There are two ways to market your business on Google Maps.

First, is to invest in Google’s local search ads. When people search for local businesses both in Google Maps or Google search, this local search ad will be displayed on top of other results. Local Search ads use Google’s standard CPC (Cost Per Click) model, so there’s not much strategy besides bidding more money according to your location and niche.

The second, which will be our focus in this guide, is to rank organically on Google Maps. It’s important to note that Google ‘only’ displays the top 3 Google Maps results for any local queries (including “near me” queries) on Google search results. Yes, they are placed below the local search ad, but organic results will always provide more value for users.

Why Google Maps Marketing Is Important

In this advanced age of social media transparency, there are three main ways how people find out about local businesses:

• Through content, including social media posts from influencers and their friends/family, YouTube videos, and so on.
• Via Google search and Google Maps, often accompanied by checking out reviews on platforms like TripAdvisor and Yelp.
• Through advertisements. Not as effective as it used to be, but it’s still there

With Google Maps marketing, we are effectively capturing one of the three main sources of traffic. By being on the top 3 results on Google Maps—according to our niche and location—, we can get three main benefits:

1. Building awareness: the Google Maps result will link to Google My Business listing, which will give various information like photos, store hours, address, what we are selling, etc.
2. Get more calls: Users can directly click the “Call” button on the search result, giving them an easier time to call your business
3. More store visits: Users can ask for directions immediately from the search result.

Google Maps Ranking Factors

Before we can optimize our listing to rank higher on Google Maps, we must first learn about the important factors that will determine our ranking.

According to Google’s Guidelines for local ranking, there are three main factors:

• Relevance

How relevant your listing is to the searcher’s intent. In practice, this is mainly about your Google My Business (GMB) listing (will be discussed further below). How complete and relevant your Google My Business information is, the usage of keywords in business title and information, whether your listing is verified, etc.

• Distance

How close your business’ location is to the location specified by the searcher, or the searcher’s location (for “near me” queries). For example if restaurant A and B have similar relevance to the searcher’s query, but restaurant B is closer, restaurant B will rank higher than restaurant A. There’s not much we can optimize about this factor besides providing correct and complete information about our location.

• Prominence

In short, how well-known a business is according to Google’s algorithm. This is why, for example, an established, well-known restaurant usually ranks higher than a fairly new restaurant with more optimizations.

In practice, Google collects various information from the internet to determine a business’s prominence:

1. Articles talking about your business
2. Backlinks to your website (since your website URL is included in your Google My Business listing)
3. Mentions of your business’s NAP (Name, Address, Information) on the internet. This will include if you list your business on various online directories
4. More reviews and positive ratings on Google Maps and other review sites
5. Social media mentions and engagements

So, our optimizations for Google Maps Marketing will focus on these factors.

Step-By-Step Guide To Google Maps SEO

Step 1: Claiming Your Google My Business Listing

Claim your business

Google Maps’ results are based on Google My Business listings, so it will only make sense that this first step is also the most crucial one.

First, do a quick Google search for your brand/business name to check whether there’s already a GMB listing for your business. If your business has been around for some time, there’s a good chance that there’s already a GMB listing that you can claim. Alternatively, you can check here and make the claim directly.

There’s also the possibility that others have claimed your business listing, but don’t worry that Google provides an option to request ownership here. Just follow the required steps, and as long as you can verify ownership, you’ll get the claim.

Step 2: Optimizing Google My Business Listing

The next step is to provide as complete and accurate information on your Google My Business listing.

Important: focus on providing comprehensive information for your human audience, and not to please the search engine’s algorithm. Don’t emphasize keyword usage too much here, use the target keywords sparingly and make sure they occur naturally.

Make sure all information details are accurate and grammatically correct, including proper capitalization for your business name and address.

Choose the most relevant category for your business. There are a lot to choose from, but remember that it is about what your business is and not what you sell.

Also, depending on your business, make sure to provide the correct information about your service area. If you provide delivery service, state so. If you business operates at the customer’s place (construction companies, home services, etc.), state the correct information.

Make sure to enter your business hours accurately, and update them whenever there’s any changes. If you have different business hours during the weekends, holidays, or other events, there’s an option to customize your information.

Step 3: Adding Photos To Your Google My Business Listing

According to Google themselves, listings that include photos get 42% more requests for directions on Google Maps, and 35% more website visitations.

Important note: if you can, take photos on or near your business’s physical location. Google will extract the metadata information from the photos.

Make sure your photos are well-taken, can represent what your business is about, and are with the correct format and size.

Step 4: Verifying Google My Business Listing

Google will send a postcard with a verification PIN to your business’s physical address

Once you’ve provided all the correct information, it’s time to verify your Google My Business listing.

Unverified listing will affect ranking performances, and you will be locked out from some Google My Business features (i.e., the ability to use https://posts.withgoogle.com).

Generally, the verification process is done via mail, where Google will send a postcard with a verification PIN to your business’s physical address. (Thus, it’s important to provide a correct address and not a virtual office). The verification process is typically done within a week.

For some business types where not having a physical location is possible, verification via email or phone call is also possible.

Step 5: Local SEO Link and Citation Building

Link building in Google Maps marketing is different than organic, traditional SEO.

In general, here are important link types that will affect your local SEO performance:

1. Citation (NAP mentions), including online local directory
2. Industry-related sites in your area
3. Local websites
4. Local press sites
5. Local chamber of commerce sites

Building Citations

Citations are the most valuable links in the world of Google Maps SEO, and there are two main ways to get citations:

1. Get you NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) information mentioned completely by a reputable local site (i.e. bloggers, reviewers, other relevant sites in your industry).
2. Listing your NAP in various online directories according to your location and niche/industry

For the first, there is no other shortcut besides building your own reputation (both online and offline), and build relationships with relevant local sites, especially those with close ties to your industry/niche.

The latter, however, is more important (and more accessible). A quick Google search will help you find online directories according to your industry/category and location. Alternatively, you can also use this list by Moz for online directories by city (U.S. cities), and this list for citations based on category.

