Google’s map pack results are critical for local SEO results. Relevant brick-and-mortar businesses are displayed in response to a search query. This is where many desktop and mobile searches end so it’s essential to ensure that your business appears in the map pack?
Google My Business and Bing Places offer free business listings, which benefit both businesses with a physical location people visit and service-oriented businesses. The quality of those listings directly influences the results in the map pack. Claiming your free listing isn’t enough. To maintain your critical position in the map pack, regular updates and optimization are essential – especially Google regularly changes Google My Business features and how they interact with the map pack.
At Efferent Media, we have had tremendous success in acquiring new traffic for our clients through optimized Google My Business and Bing Places listings. Since the searches are keyword-driven, traffic is relevant and provides quality leads. We have obtained thousands of new visitors, website visits, phone calls, and direction requests while improving brand awareness.
The above image is a mobile search result. Due in part to the Google Pigeon update in 2014, local businesses saw ranking improvements in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and the map results. It helped give local small businesses a needed boost vs. large businesses that had previously dominated SERP results regardless of relevancy.
The Google update helped level the playing field, but work is still needed. Ensuring that your business information is up to date, complete, and optimized is essential. Our local SEO specialists will address NAP (name, address, phone number) or NAHP (name, address, phone number, hours) issues first. NAP/NAHP consistency is vital for successful local SEO.
Potential customers will Google your company’s name or service and use that information to guide them so it’s critical to ensure that your Google My Business page’s NAP/NAHP information and service catalog is up to date. Customers who call old non-working phone numbers or visit stores during off-hours may be lost for good. With hundreds of business directory sites online, and it’s nearly impossible to manually update all of them. Our local SEO experts have the years of experience and tools to keep your business information optimized and current.