Google Maps is not just direction finding tool from Google. It is one of the most effective marketing platforms for the business to reach out to their targeted customers quite conveniently. When a person searches for a place to eat, he searches on Google for the nearby restaurants. The person eventually lands on Google Maps where the nearby restaurants are listed. If you are running a local restaurant, you can reach out to your nearby customers through Google Maps marketing & optimization. This concept applies to all businesses because most of the people have a smartphone and they like to search first online to land on an offline store eventually.
Google Maps can drive huge daily traffic to your online website and offline store if you pay attention to Google Maps SEO. That is why you need to put some effort to outshine your local competitors on Google Maps and get more customers every day. The main objecting of Google Maps marketing & optimization is to get a higher rank in the local business result pages on the Google Maps result page. We have provided a complete Google Maps marketing guide for your help.
Tips To Improve Google My Business and Maps Ranking
Google My Business is a tool that allows businesses to list their businesses on Google Business Directory so that they appear on search engine result pages as well as on Google Maps. By listing, it means that you have to provide essential details about your business such as location, contact details, opening and closing time, the category of business and likewise. The precise these details are, the better it is for Google Maps SEO. Without further ado, let us get into the steps.
Step 1. Get Your Address Right – The biggest factor in Google Map SEO is your location. But this is where some of the businesses make mistakes. The address they provide is incomplete or complicated for the ranking crawlers to understand and rank accordingly. Provide the correct and exact address as per the postal service in your state. For this, you can check the other businesses that are ranking in the top three to understand the format. Lastly, check the formatting because extra spaces, special characters, and other such silly mistakes can mess up your rank. After that, check how your address is being shown on the result pages or maps and how it compares with your competitors.
Step 2. Specific The Area Of Your Service – You do not want your business to be concentrated in the location where it is situated. You want to get more and more people and serve a wider region. There is an option to the Google Maps to specify the area of your operation or service. You can mention in kilometers or by the nearby towns and areas names. Not many people know this, and they complain that they are not getting listed and not getting traffic.
Step 3. Category Of Your Business – Mentioning only one category of the business is a massive negative from Google Maps SEO. You should include as many relevant categories as possible to describe your business, and accordingly, Google will rank and show your business on Google Maps search listing page.
Step 4. Get Your Business Listed Verified – It is one of the most important things to do in Google Maps marketing and optimization. You know the value of getting verified on social media. On Google Maps, getting verified will give your business ranking an instant boost. Get it verified as soon as possible and the process is that you will get a PIN number mailed to your address and you have to put it in the section available to get verified.
Step 5. Create A Catch Introduction And Add Some Stunning Photos – This is one of the most effective tips to improve Google My Business and Maps ranking. This is where you can outshine your competitors because this is where SEO and catchy writing take over. Get an experienced content writer and ask him to go through the competitors My Business listing and write an introduction that is informative and tempting for the potential customers. At the same time, you have to include certain SEO keywords for the crawlers to list your business better. You can insert a few links to the introduction. There are a lot of users who go through the introduction to make a choice.
Even if they do not read the introduction in certain cases, they will surely check out the photos posted, and this is another area where you can impress the potential customers more than your competitors and win them over. If you are a restaurant, invest some money in getting a major interior makeover. If you are a store, put on some images of the customers with smiling faces, and you need to understand the psychology to work on your customers.
Step 6. Make A Clever Review Strategy – The most important step in the entire guide to Google maps marketing is getting as many good reviews from the customers as possible. Customers are not likely to leave reviews on Google My Business page unless you offer them something. You can offer a discount or a cashback if the customers leave a good review and share a screenshot with you. Design some incentives and think of it as an investment and get the reviews as much as you can. The higher the number of reviews you have, the higher will be your ranking.
Step 7. Get Some High-Quality Back links – Here comes the Google Maps SEO part where you can collaborate with local businesses in the relevant niche and get some quality backlinks. You can hire a local SEO expert for the same, and this can boost your Google Maps marketing and optimization campaign to a new level.
Step 8. Run Some Paid Ads – Lastly, you have to spend some money on paid ads initially to get noticed by increasing visibility. At the very beginning, your rank will be so low that no user will have the energy to scroll and check you. That is why to run local ads on Google Maps, and Google shows paid business listings when users search with a specific keyword. This is how you can compete with established players neck to neck.
Do follow these steps rigorously and focus on getting reviews and backlinks. Just like any other online marketing, the result will be visible in due time. Hopefully, you found this guide to Google maps marketing useful and you can now form better Google maps marketing and optimization strategy to make your business successful through Google Maps listing.