There are two things to keep in mind during the citation building process: first, make sure to include accurate and complete information. Second, maintain consistency of information across all the different listings, especially the NAP information.

Meaning, if you change your business’s location, you’d have to update your NAP information across all these listings. Google treats misinformation very seriously, and inconsistent information might cause penalty or permanent ban, so make sure to carefully pay attention to this aspect.

Local SEO Link Building

There are three major areas to focus on in link building for Google Maps marketing:

• Local sites that are related to your industry, like local newspapers, schools & universities, local chamber of commerce and other government entities, etc.
• Your business partners’ sites
• Local influencers and important figures

Remember that quality is more important than quality. In fact, Google discourages excessive link exchanges between businesses, and you might get penalized if you get too many backlinks in a short period of time. In general, focus on ‘just’ getting two or three high-quality backlinks every month.

Step 6: Get More (Positive) Review

Positive reviews are not only important as a major ranking signal, but as a social proof, reviews are also important to build awareness and encourage conversions.

Focus on getting more positive reviews on your Google Maps listing, but reviews on third-party sites, especially major ones like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Facebook Places, among other platforms, are also important for Google Maps ranking purposes.

Regarding reviews, there are several factors that will affect your Google Maps ranking:

1. Listing on major review sites (Yelp, Glassdoor, BBB, TripAdvisor, etc.). It is worth noting that Google My Business/Google Maps listing is still the most important
2. Number of positive reviews, pretty self-explanatory: the more, the better
3. Keywords and location usage on reviews. When the reviewers use the city name or keywords, Google will perceive that you are a trustworthy local business.
4. The number of responses are also important. On the other hand, negative reviews not responded to will negatively impact your ranking

With that being said, here are some tactics you can try to encourage more positive reviews:

• Offer incentives

A common, but effective practice is to offer incentives to your existing customers in exchange of (positive) reviews. For example if you have a restaurant, you can offer free desserts or discounts after they showed your staff a review on your Google Map listing.

• Respond to existing reviews

People are more likely to leave reviews on businesses that frequently respond to existing ones, including and especially the negative ones. Above, we have also discussed that Google took account on the number of review responses as a ranking signal.

• Use social media

Share, retweet, and pin positive reviews so that more people can see it. This will also encourage them to leave theirs. Also, resolve negative issues publicly on social media.

End Words

Google Maps marketing or local SEO, as you can see from the six steps we have discussed above, isn’t exactly rocket science. Anyone can do it with limited technical knowledge, but the key is consistency.

Consistent in your citation building efforts, keep encouraging customers to leave positive reviews, and especially maintain consistent and up-to-date information. Do this for 6 to 12 months, and you’ll see your Google Maps listing steadily climb up the ranking.

The post Your Ultimate Guide to Google Maps Marketing appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.

For example, if you are a restaurant in New York, specifically on Broadway, you would want to rank on the top-3 spots when people in Broadway is searching for “restaurants near me”.

In the past, Google shows 7 results when people are searching for Google Maps-related queries (queries with specific location and “near me” queries), or when people are directly searching on Google Maps. However, as we can see today, Google only shows 3, and we would need to click “more results” to see the others.

Obviously, the businesses on these top-3 spots—or the 3-pack— will get more exposure compared to those below them. The audience will perceive that these businesses are more credible, more relevant, and hence are more likely to purchase from them.

Since more and more people are now using “near me” queries—whether by typing or using voice search— on their mobile devices when looking for local businesses, appearing in this local 3-pack is very, very valuable. Let us take a quick glance of key benefits in ranking on the top-3 spots of Google Maps.

Key Benefits of Ranking in the Google Maps 3-Pack

• 88% of consumers who searched for a local business on their mobile will visit that business within 24 hours.
• According to Google’s report, 28% of these local searches result in a purchase
• People are now making purchase decisions based on whether they can easily find/contact/visit your business and whether others are saying positive things about you. In a Google Maps listing, the audience can easily find these pieces of vital information
• Google Maps results are interactive, where people can find the directions to your business with just one click and make a phone call directly from the search results. According to Google’s study, 70% of mobile searchers use this click-to-call feature.

Key Factors In Determining Google Maps Ranking

Since Google Maps results are mainly based on the searcher’s location, there are two main factors in determining how high your listing will rank:

• Visibility and Credibility

The more credible your business is, the more likely it will rank higher on the Google Maps listing. There are many factors that can determine your local visibility from mentions from other sites, mentions on social media especially from influencers, etc. Having more citations on local directories (Google Maps itself, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Facebook Places, other local directories according to your niche) will also play a big part.

• Positive Reviews

Google took account of the number of positive reviews you have as a strong ranking signal, and we should encourage more positive reviews not only on Google Maps, but also on other important platforms like Facebook Places and Yelp among others. Positive reviews can also build your credibility to encourage more conversions, while negative reviews can ruin your reputation and might give a significant damage to conversion rate.

Top-3 Spots VS Paid Advertising

Technically, the 3-pack is not the topmost results we see on a Google Maps results page, but rather the paid ads (when there are actually businesses paying for the advertised spots). So, we can cut through the local SEO efforts and get these top results instantly.

The question is, which one is more beneficial?

To answer this, we should understand the very basic principle of any marketing efforts. Local SEO, which is ranking organically on Google Maps listing, is an organic marketing effort. Meaning, you will need to spend less money to execute this campaign.

The thing with organic campaigns from blog posts (content/inbound marketing), SEO, and others including local SEO is that they will take more time before you can see any significant results, while a paid campaign will get you to the same place in less time. So, you are technically buying time.

In general, paid vs organic campaign is usually a case of time vs costs. Paid advertising will obviously cost more, but will guarantee short-term results. However, is that also the case with organic Google Maps ranking vs paid ads? The thing is, more and more people are resisting Google ads, especially on the search results page. According to a report by Search Engine Watch, 60% of local searchers prefer the top-3 results, and only 10% trust paid ads. Again, here we see an advantage if we can get that 3-pack spot.

