Google Maps website ranking is one of the most important factors that affect your local business’s online visibility and sales. According to studies, 67% of potential customers choose places that are listed in top3 or top10, and don’t even check venues that are ranked lower. Optimizing your Google Maps profile helps you beat your competitors and attract more traffic to your store. Luckily, Semrush’s Listing Management tool makes it easy to track your profile’s performance and keep it up-to-date.
Creating and managing your Google My Business profile is crucial to your location-based SEO efforts. It’s a free platform where you can add your business details, contact information, and photos of your location. Make sure to include keywords in your description and categorize your business correctly so that it shows up for searches relevant to your industry. Additionally, update your opening hours and post regularly on your business page to show that you are active and care about your customers.
As with any other search engine optimization effort, it’s critical to have a mobile-friendly website that renders properly across different screen sizes and devices. This ensures that users can navigate your site without having to pinch and zoom or scroll side-to-side. This also improves your Google Maps ranking since the search engine considers sites that load quickly as highly optimized for mobile use.
Another way to improve your Google Maps ranking is to add relevant images and ALT tags that help search engines better understand your content. This enables them to match your listing with related searches and rank you higher in the results. It’s also a good idea to monitor your ranking on a regular basis and take steps to improve it when necessary.
Prominence is another important factor to consider when optimizing your GMB listing. This is based on how well known and liked your business is, both online and offline. While it’s difficult to pin down exactly how prominence is measured, the latest Google Maps algorithm seems to place a premium on brand citations, reviews, and ratings.
Building more citations is a great way to boost your GMB ranking because it’s one of the few things that Google publicly admits has an impact on rankings. However, focusing on low-quality citations from directories and other non-reputable sources is a bad idea because it can actually hurt your rankings.
Reviews are also a big part of the Google Maps ranking formula, so it’s important to encourage your customers to leave a review after each visit. This will not only improve your GMB ranking, but it will also increase your chances of getting a customer through the door. One way to do this is by using a service like Podium, which automates the process of getting reviews from customers and helps your business grow.