We get asked by a lot by business owners about how to improve their Google My Business rankings. Once you have optimised your Google My Business listing, it comes down to a few tips which we will happily share with you.
Google Places rankings is important for businesses and their physical location to become noticed within the world of digital marketing. If your business is one that relies heavily on physical purchases, you will want to have a solid ranking within Google Places.
1. Business Listings
Getting high rankings within Google My Business comes down to Google verifying that your business actually exists. It does this by determining how often your business name, address and phone number (NAP) is listed or cited on the internet. It’s the same way how backlinks work for SEO. The more listings or citations, the better your rankings should be.
The easiest way to get listed or cited is to submit your business to national and local business directories. By submitting your business to these directories, your NAP will receive more citations, and should therefore rank you higher with local SEO.
2. Consistent NAP
The way your business NAP is listed in these directories, within the Google My Business listing and on your website’s contact page must be consistent and up to date. Here’s how you can ensure your NAP is consistent across the internet. Google website crawlers will become confused should your business have multiple NAP listings on different business directories.
To ensure your NAP is consistent, do a quick Google search of your business. Click to see what every listing of your NAP looks like. If the information is incorrect on a website, contact the directory and have them change it. This is something our clients have occasionally had to do to ensure they’ve changed phone numbers or addresses. Using the best SEO software, we can see our clients’ business listings and view their NAP.
3. NAP On Your Site
You will also have to list your business NAP on your website. We’ve heard other digital marketing companies say it’s ideal to have it in the header or footer of your website so it’s visible on every page. If you can do this, do it, as it helps user experience. We’ve found that it’s fine to have the NAP listed on the contact page. It’s even better if you do the same using Schema markup.
4. Embedded Google Map
You want to utilise the embedded Google map. It’s great practice to have your business’s Google My Business listing embedded on your website’s contact page. This way Google can be sure that you are located at the given address through confirmation with your “Places” listing.
Embedding is simple. All you have to do is search your business name in Google Maps; when you have found it click on the three lines beside your business name in the top left search bar. Then you simply click “Share or Embed Map”.
Once this is done, select the “embed map” option at the top of the pop up box. You can then copy the iframe code and paste it onto your contact page.
5. Reviews
You should try and get everyone you know to review your page (seriously). If Google sees a page with over 30 reviews, won’t it want to rank that page in the mapped listings over a page with few or no reviews? This aligns with Google’s search approach. They exist to provide the searcher with the most relevant business and search result.
Ensure your customers, and even friends, are giving your business listing quality, favourable reviews. Once your customers start hitting the 5-star button, Google will notice, thus helping to improve your overall Places listing.
6. Analyse Your Rankings
If you have made these simple changes but still find your rankings are low, you might need to have your business cited more. Find out where higher ranking competitors are cited. Search their business and they pop up in a directory, find out if your business has a listing there. If it doesn’t, add it.
Similar to SEO, Google utilises citations as a method of providing their search engine with the most relevant businesses within the Google Place rankings. Follow the above-listed instructions and watch your ranking grow higher. If you properly utilise our tips for improving Google Place rankings, you should see your business page rise up the ladder.