Pair that with the fact that search ads can be extremely expensive when not managed well, and the average CPC (Cost-Per-Click) of Google Ads is increasing with each and every year. Popular keywords in popular location can cost you more than $50 per click, and pair that with the fact that Google Ads has a pretty low CTR of 2% and below, it is hard to maximize ROI. Simply put, this average CTR of 2 to 3% will translate to just 2 or 3 visitations or phone calls in 100 clicks, a pretty abysmal number.

What about ranking in the 3-pack? What’s the average phone calls per 100 views? The good news is, the average conversion is very high at 44% according to a study in 2015 by Moz. We can see that getting that top-3 spots is far more valuable.

There’s also another factor causing this phenomenon: in Google Maps results, we can directly see the star rating on the result, which as we have mentioned above, a huge factor in influencing conversion rate. Businesses with more positive reviews and a higher star rating will simply get more views and clicks. There are cases where the number 3 spot get more calls and views than the topmost, simply because the business in the number 3 spot has more reviews and a higher rating Let us discuss this a little deeper.

The Importance of Positive Reviews

In this age of social media and transparency, everyone is checking for online reviews for just about anything. Your online reputation and especially the number of positive reviews your business has can literally make or break your business.

72% of customers don’t take any action—much less making a purchase decision— before they read reviews. So, a lack of positive reviews on your Google Maps listing, as well as other important aggregators like Yelp or TripAdvisor, can hurt your revenue. On the other hand, 40% of customers go to competitors when they read bad reviews, another important fact we should notice.

So, how can we leverage online reviews to our advantage? Here are some key principles:

• Encourage positive reviews from your existing customers. If necessary, you can offer incentives like special offers or discounts when they leave a positive review.
• Understand that there are two different types of negative reviews: those coming from actual customers with real issues, and those coming from fake customers with malicious intents. Noticing the difference is the key.
• If the negative review is valid, handle it quickly and politely. Don’t deliver false promises, yet on the other hand, don’t give the impression of unprofessionality. If you don’t have the answer, you can simply say “we will get back to you as soon as possible” (and do get back to them).
• If the bad review is fake, you can report it to Google Maps or the respective platform, provided you have sufficient proofs. You might want to take legal actions depending on the severity of the case.
• Bad reviews can be rooted on actual issues within your product/service or even your business. In these cases, you will need to treat these underlying issues as a long-term solution, or else, you’ll keep getting the same negative reviews related to this issue.

We have also mentioned that the number of positive reviews is an important ranking signal for Google Maps, so by having more positive reviews, you are killing two birds with one stone. On average, a customer reads between 2 to 10 reviews before making a purchase. However, 7% of customers can read between 11-20 reviews while 6% will read more than 20. In short, aim for at least 11 positive reviews, since 13% of the total buying population will read that many before making any purchase decisions.

Higher Star Rating=Higher Conversions

Above, we have briefly mentioned how a high star rating can dramatically improve the conversion rate of your Google Maps listing.  On average, a listing with a 5-star average rating will get 69% of the total attention on the 3-pack. The number will drop to 59% for those with a 4-star rating, and 44% for those with a 3-star average.

Importance of Reviews on Third-Party Aggregators

While Google never really confirmed it, there is common speculation that reviews on other review aggregators (Yelp, TripAdvisor, Facebook Places) and local directories will also affect your ranking on Google Maps. This speculation is partly confirmed by a Forbes article, stating that Google do use information from third-party aggregators and directories.

Google uses third-party reviews to determine trending businesses, as well as social media mentions. We should also remember that the more reviews we have on all kinds of sites and the more mentions we have on social media, the more people are aware to your business, and hence it can increase conversions. Reviews are time-stamped, so Google’s (and other search engine’s) crawlers can easily track customer engagement and trends.

We definitely can’t neglect the importance of user reviews for both the benefits of improving your Google Maps ranking and conversion rates. As mentioned, online shoppers nowadays always check for reviews before making a purchase. The more positive reviews you have, the better the chance you’ll also rank in organic SERP and Google Maps ranking (even better, the 3-pack).

In the early years of the internet bloom and e-commerce, people are relying on websites to decide on an online purchase. Back then, we can simply have a good, informative website, push it with SEO and the sales will come. Now, in the era of social media and online transparency, that is no longer possible, as more and more people will first turn to online reviews.

Here are just some of the stats showing the importance of online reviews;

• According to Spiegel Research Center, displaying reviews can increase conversion as high as 270%, while displaying reviews for higher-priced products can increase conversion rates by 380%
• According to 3D Cart, with available reviews, 71% of customers are more comfortable in making a purchase decision
• Zendesk concluded that 88% of buyers are influenced by reviews
• According to BrightLocal, 87% of American consumers will only buy from businesses with three or higher star rating.

How will this affect your local business? You will need to encourage more of your existing customers to leave positive reviews. Also, if you are working with (or looking to work with) a digital marketing consultant, make sure that the agency understood the importance of online reviews and social proofs. Many digital marketing companies are focused on ranking high in the organic SERP or placing Adwords, but they won’t bring much value when you don’t have enough visibility, trust, and attention that are provided by local reviews and ranking in the 3-pack.

End Words

Ranking in the top 3 spots of Google Maps—or the local 3-pack— is a very important step to attract your ideal prospects: encouraging people to make a call, request for directions to your business, and in the end, bringing more revenue to your business.

So, it is very important to develop a local online marketing strategy or hire an expert or subscribe to local SEO services that are focused on getting that Google 3-pack presence, as well as getting more positive reviews from your consumers.

The post Why Ranking On Google Maps Is Important For Your Local Business appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.

Local SEO can be an effective solution for that problem: by ranking high on Google Maps, we can get more traffic, prospects, and ultimately, visitors. Yet, how can we effectively implement it? In this guide, we will learn how, from registering your Google Maps listing to optimizing your listing.

