Google Maps: Your Guide To Improving Your Maps Ranking

Your website’s ranking is crucial to the success of your business – the difference between a good ranking and a bad one could be what separates you from record profits or record losses. There are some really simple steps to improving your Google Maps ranking and I’ve explained them in this guide.

Recommended reading: Why Your Best Customers Are Walking Away

Update: May 2022

Managing your Business Profile on the Google Maps app

How you access your Google business listing has changed.

In July 2022, the Google My Business mobile app will no longer be available and the Google Maps app will be the best place for managing your business on mobile. You can also manage your profile via your Google Search page.

Make sure your Google My Business page is correct

Your Maps ranking begins with the details you add to your Google My Business (GMB) page. If it doesn’t have all of the relevant information for your business, Google won’t be able to link your business to all the searches relevant to you. Making sure your GMB page is correct is the first step in improving your ranking.

The information you must add is:

• Location of your business
• Business hours for your company
• Details of your website – including a link to it
• Contact information

Once all this is done, you need to verify your listing. This is simple to do but crucial to complete. This is because Google won’t include your business in its results until it’s confirmed to be a real organisation. Another important thing to get right on your GMB page is the subcategories you use for your business. These are particularly useful if your business is based in multiple locations. For more on Google My Business, check out the video below:

Review your NAP for consistency

NAP is the Name, Address, and Phone (number) of your business. Getting it right on your GMB is essential but this doesn’t go far enough. Your NAP can be found in many online directories on the internet and it needs to be consistent. If it’s not Google has less trust in your business and lowers your ranking.

The various places your business could be listed include:

• Better Business Bureau
• Bing
• Google+
• Merchant Circle
• Mantra.com
• Yahoo
• Yellowbook
• Yelp
• YP.com

There are a range of tools available to help you find where your business is listed. After you’ve found every listing, you must ensure all of the information is the same – including spelling and grammar. Doing this will increase Google’s trust in your business and improve your ranking. Watch the Q&A session underneath to learn more about NAP:

Optimise your website to match your GMB page

Once you’ve added your website to your GMB page Google associates the two. This means Google will use your website to help determine your Maps ranking. A quickfire way to improve your Maps ranking is to optimize your website so that it’s consistent with your GMB page.

In order to optimize your website, you must include your company name, business type, location, and the primary keywords used in your GMB page. This must be added wherever it is relevant to do so on your website, with your focus points being:

• Title Tags
• URLs
• Subheadings
• Images

This is a great way to improve the ranking for well-established and newly-made websites alike because it’s such a quick win. For example, optimizing images is one of the best ways to increase traffic, while your title tag is the most important on-page ranking factor. For more information about website optimization, watch the detailed video underneath:

Boost your Google Maps reviews

Reviews are extremely important today. Your customers value the opinions of their peers as much as those from their friends and family. Because of this Google puts a lot of stock in customer reviews and uses it as part of your Maps ranking. What does this mean to you? Boost your Google map reviews and your Maps ranking will improve. Simple.

Google’s policy is that you can’t ask your customers to leave reviews. However, there are ways around this:

• You can offer them a discount on their next purchase after leaving a review
• Reply to as many of your existing reviews as you can
• Include the link to your Google Maps review section in your email marketing

Your reviews need to look natural for them to improve your ranking. This means if you get a bulk batch at the same time Google may get suspicious, particularly if you have a new website.

Spending time improving your Google Maps ranking can pay dividends for your business. It’s an important ranking factor in local SEO and could be the difference between your business losing a customer or winning one. Now you know how to improve your Google Maps ranking, all that’s left is for you to put my advice into practice. So go away and put your business on the (Google) Map(s)!

Patrick Foster

GUEST AUTHOR
I’m an ecommerce nerd, passionate about all things digital and technology. Founder of Ecommerce Tips an industry-leading ecommerce blog dedicated to sharing business & entrepreneurial insights from the sector.

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