How to Optimize Google Maps for Higher Rankings

August 23, 2023
Published: July 30, 2020

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Every single day, Google Maps users contribute 20 million pieces of information to the service. There are millions upon millions of people using Google Maps every day, so it’s important to know how to optimize Google Maps for SEO purposes.

Yet to many people the idea of optimizing their Google Maps listing seems alien. How can you optimize a mapping program? Like with other SEO questions, this is not as simple as it may first appear: there are a hosts of different solutions that can help you.
In this guide, we’ll take a look at some of the best ways to make Google Maps help our business grow. Put these solutions into play and your business’ online profile will grow.

Ready to learn more and start improving your local SEO? Then keep reading!

1. Adding Your Business to Google Maps

Knowing how to optimize Google Maps will be for naught if your business isn’t showing up on Maps at all! Luckily, adding your business to Google Maps is as easy as pie and an enterprising customer may have done it for you already.

Search for your business on Google Maps and see whether a listing comes up. If one appears, great, but if not, hit the “add a missing place” link.

Clicking this will let you add details about your business including name, address, and what kind of business you are.

2. Claiming Your Listing

Now that you’ve got a listing or found an existing one, you’re going to need to claim ownership. When you claim ownership, you’ll be able to edit details about your business and add a lot more colour to your listing.

To claim your listing, you’ll need to go to Google My Business and add the necessary information.

This doesn’t only help your Google Maps optimisation either: claiming your business also lets you edit the information that appears alongside search results when people search for your business.

Add Colour to Your Listing

Now that you’ve got your listing, it’s time to add more information to it so that people can learn more about your business in advance. You should add a link to your website, photos of your business and products, and a phone number.

When you’re adding information, such as a summary of what your business does, do keyword research and add keywords to your listing naturally. Don’t stuff it with keywords or you could get penalized by Google.

When you add photos, optimize them, too. Ensure that they have accurate and descriptive file names such as “[business name] storefront” rather than a string of letters and numbers or overly generic filenames like “storefront”.

Letting people know more about your business is crucial for Google My Business optimisation and can also tempt more people into your store or to your website. All in all, it’s a fantastic thing to do for your business.

3. Cover All Bases

The desired result of Google Maps listing optimisation is getting eyes on your listing. You can help this out by adding as many (relevant) categories as possible to your listing.

Google gives you space to add quite a few categories to your listing and you shouldn’t stop at one. Generic terms like “web designer” are huge on Google Maps and making your business appear in the results should be as important to you as appearing in any other search.

4. Encourage Customers to Review Your Business

There’s one area where a Google Maps optimisation service can’t directly help you and that’s with customer reviews. The power of customer reviews should not be underestimated: prospective customers are more likely to shop somewhere other customers had good experiences. This is a powerful psychological phenomenon called social proof.

Put yourself in a customer’s shoes: if you were comparing two businesses on Google Maps and one had a solid five-star rating and another had a two-star rating, you’d go for the former.

Encourage customers to review you on Google when they’re in the store or offer incentives to people who review your business, such as coupons. Harnessing the power of reviews is a significant aspect of Google local listing optimization: don’t forget about it.

5. Keep the Content Coming

Did you know that you can publish posts on to your Google Maps listing? Adding posts to the listing not only gives your prospective customers more information about what’s going on with your business, but it also gives you more opportunities to employ keyword research and other SEO techniques.

The sky’s the limit as far as these posts are concerned: advertise offers, events, and sales, and make sure that you get eyes on them.

In addition to these advantages, Google likes to see businesses keeping their listings updated and can rank you higher on Google Maps as a result.

6. Optimizing Your Website

Optimizing your website is not the most obvious facet of Google Maps optimisation but it is very helpful. Local search isn’t only relevant on the main Google search engine, it’s also relevant on Google Maps.

This means that if you add local keywords to your website, your listing will appear more prominently in Google Maps searches, too. So write about local events, local news stories and the like, and help Google understand the relevancy of your store to the local area.

Other SEO techniques can also come in handy here such as ensuring that you have speedy web hosting and a responsive site. If your bounce rate is too high, your Google Maps ranking will become less prominent.

Knowing How to Optimize Google Maps is Crucial for Your Business

While learning how to optimize Google Maps can seem difficult, it is a crucial tool in your business’ arsenal and not something that you should ignore. If you’d like some help figuring out how to optimise a Google Maps listing, we can help you.Our local SEO services can take the work out of your hands and give you a well-made listing that will improve your ranking and get more eyes on your business. For more information about our products and services, take a look around our site or get in touch!

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