First, however, let us begin by discussing the concept of local SEO.

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO, in a nutshell, is optimizing your business listing on Google Maps. Quite recently, Google implemented a major change on their Google Maps search results page: while previously Google listed 7 top results on the first page, now they only show 3.

Meaning, if your listing is outside this top 3 results for your specific industry and location, you will get significantly less visibility.

Is local SEO different than “traditional” B2B SEO then? Yes, and here are the main differences:

• First, obviously “traditional” SEO is targeting the Google search engine as opposed to Google Maps for local SEO.
• While traditional or organic SEO relies on backlinks or inbound links, local SEO relies on citations (we’ll discuss it more below)
• Traditional SEO is mainly about developing content, while it’s also true to local SEO, it’s less prevalent

A common misconception we should first address is that local SEO is not about targeting local keywords like “restaurants, Toronto” on your content. It’s a common practice in the past, but no longer relevant nowadays.

Why? Because for keywords that are tied to locations (try searching for “restaurants in Toronto” now), the Google Maps results will be on top of any other sites, usually followed by list articles like “Top 10 Restaurants in Toronto”. So, optimizing your site to rank organically for this keyword is very difficult.

Local SEO, in a nutshell, is optimizing your business listing on Google Maps. Quite recently, Google implemented a major change on their Google Maps search results page: while previously Google listed 7 top results on the first page, now they only show 3.

Why Is Local SEO Important?

We all know how more and more people are now using mobile devices as their main way to search and browse the internet. We should also consider the rise of smart home assistants in recent years from Amazon Alexa to Google Home to Apple HomeKit, among other products.

With these devices, near me” queries became more common,, especially when we are using voice search. If you are a brick-and-mortar business, not optimizing for these queries simply means missing out on a huge market.

Also, a Google Maps listing can effectively encourage prospects to purchase from your brand, with Google Maps reviews being very relevant social proofs nowadays.

Long story short, if you rank high on Google Maps, more people will be aware of your business and more people will trust your business. In turn, this will translate to more traffic to your listing and more visitors to your actual location.

Let’s use a fictional restaurant, the X Bistro as an example. If X Bistro can get the top 3 spots for the “restaurants near me” query when someone is near Toronto, there is a high likelihood this person will click on the X Bistro listing. If the review for X Bistro listing is also good, there is a high chance this person will visit our restaurant.

How To Rank on Google Maps

There are two main factors driving your ranking on Google Maps listing: proximity and relevancy. Before we can optimize our listing to rank better, we should learn these two different factors.

• Proximity

In a nutshell, the closer you are to the searcher’s location (or the location specified in the search query), the better you will rank.

• Relevancy

If the X Bistro is deemed more relevant than Y Restaurant by Google, X Bistro will rank higher. Yet, how does Google determine relevance? There are three main factors: how complete and up-to-date your listing is (including photos), your reviews, and your local citations.

So, Google Maps ranking is based on these two factors. Obviously, we can’t optimize proximity (unless somehow you have an unlimited budget and can build a location on every inch of the planet), so our main focus to rank better in Google Maps is to optimize the relevancy of our listing.

For the rest of this guide, we will learn how with a step-by-step approach.

Implementing Local SEO: A Step-By-Step Guide

Above, we have discussed that our local SEO efforts will be focused on optimizing the relevancy of our listing. Yet, how can we do that? Here, we will discuss how in just five simple steps.

Step 1: Register and Verify Your Google My Business Account

To optimize your listing, you should first have a listing. It’s fairly obvious, but still a very important step. There are also several details you might have missed when you registered your Google My Business account, and so make sure not to skip this part.

Here are some important considerations in this step:

• Make sure your address is complete and accurate. A good approach is to use the exact same address used by the USPS
• Specify your service area, if you can deliver your product/service to nearby towns or even cities, you can specify it in your listing
• List all possible categories related to your business. For example, since our X Bistro is specializing in steaks, we can list “restaurant”, “steakhouse”, “steak restaurant”, and so on. The more information you can provide Google, the better, but make sure they are all relevant.
• Optimize your introduction. You can include the relevant keywords here (i.e. “restaurant in Toronto”, but your main focus is to make sure this section is well-written for human readers.

Also, make sure to verify your Google My Business listing. Usually, Google will mail a postcard containing a unique PIN to your physical address, where you can use the PIN to verify your listing. Verifying your listing is very important, so don’t neglect this step.

The main principle of this step is, the more complete and accurate your information is, the better it will be for optimization purposes. Take your time to fill out all the necessary information including business hours, payment forms accepted, and so on.

Step 2: Optimizing Photos in Your listing

Google My Business and Google Maps are essentially visual in nature. What’s the first thing you see when looking at a Google Maps search result? Most likely it’s the photo(s).

Including and optimizing photos in your Google My Business listing has two different benefits:

• Obviously, having nice, well-photographed photos on your listing can drive more customers
• You can optimize your listing with photos, in relations to local SEO

With that being said, consider including at least one professional-looking photos in your listing. If ambiance or design is a crucial aspect of your business, you might want to include more pictures.

So, how can we use photos to optimize our listing? the answer is by optimizing the EXIF metadata of each picture. You can use various third-party tools to do this, some of them are free. Here is some metadata you might want to add to your images:

• Your geographic location tags (city, country, etc.)
• Your physical address
• Latitude and longitude details
• Your target keywords
• Details about services offered by your business (business category data)

Step 3: Building Local Citations

This step might be slightly more complicated than the previous ones, and so we will first explain the concept and main principles of local citations.

A local citation, in a nutshell, is an online mention of your local business which must include three important aspects: your business Name, Address, and Phone Number, which is often abbreviated as the NAP. There are three different types of local citations:

1.Major Local Business Platforms

These platforms include Google My Business (which we have covered), Infogroup, and Acxiom among others. Major social review sites like Yelp! or Facebook can also be included here.

