Google is always inventing new products. Many of these, such as Google Authorship, Google Plus, Google Podcasts, and Google Sites have come and gone.
The trick as an SEO agency is to identify which of these products will develop mainstream acceptance and become commercially viable. All too often, we begin using a new Google product, only for it to be removed and for us to lose all progress on our marketing campaign.
The last thing we want to do is waste time.
About 2 years ago, we noticed that Google Maps were getting an increased emphasis. Google was expanding its Google Guaranteed (Local Service Ads) product to more niches, and our efforts to advertise in Google Maps are yielding a high conversion rate.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation on how to rank your business higher on the maps. Everyone on YouTube has these catchy titles of “7 Tips That Will Rank You In The Maps in 24 Hours”. Except that, I tried those tips, and it didn’t work.
Most of our customers have this thing called a “competitor.” Competitors mean that you need to go beyond the same basic 7 tips that everyone else is implementing. You need to bring something extra.
A competitive advantage.
This is why I’ve had my team constantly testing the Google Map Algorithm. Our customers need an advantage that they cannot find anywhere else.
We are strong believers in correlation studies and single-variable testing.
Correlation studies are where we gather data for different locations and then analyze the data for trends.
Generally it starts as a hypothesis such as “people who post more frequently to Google Maps have a higher ranking.”
And then, we examine the maps, collect data, and try to find a correlation.
The challenge is that we’ve noticed that Google has a much more robust algorithm controlling the maps, than they do with the “normal” organic listing.
With maps, Google can collect a lot of user behavior data. This data cannot be manipulated or optimized. User behavior can only happen after users find you in the maps, making it a very poor metric for optimization.
At the same time, user behavior metrics are becoming increasingly important.
With this in mind, we have found several successful hypotheses. This has given us an unfair advantage over other agencies, allowing us to deliver higher rankings at a lower price.
That said, many of our techniques require a great deal of manpower to implement. As a result, we are not the cheapest internet marketing firm but the best value when it comes to delivering long-term rankings. Check out our up-front pricing.
The big challenge with our method of testing is that it often takes multiple attempts to test one hypothesis. Often, a single hypothesis will require a period of 30 to 90 days to prove or disprove.
So, each tip on this list is a hard won. Accordingly, there are a few that work so well, that I will be purposely vague about them.
However, our methodology should give you a good idea about why Garage Door Marketing Syndicate is the best.
Where is your business located?
Time after time again, we talk to businesses in Matthews, NC, who want to target Charlotte NC.
We’ve had folks in Nokesville, VA who want to target Arlington, VA.
My favorite was a plumber in Benton, AR, who was adamant that they should be #1 in the Maps in Little Rock.
You see, Geo-targeting is the most important factor when it comes to maps.
Whenever you search for certain terms like “garage door installer” or “plumber”, Google interprets that as a “near me” search and geo-locates the business to the searcher.
It is imperative that your business address matches your target city name.
Now, if it doesn’t, there are things we can still do to move you higher. But you won’t dominate the area until we get an address inside the city.
At the very least, rent a $300 per month office so that you can have a business address inside your service area.
If you absolutely cannot get an address in the city, then you can still work to promote your website organically.
You can build a business this way, but it will never be a dominant brand, and you’ll always be dependent on a certain amount of ad spend to stay busy.
This one does not have a major impact on your rankings.
However, when you look at big markets like Chicago or Albuquerque, you’ll notice that all of the companies in the top 3 spots of the map pack have well-flushed Google map packs.
We’re also seeing that Google will change what photos they show based on variants of your searches. For example, if someone is searching for “Garage Door Opener Replacement”, Google will shuffle the photos to show photos of garage door openers in the top position.
With that in mind, it is important to have a deep selection of photos on your profile.
We also like to fill out the products and services section and add photos to every section we can. Heck, we even try to get the customers to leave reviews with photos.
That said, even if you have the business profile completely filled out, you will not rank at the top unless you do the other things on this list as well.
A lot has been said on this.
We want the Name, Address and Phone number (NAP) of your business to be the same on your website as it is on the Google Business Profile.
Then, we make sure to add it to the contact us page (a large number of websites don’t add it to this vital page). We had a client come to us, who’s listing had been suspended. They had the same address in their website footer as on the listing, but they were unable to get the listing reinstated.
All we did was add the address and phone number to the contact page and resubmit the profile. They were reinstated immediately.
Google is a bot. And often, a very stupid bot.
We also promote this information on other sites. Whether we are getting you included in a top-3 list in your city, or filling out your Chamber of Commerce listing or running a press release. We want to be as precise as possible.
