How to Rank Higher on Google Maps?

Top 10 Ways to Rank Higher on Google Maps in 2020: Get the Traffic Juice from the 3-Pack

Who does not want their business to be into the 3-pack on Google Maps? Being in the 3-pack indicates that you are the key performer. When your potential clients look for similar products or services, you appear on the top. This is the reason every business strives hard to be there.

Now the question is, how you can rank higher in Google Maps for a specific location? To help you with this, we have discussed the top 10 ways to rank higher in Google maps.

Complete your Google My Business Listing:

When it comes to improving your Google Maps ranking, the status of your business’ Google My Business listing plays a major role. The search engine wants you to display your business information as much as you can so that your consumers get to know more about your business. The more information you provide, the more Google can supply its searches to you and the more reliable you become to get a higher rank.

To make your Google My Business more precise, complete and optimized, you should include more detail with certain items in the following section –

• Phone number
• Hours of operation
• Description
• Website
• Business categories
• Profile images
• Verified status
• Business details
• Reviews
• Review replies
• Average star of ratings
• Positive and negative ratings
• Posts
• Questions
• Answers

If you already have a Google My Business Listing, check all the above sections are updated with authentic information.

• Use a local phone number:

  Google is least interested in any toll-free number displayed on your website. In fact, the toll-free numbers are frequently used for spam. So, if you want to be in the good books of Google, update a local telephone number with the area code of your location. This helps Google to recognize you as an authentic business and increase your chance to rank higher in Google Maps.

• Avoid using a tracked number:

  Businesses often use a tracked number in an intention to segment customers coming from Google Maps. Doing this can affect you in two ways – the right way and the wrong way. The right way is highly complicated, and the wrong way can completely damage your ranking. Therefore, it is recommended not to use a tracked number.

• Keep your hours of operation always updated:

  The visitors get to know about your business and its hours of operation from Google Maps. Google Maps shows if a business is open, closed, or opening or closing soon depending on the hours of operation you have updated. So, it is highly important to update your business hours in your listing.

2. Precise your categories and max them out:

Though Google My Business is important, it is not the perfect fit for every business. Therefore, you should match up your primary categories with the main keywords that you want to target as close as possible. The best way to do this is – type your main keywords and the locations you want to target and copy the most commonly ranking ones. Also, don’t forget to maximize your secondary and related categories.

3. Fix your on-page:

Maintaining your on-page is a crucial factor when you are trying harder to rank higher on Google Maps. So, what to fix on your on-page to impress the almighty Google? Read on –

• UI/UX:

  You need to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly and the load speed is fast. People usually use their mobile phones to call a local business. Google Maps will rank your business higher only if your website is mobile-friendly.

• SEO optimized content:

  The content on your landing page should be informative and should have at least 1 thousand words without stuffed keywords. Choose keywords wisely to optimize your content so that Google Maps can display your location page organically.

• NAP information:

  Including your NAP information along with your schema markup, and a Google maps embed is a great idea.

4. Get Social signals:

When it comes to improving organic search results and ranking higher on Google Maps, Social signals play the most crucial role. Social signals are your site’s overall social media appearance, including likes and share, from the perceptive of search engines. You can take professional help to get social signals and higher your ranking.

5. Build niche and local related citation:

The major part of local SEO includes developing niche and local relevance through on-page and off-page optimizations. For off-page, one way to do this is to build a niche and local citations. Without building a niche and local related citation, your SEO is quite worthless.

6. Get more reviews:

The more reviews you get, the more chance you have to rank higher on Google Maps and improve your click-through rate. So, if you want to get more reviews, getting in the map pack is just the first step. Your services and content should be more appealing to get clicks and calls. Google considers the CTR and user behavior to determine who will rank high. You can also boost your reviews by updating your Google Maps review link on your invoices, business cards and in your email signature. Though it is technically against Google’s policy to ask for a review, you can make it done politely by building a good relationship with your customers.

7. Get a press release done:

Getting a press release written can be highly beneficial for you since it provides high-quality backlinks for your business. Your customers get impressed with the quality backlinks and they tend to click on your location page from the backlinks.

8. Guest-post outreach:

There are very few things that are as powerful as a guest post on a high domain authority site or location related website. Google Maps indicate your landing page when the anchor text matches. A well-written guest-post published on an established website increases the chances of getting a high rank on Google Maps.

9. Domain Authority or Google sites stack:

Google stacks refer to the bunch of Google entities and multiple high authority properties that are interlinked and embed into a Google site. Domain authority and Google site stack influence Google Maps to rank a website to a great extent.

10. Be patient:

Getting a high rank organically on Google Maps is not something that you can do overnight. So, if you are in the process of being in the 3-pack, the first thing that you need to learn is to be patient. Choose competitive keywords, optimize your website, make it mobile-friendly, do on-page and off-page link building task, wait for the right time and keep adding guest post until you hit the 3-pack.
Have you ever tried any of these tactics? Do you know any way/s that can help in ranking higher in Google Maps? Write to us in the comment section.