2.Location and Industry-Specific Directories

There are sites and online directories that are focused on listing businesses in a specific location or businesses that belong to a specific industry. For example, Toronto Business Directory is focused on Toronto area, while the Toronto Dining Channel is focused on listing restaurant businesses in Toronto.

3. Other Citations

Other citations such as mentions from publications, blogs, relevant sites, and relevant apps can be valuable. In this case, the approach is similar to building backlinks for traditional SEO.

Our focus in this step is more about the first and second type of citations, while for the third type, we will discuss it further when discussing content development below.

Now, your main job in this step is to find all the relevant directories (both major and local platforms) according to your industry and location. Let’s go back to our example, the X Bistro. In this case, we would want to find local directories for Toronto (location) and restaurants (industry).

A quick Google search will help you find these relevant directories, and here are the important principles when building your citations:

• Make sure all your information are complete and up-to-date, as complete as your Google My Business listing discussed on step 1
• Pay special attention to NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number), make they are always consistent across all your listings
• The more the merrier, but the more listings you have, the more you will need to invest your time and resources, especially if the citation also features reviews. We will discuss this further below.

Your citations are one of your most important assets when talking about local SEO. Pay extra care to the effort in building your local citations, and evaluate your listings regularly.

Step 4. Driving Positive Reviews

In this era when social proof is extremely important,, soliciting positive reviews have two major benefits: first, obviously the more positive reviews you have, the more credible your business will be perceived by customers. This will translate to more prospects and eventually, more customers.

Also, positive reviews on your Google Maps listing, as well as relevant review sites like Yelp!, TripAdvisor, and Facebook, are a strong ranking signal for Google Maps.

So, how can we get more reviews? One of the most effective ways is to incentivize your existing customers. For example, you can offer discounts, freebies, or other special offers for those who leave positive reviews on your Google Maps listing.

Here are some important considerations for this step:

1. The best way to get more positive reviews is to offer service excellence and delivering an excellent product. There’s no shortcut around this.
2. You can use various monitoring tools to keep track of your reviews, as well as your competitors’. This can act as an effective market research method.
3. Also, an important factor is how you should handle negative reviews. If it’s a valid negative review from those who have purchased your product/service, handle it quickly and politely. Don’t ever deliver false promises.
4. For negative reviews coming from fake users, especially those with clear malicious intent (using harsh languages, etc.), you can ask Google Maps or the review platform to remove this review with sufficient proof. Consider taking legal actions if the attacks are serious.

Step 5. Developing Content

Content marketing is a pretty broad subject on its own, and we won’t give it much justice discussing it here. However, here are some key principles in implementing content marketing for local SEO purposes:

• The most important part here is targeting the right keywords (i.e., “restaurant Toronto”). Find keywords with enough search volume but manageable competition. However, focus on writing for human readers: write naturally, don’t overstuff keywords, and make sure the content is unique, valuable, and relevant.
• Aim to get more backlinks from relevant sites, which can act as a citation. Promote your content with social media, influencers, and other channels.
• Guest posting for relevant sites can be a good approach if you do it right.

Conclusion

While local SEO can be terrifying at first, it is actually quite simple once you’ve got the hang of it. With the five steps we have shared above, you can start working with local SEO consultants and see your listing climb higher on Google Maps ranking.

The key to a successful local SEO is consistency: local SEO, as with traditional SEO, is a long-term game, and you should expect to invest at least 6 months before you see significant results. Monitor your progress, constantly evaluate and optimize, and be patient.

Getting that top spot on Google Maps can dramatically improve your growth. So, although the process can be long, it will be totally worth it in the end.

The post How to Create a Successful Local SEO Strategy appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.

To answer this question, first we will need to define the term “SEO” and “local SEO” respectively, understanding their similarities, differences, and different benefits.

First, SEO—or Search Engine Optimization—, in a nutshell, is optimizing your site to rank higher on Google’s (and other search engines’) result page for specific keywords. For example, if your business is a pizza restaurant, if you can rank for the “best pizza” New York, it will bring several key benefits including but not limited to:

• You can attract those who are searching for the “best pizza” query
• Since this is a positive keyword associated with credibility, this audience will perceive your business as trustworthy and credible
• If the “best pizza” keyword has a high number of search volume (which is, the number of searches in a given month), you can get a lot of traffic to your site, which can then translate to more people visiting your business and purchasing from you

How can we implement SEO? While SEO is a very, very broad and complex subject, it will boil down to mainly three things:

• Creating and publishing high-quality, relevant content pieces that include the target keyword(s). The keywords should be included naturally with optimal density.The main focus here is to develop content pieces that are valuable for your ideal readers.
• Optimizing your site so that it can be easily indexed by Google. This aspect will include things like ensuring your site is mobile responsive, ensuring fast load speed, and so on.
• Getting other sites, especially high-quality ones to link your site (and your content). These links are known as backlinks, and simply put, the more high-quality backlinks you have, the better Google will perceive your business as relevant (and so you will climb up the rankings).

SEO efforts are mainly centered in these three factors. So, what about local SEO? Local SEO is, in essence, attempting SEO to target the local audience: ensuring your business’s local presence to the audience within your geographic proximity, or the audience located within your service area.

In the past, this is mainly achieved by targeting “local keywords”, which are mainly keywords that include location names (i.e., “restaurants in LA”,”bookstores in NY”, and so on). While the same practice is still effective nowadays, today Google uses Google Maps’ results for location-related keywords and “near me queries”.

Try typing for “restaurants near me” on Google, and you will get a result page with the top 3 of Google Maps results just below the paid advertising (if someone places an ad for your area and for this specific keyword).

So, with this phenomenon, for local SEO we should aim for two different things:

• Ranking on organic search results page for location-focused keywords, as we have discussed above. This is mainly done through the same efforts we have discussed for organic SEO above.
• Ranking on Google Maps. Google Maps only display three of the top results before you have to click “more places”. So, ranking on this top-3, or the 3-pack is the ultimate goal.

