Business listing is adding a business description. Keywords within this description will help Google give the most relevant search results to a consumer.
Believe it or not, the content on your website will have an impact on local SEO. When a user searches for something, Google crawls through sites, analyzing the information within the website and pulling keywords, so it is important to use language that an everyday person might type into a Google search bar.
Getting into the more technical aspects of local SEO, meta-descriptions and title tags also play a critical role. First impressions on a Google search engine results page (SERP) will help a consumer decide whether or not they would like to visit your website. Your title tag should include a primary keyword phrase that is searched for, and your description should not only catch the eye of the consumer but also keep their interest enough for them to click the link onto your website.
Another technical aspect to focus on would be body tags and alt text on images. Body tags (i.e., h1, h2, etc.) are essential because not only do they organize information for the reader, they also give the reader an idea of what they should expect in the succeeding paragraphs. Alt text, on the other hand, deals with images rather than text. When posting a picture on your site, you have the option to add alt text. This helps search engines crawl and fully understand what exactly the image is portraying. At the same time, it is an excellent opportunity to add your keywords to better optimize your page.
While there are a plethora of aspects that play into the relevance of a business and their webpages, the final elements we will cover are links, internal and external. Including links within content that lead to other relevant pages on your website help the user navigate your site with ease while visiting all pages that focus on a specific topic or keyword. External links help users navigate from your website to another, in case you cannot offer the full amount of information the user is looking for.
Get on Google Maps
Getting your business to the top of local search engine results pages can be tricky and time-consuming, but following these tips may help you achieve your goal of climbing to the top! If you can’t seem to figure all of this stuff out (we know, it is a lot) or if you just simply don’t have the time to dedicate to it all, we have a team of local search experts who can help you out. Get started with ASAPmaps and let us do the hard work for you.
