How to Get Your Small Business into the Top 3 of the Google Local Map Pack

Over the years Google has made changes to the local pack. Online professionals have also referred to this as the map pack, 7-pack (for a time). It used to be you could see as many as seven local results show up at the top of a page, right underneath the ads. This is no longer the case. For a while, there was a black carousel and was commonly seen for restaurants and hotels in many markets, which has now disappeared. We now see a simple 3-pack. What does this mean for your business? How do you get your company to be one of the three?

First off, let’s define exactly what the 3-pack is. You see three company listings when you do a search in Google for a local business. When this occurs, you will see three local companies show up at the top of your search results, right underneath the ads. This is consistent with what your search results look like on your phone. If the companies have Google reviews, you’ll see those results as well.

You’ll notice right underneath the three options you may have the opportunity to click on “More places,” which then opens up all of the local options.

You can imagine how vital it has now become for the success of any business to be in the top three. Back when there was a 7-pack, it was far less challenging to show up on the first page for a keyword term through a local listing campaign. Now Google only shows three options on the first page, no matter how many local companies might be available. Without showing up in the top three, it’s much more challenging to get your website in front of the eyes of potential customers.

Getting into the top three Google Local results can be easy for less competitive markets and very difficult for others. But the basic steps are all the same.

1. Have an Ideal Location

In the old days where all companies were brick and mortar, the location of your business was significant in connecting with walk-by customers, especially if you had a storefront. But these days, the biggest reason to consider your address is for Google.

With many businesses selling their services online, and many employees working remotely, the actual location of your office may not seem as important as it used to be. But it is essential for search engines. If someone is looking for an architect in Los Angeles, the more centrally located you are in the city, the more likely your company is to show up as one of the top three in the local pack. Is it worth moving locations to get a better spot in the search engines? It may!

No one likes moving their business. It’s a huge hassle. There may be creative and legitimate ways to acquire a better business address, which doesn’t result in shifting your entire operation. Give us a call to discuss your options.

WARNING: Google has strict terms of use. Breaking the rules on how you get an address for your business location, and claim it in Google My Business, can have very negative penalties. Consult with a local listing specialist before you make a change in address and go through the verification process with Google, to make sure it’s valid.

2. Optimize Your Google My Business Profile

If you want to stand out in Google’s ranking system, you ought to take full advantage of their listing profile system, Google My Business. This means:

1. Have accurate information entered for your name, address, phone number, etc.
2. Add a lot of useful images of your business and the products and services you provide.
3. Enter a long and informative company description with many of the keywords associated with your industry.
4. Optimize your description using keyword phrases, potential clients are searching for online. (This requires the assistance of a content marketing specialist)

3. Add New Listing Profiles Consistently Month After Month

It’s important to be adding new profiles on the many thousands of available listing sites gradually over time. Some of the most familiar are:

• Bing
• Yelp
• YellowPages
• SuperPages
• DexKnows
• Yahoo
• Facebook

You don’t need to update them all at once. But you do want to figure out which sites are the most important for your industry and location. Consulting with a local listing expert will help you know which sites should be a priority. Updating or adding a couple of new listing profiles every month is the right strategy.

Are you a Yelp user? If you want customers to find you on Yelp, you should understand how this site works. Start a profile today and begin reviewing every company you do business with.

We have found, gradually building your local listing profiles looks natural to Google. We make sure the necessary information, like your company name, address, and phone number, is consistent across the different listing sites. When Google sees new information showing up on new sites, which verifies the Google My Business listing, your authority as a genuine business increases. This process also strengthens your placement on the local pack.

We also use other advanced methods of content marketing to help promote your local listing profiles, increasing the chance of each one showing up in actual search results for various keyword phrases. All of these techniques will help strengthen your placement within the Google local pack.

4. Make Sure There Is Consistent Information About Your Company Across the Universe

Did you have a different address or phone number a few years ago? If you’ve been in business for a while, it’s very likely you have incorrect information floating out there on the Internet ether. When Google sees these inconsistencies, it causes them to question the validity of your company. It makes them doubt whether you are still in business. If they see different phone numbers on different profiles, it makes Google question the accuracy of your contact info. If they see two or more company profiles on one site, Google questions which is the accurate one.

Fixing an inconsistent listing can be somewhat straightforward. But changing many problematic duplicates or incorrect listings across a lot of sites can be a nightmare. How do you even know where the problems are? How do you fix hundreds of sites all at once? Local marketing experts have tools to fix these problems quickly. Consult with an expert.

5. Have a Great Website

The strength of your website has become more and more important in your placement within the local 3-pack. A couple of years ago, you could manipulate your position through a strong local listing campaign, with a lot of consistent citations across the web. But those days are over. Google wants to make sure they are sending their users to websites of value.

So it’s imperative you have a site with meaningful content on it. You should invest in great videos, articles, images, and information that potential customers will find helpful. You want to keep customers on your site for as long as you can, induce them to contact you, and motivate them to buy your products and services.

Ultimately, it’s in your interest to do this. A site ranking in the search engines, but isn’t interesting to users, won’t convert viewers to customers, which in the end is a waste of money and investment on your part. And the value is circular. Google can see whether people are interacting with your site. The more your site converts, the more Google will increase its ranking in the organic search results and in the local 3-pack.

Perhaps the most important factor in increasing your presence in the 3-pack is online reviews. Many business owners assume they merely offer excellent customer service and their customers will naturally write positive reviews about them. First, the assumption you have great customer service may not be as accurate as you think. Secondly, even if you do, that doesn’t mean your clients will tell others online. We’ve seen many clients who provide fantastic customer service to their clients but fail month after month to get online reviews from them. As a business, you need to understand how the review process works, and you need to be continually asking for feedback from your customers.

The first and most obvious place to get reviews is in Google itself. When you get reviews, users can see the star ratings in the search results. Having the best star rating and the most reviews, not only increases your chance of getting into the top three of the local pack but also increases your likelihood of being picked from those three.

This next point might not seem as obvious. But it’s also imperative to get online reviews on other sites as well, like Yelp, and Yellow Pages, and Angie’s List, etc. Google can see these reviews. Acquiring positive reviews on multiple sites increases your placement in the local 3-pack as well.

We at Holistic Web Presence can offer a number of tools and services that can help you to increase the number of online reviews on the various sites that are appropriate for your industry and location. We also offer extensive training to help you as a company to blow your competition out of the water.

We’ve seen that the way that Google shows local search results has consistently changed in the past few years. But some methods for increasing your visibility within local search have stayed consistent, and they’re not likely to change. Having a great website, that provides potential customers with useful information, is not expected to go out of style. Getting regular online reviews isn’t going to disappear anytime soon as well. It’s only going to become more competitive as businesses get better and better at asking for reviews.

So begin consulting with an expert content marketing specialist today to see how we can help you get to the top of the local 3-pack. Don’t get left in the digital dust. The farther behind you get, the harder and longer it will be to catch up.

Wade Mann, the author of this article. He’s a content writer for Holistic Web Presence.

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