Now, ranking organically for the local-focused keywords will produce the same benefits as organic SEO—which we have discussed above—-, but what about ranking on Google Maps? Here are some important takes:

• Google Maps result is interactive, where you can call the business directly with just a single click or get a Google Maps’ directions to the said business. Meaning, you have many opportunities to ensure conversions
• Fewer people will click on the “more places” button to check on results below the top-3. On the other hand, a lot of us simply don’t trust paid search ads although it’s placed above the Google Maps results. Simply put, by ranking in the 3-pack, you are generally perceived as the most credible business among your local competitors.

As we can see, there are a lot of benefits tied to local SEO, both by ranking on the organic search results page and by ranking on the top-3 results of Google Maps. Especially if your small business is targeting local audience, you will miss out on a lot of opportunities if you don’t work with SEO experts and consultants on optimizing your site and listing.

So, How Can I Implement Local SEO?

Now that we’ve discussed the benefits and importance of local SEO, the common question here is: a) What should I do to implement local SEO?, and b) Do I need to get help from a professional or a marketing agency? In this section, we will mainly try to answer these two questions.

First, above we have mentioned that there are two main goals of local SEO:

• Ranking for local-focused and location-related keywords on Google’s organic search
• Ranking on Google Maps’ results

Both of these will require different technical approaches, so we will discuss them separately. First, let us learn the key steps of ranking on Google Maps.

Ranking On Google Maps’ 3-Pack

Before we can optimize our Google Maps (or Google My Business—more on this later—), we must first learn about the key factors that can affect Google Maps ranking.

Although there’s always the debate surrounding Google Maps’ (and Google’s) ranking signals, generally experts agreed that there are three main factors affecting the ranking of your Google Maps listing:

• How complete, comprehensive, and optimized is the information on your Google My Business account (again, more on this later)
• The number of positive reviews on your Google Maps listing, as well as on third-party sites (Yelp, Facebook Places, TripAdvisor, other local business directories)
• The number of citations you have, which is, the mentions of your Name, Business, and Phone Number (NAP) on the internet. Citations have a similar effect to backlinks in regular SEO: the more sites (especially high-quality ones) that mention your NAP, the more credible Google will perceive your business.
• Last but not least, the searcher’s location. If another business with similar optimizations and authority is closer to the searcher than yours, it will rank higher.

Based on those three factors, here are the key steps in improving your Google Maps ranking:

1. Register and Verify Your Google My Business Listing

To have your business listed on Google Maps, you will need to register for a Google My Business account, which is totally free.

The registration process itself is fairly simple, and you can click the link here to get started right away. However, here are some key considerations when registering your Google My Business (GMB) account:

• Your Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) are the most important pieces of information in your GMB listing. Make sure they are accurate and up-to-date, and if you have previously listed your business on other online platforms, make sure the information is consistent.
• If you deliver your products/services to your customers, check the corresponding box under the location tab. There’s also the option to hide your address (i.e, if you are operating your business from home). However, your address information is a very important ranking factor, so it is not advisable to hide it from public unless it is absolutely necessary.
• Choose your business category carefully. Remember that it is about what your business is, and not what you sell/provide. You can choose several categories (which will translate to attracting different types of customers), so think very carefully about how your business will fit in within categories, and optimize this aspect.

The next step is to verify your Google My Business account. There are several features that are locked from you unless your listing is verified (i.e., Google Posts), and obviously getting verified will affect your ranking.

To verify your account, you can simply click on the verify now button after you sign in to your Google My Business account. Generally, Google will send a postcard to your business’s physical address containing a verification PIN. Verification via phone and email are also available for certain business types.

2. Optimizing Your Google My Business Listing

Now that your GMB listing is verified (or at least, in the process of verification), it’s time to optimize your listing.

The main principle here is to add as many accurate information as you can about the business. The thing is, people (yes, even random people that hates your business) can “suggest an edit” to your listing. Sometimes, Google will approve these changes without notifying you.

So, it’s important to make your listing as complete and accurate as you can to discourage people from suggesting an edit. Also, regularly check your GMB dashboard and monitor if there’s any change.

Here are some key areas where you can optimize your GMB listing:

Service area

Remember that Google Maps ranking is based on searcher’s location. So it is important to accurately provide accurate information about your service area. You can check Google’s guidelines on this topic here, but here are the key areas to focus on:

• If you are a brick-a-mortar business serving your customers at your place, check the box “I serve customers at my business address”. This will show your complete address on Google Maps
• Similarly, check the box stating that you deliver goods and services to your customers if you do so.
• Make sure to put in accurate business hours. You can also include customized hours for holidays and weekends if necessary.

Including Keywords

Similar to regular SEO strategy, Including the target keywords to our listing is an important ranking signal. The first step to do this is obviously a proper keyword research: we should find relevant keywords according to our locations, with enough search volume, yet manageable competition.

The main principle here to find the optimal keyword density. Don’t worry too much about the density percentage, but instead focus on including the keywords naturally so the content is comprehensive for human readers.

Including Photos and Videos

According to Google’s reports, businesses that feature photos will get significantly more clicks, requests for driving directions, and phone calls. Remember that Google Maps is essentially a visual platform, and we should make full use of the fact that searchers can directly ask for directions to your business, call your number, and visit your website from the Google Maps search result.

Your photos should be at least 720px by 720px in size, and make sure your photos are properly taken, well-lit, and not altered too much (filtered, photoshopped, etc.). Google might review your photos for quality from time to time, and Google does prefer photos that represent the reality of your business.

You can also add videos that are 30 seconds or shorter. Use this opportunity to highlight unique values of your business (interesting interior, product showcase, etc.).

To further optimize your images and videos, you can use metadata to ensure easier indexing.

3. Encouraging positive reviews and managing negative ones

As mentioned, the quantity of positive reviews is a very important ranking signal. If your Google Maps (and GMB) listing has a lot of positive reviews, Google will perceive your business as credible and relevant.

