4 Google My Business Features That Guarantee Higher Google Maps Ranking

in today's video i'm going to show you which features inside your google my business listing directly impact the rankings of your business in google maps and the ones that have no influence whatsoever so you can focus on what really matters if you're ready let's go [Music] from qas to google post through to photos and reviews there are many features inside your google my business dashboard you can use to showcase your business on google but only four of them will have a direct impact on your rankings in google maps before i start with the first one i thought it was important to mention i decided to make and share this video with you after watching another video made by joey hawkins who is not only a google product expert but also the founder of one of the top local seo agencies in canada sterlingsky.ca check out their blog it's simply awesome and before you ask no they haven't paid me to give them a shout out they don't even know who i am enough said let's have a look at our first feature your business title according to the latest map pack ranking factor survey having keywords in your google my business title is the second most influential factor to rank a listing on google maps let's have a look at an example if i search for air conditioning repair in miami for instance unsurprisingly all three results in the map pack include the keyword ac repair or air conditioning repair in their business titles and the first business even has the location keyword miami in his this makes all these businesses really relevant when someone is searching for ac repair miami and google uses it to rank businesses on its maps let's have a look at another example emergency plumber london same again you can see all businesses have specific keywords in their title to understand how much weight google puts on this check out this study conducted by sterling sky in which they added the keyword salad bar to a restaurant listing which didn't have keywords in it the results were astonishing the listing went from being literally invisible to ranking at the top of google maps in the space of a few days for the keyword salad bar in their own city here is another insight from the study where they removed existing keywords from the business title of an existing listing and how it affected their rankings across google maps so if you want to rank higher it's easy right just add keywords you target to your business title unfortunately it isn't that simple because it's against google's guidelines according to which your google my business name should reflect your business's real world name if you were creating a listing for a 24 24-hour coffee shop in southampton city center called shelly's coffee you would enter that business information as shelly's coffee and not shelly's coffee 24 hour southampton if we check again our ac repair businesses in miami two out of three are gaming the system their business names are not reflecting their real world's names this is dangerous and their listing might get suspended so i wouldn't recommend you follow the same path so what should you do if you find your competitors are stuffing their business names with extra keywords to gain an unfair advantage against you simply report them using the google my business complaint redressal form if you don't know how to do this just watch my video report dirty competitors to google and rank higher if you're only starting out and have yet to decide what to call your business consider choosing a name that will include the keywords you want to target look at this electrician you call this business london electrician 24 7 so he can legitimately have keywords in his google my business title and rank in the top three results for them if you're already running a business the final alternative is to consider changing your business name altogether i know this sounds drastic but looking at how much weight google puts on this and the additional customers you might get it might be worth thinking about it let's move on to the second feature that can make or break your rankings your business category one of the most important decisions you need to make when creating a google my business listing is choosing business categories that best represent your activity this is because still according to the map pack ranking factor survey google categories have the most impact on rankings in google maps there are currently around 4 000 different types of categories to choose from and google add new ones regularly which can make your decision a difficult one for certain businesses it's just as straightforward as choosing electrician or plumber but for others it can be a little bit trickier if i search for personal injury lawyer in fort lauderdale for example all businesses listed have chosen personal injury lawyer as their main business category this is likely to be one of the main reasons why they are showing up in the top three results in google maps for this specific search but if i check this business for instance when staying legal i can see they also offer criminal defense lawyers as part of their services but are not listed in the top three results for the keyword criminal defense lawyer fort lauderdale they've probably decided to go for personal injury lawyer as their primary category instead of defense criminal lawyer based on how profitable one service is over the other every business can pick a primary category and nine additional categories which will all influence your rankings but bear in mind the primary one is the most influential one so choose wisely to help you pick the right one you might want to watch my video how to pick the right business category time to talk about our third feature google reviews if you've been following my channel for a while you've probably seen many videos in which i talk about google reviews and how important they are beyond establishing credibility for your business google reviews also play a significant part in the rankings of