Not Showing Up On Google Maps? Follow This Simple Check List

While talking to a friend this week, we discussed the topic of GMB or Google My Business optimization. My friend had a hard time showing up on the maps when he searched for his own business even when he was located close to his business address. So in today’s blog I will quickly go over a few key points to put your business on the map and likely ahead of most of your competitors. 

Descriptions

First things first, it may sound basic but for some reason or another, not many do this. In each and every description for your GMB, fill out the blanks as much as you possibly can. Similar to the functions of SEO, having more content increases the ranking of your business simply because Google will have more content and relevance to deliver to their searchers. Therefore, go through each and every single tab within your GMB and fill out all the information you possibly can. 

Keywords

When you fill out the information, be sure to also include keywords that you are targeting. Within our other blog post, we cover the few details on how to research target keywords for your business. Within your descriptions, mention the targeted keywords while maintaining a descriptive answer for the prompt. 

Media Content

One of the biggest ranking factors and a game changer is to have consistent media content. Looking at the cover picture, a study done by Digitalmaas you can see the drastic increase in search results just by having media added to your GMB. That being said, make sure to add photos consistently. Obviously the more often the better but consistency is the key. Regardless if you decide to have posts weekly or monthly, having consistency will help your page be on the google bot schedule to come by regularly and check on your new content. However your images needs to be:

-JPG or PNG

-Between 10KB to 5 MB

-Min resolution 720 px tall and 720 px wide

-The Quality of the photo should represent reality, meaning no excessive filters, alternations, or poor lighting.

Pay special attention to the file size of the photos, load speed affects the ranking of a page in a major way. Average users allow 2 seconds of load time for any page, taking this into account, Google automatically will deter from serving up any page that loads any slower. 

Attributes

Add Special attributes to your business if they qualify. Businesses gain additional niche traffic when it is labeled as Woman-owned, Black-owned, or healthcare-related. These additional labels will target searchers that have been categories to prioritize search results with those specific attributes. 

Live Messaging

Turn on Google Messaging. It may sound inconvenient, but having this feature enabled by itself will allow you to be presented as a higher search result compared to your competitors. In combination with your correctly updated business hours, spelling plainly,  it should not be any major inconvenience anyway. 

Reviews

Responding and managing customer reviews will give more presence and visibility to your business. Make sure to handle each negative review with an open mind and utmost professionalism and whatever you do, DO NOT DELETE A NEGATIVE REVIEW. This sends major red flags to Google Reviews for altering and curbing review ratings. 

Citations

More on a SEO background note, citations are another important factor to ensure the visibility of your business within search results. Citations are the exact same as mentioned in the top 4 key components to ranking a website blog. To put simply, citations are the number of times the business information is found throughout the inter-web, letting search engines know how real the business and establishment is. 

Product catalog

Lastly, if it pertains to your business, Google allows merchants with products to submit a product catalog to showcase their products on their GMB page. This will give more chances for Google to serve your business to the searchers and take up more of the real estate on the search page. 

At LSL, we provide GMB optimization services, permanent citations, along with keyword research to ensure your business is fully optimized for geographical searches. Contact us now to learn more!