Obviously, there’s another significant benefit of having a lot of positive reviews. A lot of us will check for reviews nowadays, before making any purchase decision. A good number of positive reviews will encourage higher conversions.

However, it’s not always about having more positive reviews, as how you respond to bad ones is also important. Recently, Google confirmed that they do prefer businesses that respond to reviews, which might directly affect ranking.

Responding to reviews will also encourage more people to leave a review. They will feel that their voices are being heard, and that the company will respond when they have issues.

When responding to reviews, here are the key considerations:

• Respond quickly and politely, avoid giving promises you can’t deliver. If you don’t have an answer for a specific issue, just say something like, “we are investigating the issue and will get back to you as soon as possible “.
• There are always cases of bad reviews made with malicious intents (from those who never bought your product/service, non-existent issues, etc). If you have sufficient proofs, you can ask Google (or other review platforms) to remove this review. If it’s a serious case, you might want to pursue legal actions.
• For valid negative reviews, remember that there’s usually an underlying issue(s). If you don’t tackle this issue, you’ll keep getting the same bad reviews.

Another way to encourage more positive reviews is to offer incentives. For example, you can offer discounts and even freebies for those who have left positive reviews on your Google Maps listing or posted about your business in social media.

What about reviews on third-party sites like Yelp or Facebook Places? Google strongly suggested that they will indeed affect ranking. Besides, the more positive reviews you have, the more people that will purchase from you, so you might as well encourage positive reviews on as many platforms possible.

4. Building Local Citations

Local citations, as mentioned, are any mention of your business’ NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) in the internet.

In local SEO and especially improving your Google Maps ranking, citations have a similar value to backlinks in regular SEO: the more citations you have, the more relevant and credible Google will perceive your business, and so the higher you will rank.

There are generally two main approaches in building your local citations: getting relevant sites, bloggers, social media personalities, and others. The second approach is to list your business on online local directories according to your niche.

To start, list your business on major platforms according to your industry. If you are a restaurant, for example, you can list your business on Yelp and TripAdvisor among other platforms. You might want to check out this list by HubSpot listing these major online directories.

Besides these platforms, a quick Google search will help you find local online directories according to your niche and location.

The main principle in building local citations here is to maintain information consistency, especially your NAP. Your NAP should be consistent across all of your citations. Information inconsistency won’t only lead to confusion for your customers, but can also hurt your Google Maps ranking in the long run.

Ranking on Organic Search for Local-Focused Keywords

Now, we shift our focus to organic local SEO, and as we have mentioned, there are three main factors affecting organic ranking:

• The technical aspect of your site, which affects how easily Google can index your site.
• Your content and how it includes your focus keywords. Google will crawl this content and determine whether your site is relevant for the said keyword
• The quantity and quality of backlinks. The more quality sites that link to your site, the more credible Google will perceive your site.

So, as before, here we will focus on how to optimize our site according to these three factors, starting with the first one.

1. Website Optimization

Website optimization for SEO is by itself, a pretty deep subject. You might want to consult this technical SEO checklist to plan your site optimization according to its current state.

However, especially for local SEO, here are a few key areas to focus on:

2. Mobile-responsiveness

It’s no secret that quite recently Google implemented a new update to prefer mobile-friendly sites for ranking purposes.

If your site is not yet mobile-friendly, Google might opt not to include it in the SERP. To start, you can use Google’s mobile-friendly test tool to check your site’s current state.

If your site doesn’t pass the test, here are a few areas you can optimize:

• Make sure your content, images, and other site elements are properly displayed on mobile devices
• If you include forms, don’t use too many fields and make sure users can easily fill in on their mobile devices
• Pay extra attention of your NAP information. Make sure it’s displayed properly even on mobile devices’ smaller screens
• If you include reviews on your site, make sure it’s easily readable

Remember that besides for SEO purposes, not having a mobile-responsive site can significantly affect bounce rate and conversions.

3. Load speed

Similar to mobile-responsiveness, load speed can also affect bounce rate. Make sure your site has a fast enough load speed, and you might want to check out this guide on improving your site’s loading speed.

4. Optimizing Keywords

You should include your target keywords at least in these areas on your site:

• Site URL
• Title Tags
• Headers
• Meta description
• Your site’s content

Google nowadays is being quite sensitive about heavy-optimizations, and so there are two main concerns here:

• Use semantically-related words instead of exact-match keywords. For example, instead of always using “best restaurant in Toronto”, you can use similar phrases like “restaurants to visit if you are in Toronto” and other similar phrases.
• Focus on providing comprehensive content for human readers. Include your keywords naturally and don’t overstuff your content.

5. Location pages

Since this is especially about local SEO, including location pages, especially if you include a Google Maps snippet can significantly improve your ranking.

If your business has more than one location, create specific pages for each of these locations. Again, make sure to include accurate NAP information for each pages, and avoid using duplicate content pieces across multiple pages.

6. Local-focused content

Google’s algorithm is now much more advanced compared to the early days of SEO. In the past, we can get away with shallow content with a high keyword density. Nowadays, your content should bring value to your human readers, and Google can recognize this.

Your main goal here is to build credibility as the local expert or thought leader according to your niche, so you should focus on relevant local keywords to attract your ideal audience.

For example, if you are a home remodelling company, you can go beyond the usual keywords like “home remodelling tips” and similar ones. You can help newcomers get well-acquainted with your city, like providing a content covering important local service providers. These types of content can help attract new audience.

End Words

While local SEO might seem like a complicated concept at first, it is actually quite simple once you’ve got the hang of it.

However, since one of the main elements of local SEO efforts is citation building where quantity and consistency is the keys, the process can be long and tedious.

Getting the help of a local SEO services can tremendously help especially in maintaining consistency across all your different listings.

The post The Small Business Guide To Local SEO appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.

Google Maps results are based on Google My Business listings. So, one of the main considerations in improving your Google Maps ranking is by optimizing your Google My Business listing. Here are the steps provides by SEO consultant Mike.

