Since you are reading this post, we can positively deduce that you are the manager/owner of a business active in a niche or highly-disputed industry and that one of your main concerns is the future profitability of your services in the context of rising customer expectations and increased competitiveness from business rivals. You are not the only one. It’s tough out there. Modern businesses have to navigate challenges that previously were only an afterthought for profit-focused companies, and nowadays, the digital position of your venture and its visibility in online directories will be almost as important as the quality of the services and products you commercialize.
We are all familiar with the importance of SEO in the modern business environment. 90% of all online experiences start with a search, and by targeting the on-page and back-end elements with a direct impact on SERP positioning and content indexability, SEO can be a way to attain organic traffic increases, which over time will generate compounding returns and contribute to your site’s reputational boost. So, we are on the same page here, right? If you want to succeed in the modern business sphere, you will need to prioritize your venture’s digital presence. And that, in many cases, means you will have to prioritize SEO for Google Maps.
What is SEO for Google Maps? Good question, even though I wrote it. In essence, SEO for Maps represents the process of optimizing your venture’s visibility elements that can have a direct impact on your company’s presence in regional searches or in the local pack. In other words, Google Maps-focused website SEO services are what’s needed in order to make the best of your GPB profile and target the local interests of core audiences.
It’s All About Increasing Your Visibility for Nearby Searches
When we say SEO for Google Maps, the majority of us active in the SEO sphere automatically think of optimizations to the Google Business profile. And yes, in the end, GBP is the main factor that can determine the likelihood of your services appearing for regional searches with strong local signals. It’s obvious why visibility in Google Maps is important, right? The more your venture appears in the local pack, the more calls you will receive, offline visits, and inquiries about your schedule and services.
In fact, around 76% of all the people who search for a business nearby will visit that location in the next 24 hours. The specialist in website SEO services with whom you collaborate will optimize your GBP and ensure that your service’s descriptions are up-to-date. But, on top of the modifications that can be implemented in GPB, your ranking in Maps will ultimately be determined, amongst other things, by the proximity of your business to the user who submits the Maps search. This is something that you cannot change, and it’s the primary reason why SEO for Google Maps features a local optimization approach.
What About Technical Search Engine Optimization?
While GPB is the core of the modification required in SEO for Google Maps, in reality, optimizing for it is only a fractional part of the modifications that will need to be implemented by the agency specializing in website SEO services. Yes, for local signals, the most important thing is to improve the elements that are present in the GBP. But, to amplify your Maps rankings, the specialist you call will also need to take a look at your site’s backend data. Google assesses the indexability of a website based on the CWVs. So, if you want to boost your page’s authority, trustworthiness, and local relevancy, technical SEO is mandatory.
How will an SEO specialist help in this regard? Well, it depends on your site’s profile, as technical SEO is perhaps the most involved step of a long-term search engine optimization strategy. But, in general, any backend modifications blueprint will first start with a full SEO scan, in which the specialists you hire will look for indexation issues, loading problems, duplicate content, manual actions taken in GSC, or redirect chains. Once these issues are identified, the SEO specialist you call will compress or change the format of your site’s media elements, remove heavy scripts that affect the website’s performance, utilize lazy loading, deploy a CDN if necessary, and ensure that your site follows the core web vitals.
But wait, that’s not all. The SEO agency will implement schema markup in the HTML of your pages via JSON-LD, use HTTPS for all your pages, geo-tag your images if this is deemed necessary, and, of course, develop robots.txt files and sitemaps, which can be used by crawling agents for indexation purposes. These actions, while complex and sometimes laborious, can drastically increase your SERP visibility and also make your site load faster.
How Can Website SEO Services Be Used for Google Maps SEO?
It all starts with a complete audit of your company’s Google business profile. The specialist you collaborate with will ensure the categories listed for the activity of your business reflect the services and products you commercialize. He/she will choose the primary category that represents your company and add secondary ones, which can attract clients interested in specific niche products/services. The next step in the Google Maps SEO blueprint will be represented by the optimization of the keywords utilized in the descriptions of your offerings or in the activities of your organization.
The more details used, the better, as Google crawlers will make use of your venture’s descriptions to determine the relevancy of your activities for specific queries. The agency that provides website SEO services will ensure that your NAP information is up-to-date, will add products and services in your GBP that utilize specific short-tail or long-tail keywords, will develop a response template for the received reviews, identify your local citations in external directories, and of course, optimize your site and content, perhaps even embedding your Google Maps location directly on your website.
