If you have just opened your local business, you have entered the competition to make your business stand out in the industry. No matter how small or big a business is, it must thrive and strive in the ever-changing digital landscape.
If you have just opened your local business, you have entered the competition to make your business stand out in the industry. No matter how small or big a business is, it must thrive and strive in the ever-changing digital landscape.
This aspect indicates that you will have to register your business on Google Maps to ensure that your target audience knows about the existence of your business and – of course – to secure more customers.
Here are some crucial tips to follow if you want to rank higher in Google Maps.
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You know that you need to get your business in Google Maps for the very reason you use Google Maps to look up things. Suppose you are looking for a lunch spot in a specific area, driving through another town, and encountering a flat tire.
Instinctively, you will grab your phone and enter a query on Google Maps, searching for a nearby mechanic to assist you with the flat tire.
We search for businesses and services on Google Maps to make more informed decisions. This aspect makes it perfect to understand why you need to register on Google Maps to rank your local business higher and to boost brand awareness.
Your target clients will be looking for your products and services on Google Maps – which is why you will want your business to pop up when someone puts a relevant entry in Google Maps.
The first step is to make a business profile to establish visibility in Google Maps. At this point, you will want to aim at optimizing your GBP – also known as your Google Business Profile. Start by searching your business name on Google and proceed to verify your business listing.
After completing the listing of your business profile, you will want to log into your Google account to edit your profile. The essential benefit of setting up a business profile with Google is that you will be a property of Google in a way that your Google Business Profile will establish your existence in the eyes of Google.
Make sure that you only include accurate and up-to-date information in your business profile.
While you work on optimizing your web presence, you will want to start the process by performing an SEO audit. You might as well use a GMB audit tool to boost and manage your Local Ranking.
The right tools will help you identify the points that need your focus for your marketing and SEO strategies. You will be able to identify the keywords that will help you rank and how to create content and integrate links to optimize your web presence.
Make sure that your business website is according to the standards set by Google so that Google can easily crawl your website content, which will eventually help you rank high. Focus on the quality and structure of your business website by ensuring that your website content is relevant and locally oriented.
More importantly, you will want to integrate intent-driven keywords in your website content. Focus on adding logical external and internal links in your website content so that the snippets pop up in the answers to your audience's queries.
Look at your website from Google's perspective by reading Google's guidelines. You will find that Google tends to reward and rank those websites that lead internet searchers to accurate answers with as few clicks as possible.
Ideally, your business website should load quickly and incorporate seamless navigation – on desktop and mobile phones.
This aspect is particularly crucial for ranking your local businesses as people use their cell phones on the go to search for local businesses.
You will need to focus on your business reviews. You might ask your customers to leave their feedback and reviews about your products and services. Reviews are absolutely crucial when it comes to ranking on Google Maps.
Customer reviews are important in determining when and where a local business appears in Google Maps. Google keeps track of the number of your reviews and also how you respond to those reviews.
With that said, you will want to ask your customers to leave their reviews about their experience with your business. Subsequently, proceed to respond to all reviews – the positive and the negative reviews as Google will take notice of this aspect too.
There are miscellaneous places where your customers can leave their reviews – including different social media profiles, such as Yelp, Facebook, etc. But – if you want to rank higher on Google Maps, your Google reviews will hold the most value.
Simply put – the reviews on GBP profiles carry more weight if you want to rank higher in Google Maps. You will want to consider asking your customers for feedback right after you have delivered the ultimate promise, such as the successful delivery of a product.
When your customers are feeling the most fulfilled and positive, they are prone to leave a great review, which will help you strengthen your GBP profile and ultimately rank higher in Google Maps.
You can, in fact, benefit from automated review texts – via emails and text messages – after the completion of a business transaction, such as paid invoice and delivery completion. Speaking of automation, business process automation can save you loads of time and money while ensuring the regular flow of specific business operations.