1. Including Optimized and Complete information

Google My Business is essentially a place where you can list information about your business, and these pieces of information will be used by Google to determine your business’s relevance, credibility, and ultimately, ranking.

So, the first thing to optimize on your Google My Business listing is your business’s information, especially these areas:

• Your NAP—your business’s name, address and phone number. These are the most important pieces of information about your business on the internet.
• Your site’s URL. Google will crawl your site to determine its relevance in tandem with your GMB listing.
• Description. There’s an ongoing debate whether optimizing your description for keywords will actually benefit your ranking. However, there’s no harm in doing so as long as you include these keywords naturally. Focus on attracting and engaging your human audience.
• Category. Choose the primary category that best represents what your business does. You can also choose other relevant sub-categories, this is a good opportunity not only for ranking purposes, but to attract a wider audience
• Attributes. Use attributes to highlight unique features about your business. For example, whether your restaurant offer outdoor seating or vegetarian menu.

Pay extra attention to your NAP. Make sure it is up-to-date and accurate, and if you have any mention of your NAP on the internet (local citations, more on this below), make sure to maintain consistency.

Here are some extra tips you can use to optimize this aspect:

1. Make sure your listed address matches the proper Google Maps’ coordinates, same for zip-codes.Again, aim for consistency.
2. It’s better to list a local phone number instead of a national or regional number.
3. Don’t over-optimize category, attributes, and description. Again, make sure they are natural and comprehensive for human readers.
4. Use this guide to help you in choosing your categories.
5. Remember to be as specific as possible when choosing categories and attributes.

2. Soliciting Reviews and Handling Negative Ones

The quantity of positive reviews is a very important ranking signal for local SEO. However, there’s also the obvious benefit of boosting your conversions and revenue: more and more people read reviews before making purchases, especially when considering local brick and mortar businesses.

Studies suggested that up to 8ryh6% of consumers nowadays read reviews before deciding on any purchases. So, if you don’t have enough positive reviews, it will simply hurt your conversion rates significantly. Yet, how can we get more positive reviews? There are at least three main approaches:

• Just ask. Sometimes, all it takes is simply to ask your customers to leave a review. The key here is not only to ask politely (and as engaging as possible), but also to find the right timing. For example, send an email asking for a review for customers who just repurchase your product (indicating they are indeed happy with your brand), or if you track online engagement, send an email for those who frequently visited your product listing page and blog.

• Incentives. Pretty self-explanatory, you can offer incentives to existing customers in exchange of their reviews (and social media mentions). You can combine this with the first approach to optimize your chances.

• Responding to existing reviews. If you frequently respond to existing reviews (yes, even the bad ones), your audience are more likely to leave their own reviews. They will have the perception that their issues will be responded quickly, and similarly, their positive feedback will be appreciated.

As you can see, managing negative reviews is also a significant aspect of soliciting more positive reviews. You might want to check out this guide on online reputation management to get started. However, here are some quick tips on this aspect:

• Differentiate between valid negative reviews coming from real customers and fake reviews with malicious intent. If you have sufficient proofs, you can ask Google Maps (or other review sites) to take down fake reviews. You might also want to pursue legal actions depending on the severity of the case.
• Respond quickly and politely, and don’t offer promises you can’t deliver.
• Remember that for valid bad reviews, there is usually an underlying issue(s). If you don’t fix these issues in the first place, you’ll keep getting the same negative feedbacks over and over again.

3. Engaging Your Customers Through Google Posts

Google Posts was introduced in late 2017 as a feature of Google My Business. As a side note, only verified Google My Business listing will get this feature, so if you can’t access Google Posts via your GMB dashboard, chances are you haven’t verified your listing.

With Google Posts, you can post content about your business, such as:

• Announcing new products or services with engaging images
• Event invitation, both for online and offline events
• Using gifs and other engaging media to attract your audience
• Announcing various business-related news.

You can include CTA buttons (“Buy”, “Learn More”, etc.) with your posts. But remember that if you use a CTA button, only around 70 characters will be displayed on mobile devices, compared to 300 characters without.

Engagement is an important ranking factor for Google Maps ranking, so take advantage of Google Posts to attract more audience. Besides, there’s also the benefit of attracting more prospects and improving conversion rates.

4. Using and Optimizing Images

According to Google themselves, business listings that include photos get up to 40% more conversion rates from requests of directions to phone calls to actual visits. Again, the more people engaged your listing, the higher it will rank.

When optimizing for photos, here are some key areas to consider:

• You can use all kinds of images and photos, but Google can review your photos for quality and appropriation. Generally, Google prefers photos that can represent the reality of your business, so avoid using too much filter and editing.
• The image format should be in PNG or JPG with a size between 10KB and 5MB
• The minimum resolution should be 720px x720px.
• Take photos within (or nearby) your business location, Google will crawl your photo location metadata and this can affect your ranking.
• You can also upload videos up to 30 seconds long. Use this opportunity to highlight unique qualities of your business.

5. Building Local Citations

Local citations refer to any mention of your business’s NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) information on the internet. Citation is a very important ranking signal, and there are generally two main ways to get citations: build relationships with authoritative press, sites, blogs, and social media profiles. The second approach is to list your business in various online directories:

• Google My Business is technically an online directory, and the most important factor in implementing local SEO.
• Start with major online directories like Facebook Places, Yelp, and so on depending on your niche. Check out this list to help you out in this aspect.
• You can then continue with smaller online directories depending on your location and industry type. Use this list for top local directory by category, and this list for citations based on city.

The key in building local citations is to maintain consistency, especially for your NAP information. If, for example, you just changed your business address, you will need to update all of these listings. Inconsistent information not only can mislead your audience, but can significantly hurt your Google Maps ranking in the long run.

End Words

To optimize your Google My Business listing, the most important factors are accurate and up-to-date information, quantity of local citations, number of positive reviews, and consistency of information.

The post Effective Strategies To Improve Your Google My Business Ranking appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.

The post Effective Local SEO Strategies For Small Business appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.