It seems to matter.
Now, this one seems to come and go on the importance level.
However, in an effort to crack down on lead gen sites, we are seeing more sites block businesses that are operating from a residential address.
Yelp is a big one. They have become pretty particular about businesses operating from a commercial place of business.
The other big one is Google Maps. We are seeing that businesses with a physical location seem to rank better, than businesses without a physical location.
The one situation where this does not work as well is for those businesses trying to rank well on maps from 15 miles outside of the city (as we discussed in the first section above).
In those cases, the business is not generally in the 3-pack, but it can get to position 4 or position 5 as a service area business, and the position drops when switched back to a physical address business.
As with all SEO, check your local results before deciding whether to show your address. Studying what Google is rewarding is always the best strategy.
Just be aware that when you set the address to be visible, it is highly likely that you will have to perform a new video verification of your business.
Outside of location, brand authority is THE biggest needle mover.
Since Google was first founded, brand authority has always been the largest piece of the algorithm.
In the old days, it was referred to as “page rank”, named after Larry Page, co-founder of Google.
Today, brand authority continues to be a massive differentiator and needle-mover in the maps. In fact, it has become so important, that Moz developed a new tool to measure it.
We’re seeing this affect your local maps in a few ways. For one, we need to get mentions of your business on other high-relevant businesses.
In some cities, joining the Chamber of Commerce can be the deciding factor between being in the #2 “money spot” or left down at #4 on the maps.
In other cities, it takes more work.
Often, we have to do a deep, manual analysis and outreach to find the most important brand placements that will move the needle.
The other thing that we are doing a lot of right now is brand reputation. Everyone knows that they need reviews on Google. But they overlook BBB or Yellowpages.
Yelp is especially important as Apple maps primarily uses it.
We want your brand to have a positive connotation to the bots (and users).
For new businesses, we also find that we have to use some low-level advertising to build brand awareness before the SEO takes off. We don’t want to waste a lot of money on branding efforts in the early days of a business.
However, when a new business is stuck, sometimes $10 a day of ads will get the SEO rankings moving again.
This is a fun one that I have to give some credence to my colleague Travis Causey at the SEO Syndicate. He and his team have done a lot of great math around this correlation study.
All agencies will tell you that you “need more reviews”.
However, it is not uncommon to see a business with fewer reviews outranking a business with more reviews.
What gives?
Sometimes, that business in the top spot has more brand authority.
More often, though, we are finding that they have received more reviews in the last 30 days.
It is become a never-ending churn of review gathering to stay in the top spot.
This is why we encourage our customers to add a review QR code on the back, and to coach all of their staff on asking for reviews.
We also provide our customers with a Review Accelerator inside of their Growth.Doctor account (included) that sends a survey and requests that review.
This is a new one that I’ve been having a lot of fun with. It’s a powerful metric that can improve a map ranking in as little as 72 hours when done properly.
I first noticed it in a customer who was operating their business out of their home and had improved rankings in the maps every January.
They also showed a clear increase in driving directions requests to their residence every December.
After some sleuthing, it became clear what was going on.
Amazon drivers were using the map listing to deliver their Christmas packages. Those increased requests for driving directions were improving the map position.
This one is hard to improve if you don’t want to spend a lot of money on Amazon every day. However, through the years, we have found more ways to encourage people to drive to your location.
This is one of those “secret sauce” items we use to claim the top map spots in as little as 90 days.
This is one of our newest tools.
I’ve had some of the wisest SEOs in the business fight me on this one, but we keep getting wins with it, so it is going on the list.
We’ve been noticing that the businesses with the larges number of Facebook and Youtube subscribers tend to rank at the top of Google.
As a test, we’ve taken an account and flipped it over to a youtube channel with more subscribers, and watched the map rankings jump by 5 spots in 48 hours.
Now, we have to do this right. The Youtube link has to be updated everywhere, including in the schema markup.
But it is one of those deeper hacks that no one has thought to test.
For our newer businesses, this generally means that we coach them on building a stronger Youtube channel, or running a Facebook likes campaign.
The most powerful 2 factors on this list are brand authority and your business location. That’s why brand authority is the keystone of our entire strategy.
With enough brand authority, nothing else matters.
However, when you combine brand authority with these other items, the maps listing will rank faster – and even outrank other businesses with more brand authority.
It are these “hacks” that help us “punch above our weight class” and outrank the bigger franchises when necessary.
We’re all about helping the scrappy business owners win.
Get started today.
