Have you ever wondered how to get your business to appear in the Google Maps listings which appear at the top of many search results?
The image below highlights just how visible Google Maps listings can be in Google’s search results and now often appear above all of the organic listings.
These listings offer the ideal opportunity to provide potential customers with easy access to important information about your local business at the precise moment they are searching for the products or services that your business can provide.
In a previous blog we offered details relating to setting up a listing on Google Maps and in the article below we aim to take things a little further by offering our 4 top tips for getting the most out of the platform.
Tip No. 1 – Follow Google’s Quality Control Guidelines
The first step in ensuring that your listing is geared for success is making sure that you have not cut any corners with the listing and taken the time to meet Google’s quality control guidelines.
Fortunately, Google takes the guess work away from this by offering in-depth information for anyone looking to optimise their listing via the business quality guidelines in the help section of the Places site.
The waffle is kept to a minimum and it is very easy to follow. To help you along your way, we have picked out 3 key pieces of information for any listing.
- Represent your business as it’s consistently represented and recognized in the real world across signage, stationery, and other branding.
- Make sure your address is accurate and precise.
- Choose the fewest number of categories it takes to describe your overall core business.
Tip No. 2 – Ensure Your Listing Is Fully Completed
If you are going to create a listing for your business, make sure that you fill out all of the fields. There is no point just providing the basics such as name and address, if you are not going to volunteer any more information.
It is Google’s constant aim to ensure that users of its search engine receive the best possible experience and to do this it needs to generate the most accurate results possible.
Whilst no-one is 100% of everything factored into Google’s ranking algorithm, it is widely believed that given a choice between two similar Places listings, Google is far more likely to display the more complete listing more prominently.
With this in mind, it is hugely important to ensure that you provide every snippet of information that you are asked to submit, including:
- URL
- Contact Details
- Hours of Operation
- Etc
Tip No. 3 – Choose The Most Accurate Business Categories
Along with a number of other factors, there are a number of very strong indicators that point to the fact that Google uses the category information of each listing to help decide how relevant your listing is to any particular search.
With this in mind, it is essential that you choose the right categories for your business from the options provided by Google when setting up the listing.
Tip No. 4 – Be Descriptive
Business descriptions are not always displayed (in part due to the device on which the search is being made) but you should always assume that your business description will be shown in full.
The description of the services available from your business may prove to be the difference between a potential customer clicking on your link and choosing to go with a competitor.
