5 proven techniques to rank better in Google Local Map Listing

The seasons have changed and the internet world too. Google has been wondering all of us with each of their new algorithm releases.

Local search is one among those which is like the one who comes to you with a smile and guides you to the right rout when you are stuck in a new place. Making it more clear, just type in the ‘hospitals’ and you are provided with the nearest renowned hospitals from the location where you typed in the query.

It is not a deadlock to get your business also optimized in the Google local search if you follow the right method.

You must be thinking how effectively the local map listing can drive in more customers?
These are certain convincing reasons:

• 97% of consumers use the internet when researching local products/services (Source: BIA/Kelsey)

• 43% of consumers search every month for a local business (Source: BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey, 2015)

• The number one reason for an online search is to find the location of a ‘known’ business (Source: comScore, Neustar, Localeze, 15 Miles – Local Search Study, 2014)

• 78% of mobile searches for local businesses result in a purchase (Source: Local Search Association Conference, 2014)

• Local Search delivers better ROI than all other online channels (Source: BrightLocal Clicks & Calls Survey, 2015)

• 34% of SEOs/SMBs would choose Local search above any other marketing channel (Source: BrightLocal Clicks & Calls Survey, 2015)

I would like to suggest you certain proven techniques that worked well for me with three of my esteemed clients.

1: Claiming the business in Google

This is the first step you can start to help your customers to find you in Google. To make it easy, Google has suggested certain guidelines which you can follow.

For your reference, the link is given here:
https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en&ref_topic=4540086

Spending enough time to fill in all the fields here, such as Name, Address, E mail, Phone number and the close matching category is highly recommended here.

My Observations
Put your business name in such a way that the customers can easily recognize the operational division you are into.

For example, if you are in a plan to serve the customers through a pizza center and if your business name is registered as “ABC Corporation”, as per my observations, adding the business name as ‘Pizza Center - ABC Corporation’ can bring in better results.

2. Schema Local Markup

Implementing Schema Markup is the next step through which your local business is going to get more reachability to the customers inclusive of the information on the hours, reviews, menus and more.

The following link can support you with further more information on Schema:
schema.org/LocalBusiness

My Observations
It is appreciable to put the
[ Place/ Physical Address - The exact location where your pizza center is located ] and
[ Geo - The geo coordinates of the place ]

Example:
<meta name="geo.placename" content="United States" />
<meta name="geo.position" content="x;x" />
<meta name="geo.region" content="usa" />
<meta name="ICBM" content="x,x" />

Note: As per the observations of John Mu and Matt Cutts from Google, they are giving least importance to the geo tags since there is a lot of copying or pasting from a template is noticed.

On the other hand, Bing still use these metatags, which cues that there is still scope for these metatags, because it is observed that the number of searches in Bing is skyrocketing every year. So it is appreciable to move forward with this.

3. Get listed in the top 10 local directories

Just because you may have to pay them some amount, I feel it is not good to discard the option of approaching the local directories.

My Observations
Let it paid or free, it is highly recommended to get listed in the top ten local directories.
Have a look through the renowned local directories in India and US here:

Top 10 local US directories
1.Yahoo Local
2.Yelp
3.MerchantCircle
4.Local
5.ExpressUpdateUSA (InfoUSA)
6.Insider Pages
7.FourSquare
8.HotFrog
9.Yext and MapQuest
10.Elocal

Top 10 local directories India
1. surfindia
2. justdial
3. submitshop
4. indianyellowpages
5. 99localsearch
6. businesslinedirectory
7. indiacom
8. yalwa
9. indiacatalog
10. yellowpages.sulekha

4. Get Google reviews

Along with the customers, your business is also going to get benefited through reviews. A genuine review can always create a positive impact.

Have a look through what Google says about it:
https://support.google.com/business/answer/3474122?hl=en

My Observations
It is as simple as to be genuine. It is appreciable to not to go with spam review.

5. Get Google Business View Photo-shoot

Google photo shoot is going to give an experience of virtual tour to your customers. Doing so, there is a greater scope for credibility and people would feel more encourages to browse over your site.

My Observations:
Google Business View photo shoot by itself is at most a very minor ranking factor, but can help your rankings more indirectly, because it can get more people to click.

Cheers -

 

Very informative content provided by na9endra, I do consider Local Map Listings for leads but you know these days Google is showing only 3 places listings with organic results and the competition is 2 high. but still I love to play with Places listings.

 

Nice information and thank you so much for sharing it's good for me.

 

Google Business page is much important in local SEO. Only a verified google business account can do a lot. Also need to maintain the Google plus business page.

 

This is great information, I'm always learning..Thanks for sharing

 

I agree to your point and it really works alot.

 

Everything is said nice, but I'd prefer to avoid directories, they are too spammy nowadays.

 

Very informative ! nice post and thamk you for sharing !

 

1. Always or at least monthly change your website keywords positioning
2. Put h1-h4 tags on your website
3. Bold or underline your keywords and again change things on a regularly basis
4. For script users make your URLS search engine friendly
5. Try and write articles directly on your site and add a social bookmarking script for people to bookmark
6. If you do link exchange make sure the website topic is similar to yours and check their page source for the "nofollow" attribute. If it's there delete their link.
7. Create a google and yahoo sitemap and submit it.
8. Changing or adding Content regularly of your website is NO2.SEO RULE
9. the NO.1 SEO rule is to have patience. Really it is.

 

Most Web search engines are commercial ventures supported by advertising revenue and, as a result, some employ the controversial practice of allowing advertisers to pay money to have their listings ranked higher in search results. Those search engines which do not accept money for their search engine results make money by running search related ads alongside the regular search engine results. The search engines make money every time someone clicks on one of these ads.