How to Rank Higher on Google Maps for Your Local Business

By Sarah Giometti | Google My Business

Aug 09
Why growth for local businesses will be dominated by GMB (Google My Business)

 

Hey, everyone. Sarah Giometti here. In today’s video, I want to talk about how to rank higher on Google Maps for your local business.

The very first thing you want to do is perform some keyword research. Some places that you can do this is, one, if you have Google Search Console activated on your website, you go in there and look at the data. You can look at the queries that you were shown in results. Even if you’re position number 80, it gives you some insights on what customers are searching for, and you can use those keyword phrases as a foundation for your keyword research. You can also use some free tools: Like Google has a free keyword tool. I think moz.com has one, semrush.com. Look for just some free keyword research tools and you can plug in your website or plug in some foundation keyword phrases, and it’ll give you some ideas.

The next place is some competitive research. Look at what your competitors are using. See what keywords they have and see if those are valuable, and if they apply to your business, they might be things that you want to actually rank for. Next, you want to claim and optimize your Google My Business listing. This includes claiming and adding all the different categories that Google has and adding them to your listing, plus fill it out completely. Have as much information as you could possibly add. The more and accurate information, the better it is for you.

Next, you want to take those keyword phrases and the Google categories, and tie them together and do on-page optimization on your website, going through and adding… If you’ve got WordPress, you can add a tool like Yoast SEO, and that makes it very easy to optimize for a keyword phrase, the titles and meta descriptions. But you want to make sure that you’re using a local keyword phrase and it’s tied into one of the categories for Google My Business to help Google make that connection.

Next, you want to look at adding schema. Schema.org is a place to research it. Add that to your website. This is something if you don’t want to do it or not, very technical. Ask your web developer to help you out with that, or find a digital marketing agency like mine or one in your area, and they can help you add the schema to your website and that’s really just highlighting your local information and repeating the information in your Google My Business listing, like your address, phone number, email, hours. It just makes the Google spiders make that connection even better.

And then, finally, you want to start looking at creating keyword and location-focused content. That would be the next strategy is, again, combining the keyword research with the Google categories, tie them together and create either videos or blog articles that match that and tie back into your listing. That’s what you’re trying to do is tie everything together, so you’re making it easy for Google to follow the path.

I hope you found this video useful. If you have any questions, feel free to drop them below and we’ll get back to you. If you like this video and you want to see more, I would love for you to subscribe to my channel. And if you are looking for a snapshot of what your business looks like online, click the link here, and it’ll take you to our free local SEO audit tool. Plug in your business information and you’ll get a report that’ll show you how good, mediocre, not so great, that you’re doing and give you a place to start in fixing your online marketing for your local business. Thank you for watching this video, and I’ll see you in the next one. Bye.

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