Google Maps is one of the most important tools for local business visibility. It’s used by consumers when searching for businesses in their area, and ranking highly on Google Maps can lead to more clicks, better brand awareness, and more business. It’s therefore crucial that businesses optimize their Google Business Profile and monitor their local rankings regularly.
Local SEO is a complex field and Google regularly updates its algorithms, some of which affect how businesses rank on Maps. As such, it’s essential that businesses stay up-to-date with the latest changes and implement their own strategies to improve their Google Maps ranking.
There are a number of key factors that can affect your Maps ranking, including customer reviews and building local citations. It’s also important to make sure that your business information is correct and up-to-date on all of your online profiles, including your website and social media channels. In addition, ensuring that there are no duplicate listings can help you avoid losing valuable ranking positions due to competitor spam or unscrupulous actors creating fake profiles to steal your rankings.
The most important factor for ranking on Google Maps is proximity. This is determined by how close a business is to the searcher’s location. Other factors include prominence and authority, which are influenced by how well known and trusted a business is, both offline and online. Businesses that were dominating local searches with keywords in their names prior to the Vicinity update may have seen their rankings drop as a result of this.
To increase your business’s prominence, you should focus on obtaining as many reviews as possible, and make it easy for customers to do so. You can do this by offering incentives, such as freebies or discounts, for people to leave a review, and by responding to reviews in a professional manner. It’s also helpful to seek out reputable local sources that can promote your business or write about it. This can be done by finding local news websites, blogs, and business directories that will link back to your website.
Another great way to monitor your Google Maps ranking is to use a tool that can track and display the average Google Maps position of your competitors. This is an objective view of your competition’s Google Maps ranking and can reveal what you need to do to outrank them. Semrush’s Listing Management tool displays this information, and can even alert you if it finds a duplicated listing. This will save you time and effort that would be spent manually tracking your ranking and addressing any issues. This can be a huge benefit for your business, especially in an industry where Google changes its algorithm frequently.