your listing on google maps based on another study from joy hawkins published in search engine land a little while back businesses who lost some of their reviews following a google update all dropped rankings in google maps showing there is a strong correlation between reviews and rankings the 2020 map pack ranking factor survey also confirms reviews are still very important if you want to climb the ranks even if their weight may have dropped slightly over time the way reviews will affect how well your listing ranks is based on three key elements the first one is related to keywords your customers will include as part of the reviews they give you the more they mention a product or service you offer in their reviews the more likely you will rank for those keywords just like for this dentist based in biltmore arizona you can see the keyword dentist being mentioned many times across a lot of reviews although you can't tell your customers which keywords they should include as part of their reviews you can certainly influence what they write if you want to know how just watch my video include keywords in google reviews for higher ranking the second one is based on the rating value customers will give you the higher the value the higher your listing will score so aim to deliver outstanding service to get an average of four plus star rating the third one is quantity or how many reviews you get essentially this means the more reviews you get the higher you will rank in a nutshell what you need to aim for is a combination of quantity and quality reviews that also include relevant keywords time to move on to our fourth and final feature that impacts your ranking your website link the website feature in google my business allows you to connect your listing to your website still based on the 2020 map pack ranking factor survey you can see there is a strong correlation between how well a google listing ranks and which web page or landing page of your website your listing is associated with the keywords in the title of that page along with external links pointing to it will be used by google to rank your listing while in most cases you're likely to associate your listing with the home page of your website as it will be the most relevant page you might want to consider using a different page which you feel could help your listing rank higher this is particularly true if you have a business with multiple locations just like this barbershop who has associated one of his listings based in london paddington with the paddington location page of his website this will no doubt affect the fact he's able to rank for the keyword barber paddington in the map pack here is another example for a family law practitioner located in philadelphia who has decided to link directly to the divorce lawyer page instead of linking to his homepage which is likely to rank higher for the keywords he is targeting there is no hard rules here and i suggest you just test which page works best for your business and monitor how well you are ranking for your chosen keywords that's it i've just gone through the only four features within your google my business listing that directly impact your rankings just like you i've read and heard many other tips you should use to get your listing higher up in google maps but they simply don't work here are some of the most common ones you may have come across add keyword to your business descriptions utterly useless if it worked you can just imagine each and every business description on all listings would be stuffed with all sorts of keywords and likely be unreadable add as many locations as possible in a service area field to extend your reach once again this does not work all this does is help google show a map of the area your business is able to serve think of it this way if you're a plumber based in san diego what is the likelihood of your listing being displayed in denver even if you added denver as the locations you serve geotag your images before posting them on your listing the concept of geo-tagging pictures is a process of adding latitude and longitude data to an image which in theory will help search engines rank them in its results when people are searching for location-specific images you may have heard that geo-tagging pictures will help rank your listing this is not true because a most pictures nowadays are automatically geo-tagged by our digital cameras and phones and b as soon as you load an image on your listing it is automatically associated to your business and geotagged by default so don't go spending time geo tagging pictures using fancy tools like this one which won't make any difference publishing tons of google posts although google posts can be useful to raise awareness about an event a service or a promotion your business is doing they have absolutely zero influence on rankings despite their prominence these are the most common misconceptions i have come across when it comes to increasing rankings for your listing other features such as q a's which are displayed on your gmb panel and services and products you provide will not have any impact either having said all that it does not mean you should ignore features that do not influence rankings this is because the completeness of a listing is a ranking factor in itself so make sure you use as many features as you can not to mention it will be very useful for your visitors that's it for today people i hope this was useful and as always if you have any questions don't hesitate to post them in the comments below and until next time happy marketing

Channel: Ranking Academy

Views: 32,753

Keywords: google my business, google my business tutorial, google my business optimization, google my business seo, google my business 2020, google my business tips and tricks, google my business tutorial 2020, local seo, google business, google maps, local seo 2020, local seo google my business, ranking academy

Id: EhAq-kfQt80

Length: 11min 24sec (684 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 24 2020