With six million businesses listed on Google Maps, it’s important for your local business to stand out. You can do this by optimizing your online presence to improve your search engine optimization (SEO) Google Maps Ranking. By following a few simple tips, you can increase your Maps visibility and bring in more customers.
In addition to a fully optimized Google Business Profile, you can also optimize your website and social media profiles to boost your Maps rankings. You can also use structured data to help search engines understand the information in your listing, including services and hours of operation. The more detailed your business information is, the more likely it is to rank high in search results and on maps.
While many factors affect your SEO Google Maps Ranking, the most critical one is prominence. Prominence is a combination of your business’ reputation, online visibility, star rating and more. You can enhance your prominence through a number of ways, such as campaigning for reviews and building citations on your local website and other sites that support your business.
Another factor is whether your business address falls within the borders of a specific location, as delineated on your Google Business Profile. This primarily influences your appearance in local search results based on the keywords you are targeting, as well as your distance from the user searching. This is why it’s so important to fill out your business address correctly.
To ensure that your listing is accurate, it’s a good idea to check the data you provide on a regular basis. This will help you catch errors before they impact your ranking. You can do this manually by performing a Google search in Incognito Mode, or by using a local SEO tool that provides a rank monitoring report of your Maps listings for the keywords you’re targeting.
It’s also important to make sure that your business information is complete and correct, including the name of your business, your contact details and your operating hours. This will help Google trust your business and display it as a highly relevant result for searches.
You can also boost your Maps profile by adding photos and videos to it. This will show potential customers what your business is all about and encourage them to visit. It’s a good idea to take advantage of the many free editing tools available on Google to add and remove photos and videos from your business listing.
Another way to boost your Google Maps ranking is by building a robust review platform. This can be done by encouraging your customers to leave a review on your GMB page and on other sites such as Facebook, Yelp and TripAdvisor. It’s important to remember that more reviews don’t necessarily mean a higher ranking, but it does signal to Google that people are interested in your business.
Finally, it’s important to keep an eye out for spam listings that might negatively influence your Maps ranking. This can happen if an intern set up an old account years ago, or someone intentionally created a fake profile to affect your Maps rankings. Fortunately, it’s easy to handle these issues by using Google’s business redressal form.