Getting your website ranking on Google Maps is a key step to expanding your business’s local reach. It also helps boost your organic traffic. A well-optimized Google Maps listing can bring more people to your physical store and increase conversions.
The best place to start is by ensuring your business’s GMB profile is fully optimized, which includes optimizing your business name, category, and location. It is also a good idea to include photos of your products or services. Research shows that businesses with more than one photo receive 35% more clicks and 42% more driving directions requests than those without images.
Next, make sure your website is mobile-friendly. Nearly 60% of Google searches occur on mobile devices, so it is important that your website is responsive across all screen sizes. If it isn’t, you could lose your map ranking to competitors with more responsive websites.
Another factor to consider is the number and quality of your reviews. Review volume and quality have a direct impact on your Google Maps rankings. Ensure that you respond to every review you receive, as this will help increase your ranking and encourage other customers to leave a review. Having a high number of positive reviews is a great way to show that your business is popular and successful. However, no business is perfect and sometimes a small number of customers have negative experiences. Having a robust monitoring system can help you identify negative reviews quickly and efficiently so that you can take action.
Aside from reviews, citations are another important component of your Google Maps ranking. These are essentially mentions of your business’s name, address, and phone number from other websites. They are a form of social proof that demonstrate to Google that your business is popular and trusted. You can monitor the citations on your website with tools like Semrush’s Listing Management tool. To boost your Google Maps ranking, your citations should be consistent with minimal variations. Variations such as Rd vs Street, apartment vs suite, etc. can cause volatility in your citations and lower your ranking.
Finally, it is a good idea to add keywords to your Google Maps profile. Using the correct keywords in your business name, category, description, and location can help your business rank higher on search results pages. Similarly, using keywords in your ad copy can also help your ads rank higher on Google Maps.
With Google’s Vicinity update in 2021 bringing proximity back as a ranking factor, it is more important than ever to focus on your local SEO strategy. Using a tool such as Semrush’s Listing Management can help you stay on top of your local rankings and avoid losing your Google Maps ranking to competitors. Then you can continue to drive more customers to your business and boost your ROI!