Speaker 1: Do you feel like you've done everything right, but you're still not showing up where you want in the Google Map Pack? Local competitors who shouldn't be outranking you are, and every day you're not showing up right here, you're losing out on a lot of money. Well, in this video, we're going to change that. I'm going to rank the biggest local SEO ranking factors to show you exactly what you should be focusing on the most, what's a waste of time, and the number one thing you can do to land yourself at the top of the map, even if you were to ignore everything else. And we're going to have some fun with this and put all 20 ranking factors into a tier list with these categories that I created. Must-do's, should-do's, good-to-haves, do-when-there's-time, and wastes of time. And trust me, most business owners have the must-do's and the wastes of times completely backwards. Okay, let's start with our first ranking factor, keywords in your business name. So let's say you're a small law office, and you want to be found here for the phrase family law. So this ranking factor says you would have an easier time ranking if the name that you put into Google Business Profile was Walker & Associates Family Law, rather than if your name was Walker & Associates Legal. The question is, how much edge does this change give you? As it turns out, it's pretty high. So I would be tempted to put this in the A tier, except for one thing. You technically do have control over this, but it would involve a legal name change of your business, including on signage, your website, all those places. Because Google's rules are pretty clear, you can't just game the system and put whatever business name is going to help you the most. It has to be your real name, or you can get penalized. So I'll actually put this one in B tier and say you should do this if you can commit to doing it the right way, and if it doesn't make your business name sound weird or spammy. Okay, sticking with keywords, this next one is putting your keywords in your landing page title. So Google lets you link your business profile to your website. Usually that's going to be your homepage. So that page you link to is called your landing page. And if you include your keyword in a meta title that shows up right here, that's good for some ranking power. And this one's pretty high too. And since it's on your website under your control, and it's pretty easy to take care of, literally you just add the keywords after your business name. I'm going to put this one in the A tier, must do. Okay, so next up we have positive Google reviews. Specifically, we're talking about the quality of the star rating here, not the number of reviews. So now this would be really easy to say that you can't really control it, so don't worry about it. But the truth is you should be working to get five star reviews as much as possible in your business. Not only do people need to see them before they're going to, you know, choose to work with you, but Google does use the average number of stars you get as a fairly big ranking factor. So encourage customers to leave a review or at least just a star rating, preferably right after you've worked together. That's when they're the most likely to do it. So you can't control the reviews you get, but you can definitely stack the deck in your favor. So I'm putting this one into B tier. Okay, so now let's talk about the quantity of reviews with text. It's the age-old question of quality versus quantity. The good news here is that the quality of your reviews, meaning how high the average star rating is, is a slightly higher ranking factor than how many reviews you get. But you should still be shooting for as many as possible and as many five stars as you can get. So this one also gets a B from me, but slightly under the last one. Okay, so now let's talk about your physical location, specifically how close your address is to the center of the city that you want to rank in. Google generally likes to show people the businesses that are either closest to them or closest to the city center. So let's say you run a sushi restaurant in Seattle. If I'm here at home in Chicago, but I know I'm planning a trip to Seattle and I search sushi in Seattle, I'm not close enough to any of the restaurants for them to show me what's closest to me. So they default to showing me what's closest to the center of the city. And in case you're wondering where the center is, just Google the city name and the center is where that city name shows up on the map. So in terms of how valuable it is to be there, I won't lie, it is a factor, but it's one you can't really control unless you literally move there. So just from a practicality standpoint, I'm giving this one a C. Okay, how about this one, social signals? So if you post a lot on Instagram or you have a ton of engagement on Facebook, does that help you rank? Unfortunately, this is a really common myth. Not that social media is a complete waste of time. It definitely has marketing value, right? But it won't help you rank. So for that reason, it is going in the F tier. All right, next up. So Google Business lets you put services in your profile, but should you also have a dedicated page on your website for each service you provide? I certainly would, not just to be able to be found for each service in organic non-map Google searches, but as it turns out, having these pages also helps your map rankings too. It's just an above and beyond signal to Google that helps them line up what you put in your profile with what you say you offer on your own website. So I will be putting this one in B tier. And we definitely still have some of the most important stuff to take care of coming up. That A tier is looking a little empty right now, so let's keep going. Okay, so let's just knock out the next couple of location factors. First, we have how close you are to the searcher. So remember, Google likes to show people businesses closest to the person searching for it. And this is a really touchy subject, right? Especially if you're more of a service business, like a plumber that travels out to your customers, or just work remotely at home, like if you're a graphic designer. And you know, it shouldn't matter how close you are to your clients. Unfortunately, Google still treats every business more or less like a restaurant and just wants to show them their closest option, all else being equal. And you really have no control over this one, right? So with city center, you could in theory move closer to that area, but there's just no way to be closest to every single searcher. So this one is a true C tier for me. So let's say that you're in that service business category. You know, they do let you set up your service area where you can list out all the cities or zip codes or even states that you serve your clients in. Now, this should help you rank within that area, right? This is a really common myth. So here's the deal. You should set this because it tells your clients who find you that you can work with them where they live. But unfortunately, it does not help you rank within the area you specify, not even a little bit. So this one gets an F. And the next location factor is just being physically located in the city that you want to rank in. So this comes up as an obstacle a lot when a business is in a suburb like Aurora, but they want to be found for, you know, house cleaning Denver. This one's a little more in your control because you could move to the city you want, or more realistically, you could choose to just double down on trying to rank in the city that you're actually in. So I'll give this one a B actually. All right, now we have keywords on your landing page heading. So remember, we're talking about the page on your website that your business profile links to. And this specific tactic is about putting your keyword phrase in at least one headline on that page. I'll say this can be pretty valuable, especially if you put it in the top headline, also known as the H1 header. Putting it in a sub headline further down the page will still be good, but less effective than if you put it up top. But for the most ranking power, I would say to put it in your H1 and in H2 if you can as well. And it's really important, but there's definitely things you should do first. So I'm putting this in B. So what about the idea of a complete and verified Google business profile? Sounds simple, right? Just fill it out as completely as possible and get your address verified. As basic as it sounds, you wouldn't believe how many businesses drop the ball here and do the bare minimum, which is actually a huge opportunity for you to do more. And it's not hard either. Just go section to section and get it done. This one is super high priority. We've definitely got another A tier here. Okay, and when we talk about having a complete business profile, how do your keywords fit into that? So we know they help having them on your website, but what about putting keywords in your Google business profile, like in your description or in your services areas? It's a good thought. Unfortunately, it doesn't do anything for your rankings. Use them when they make sense to use them to properly describe your business, but don't shoehorn them in where they don't fit. This one's enough. And next we have consistent citations. So a citation is just any mention of your business anywhere online. And usually this is going to include what they call the NAP, name, address, and phone number. And where do you usually get citations is on those business directories, review sites, and your social media profiles. And a few years ago, one of the biggest ranking factors was how consistent each citation was to the next. Like if this one says your address is on Oak Street and this other one said Oak ST, it was a mismatch and that hurt you. These days, Google is a lot smarter and the consistency isn't as important, but you should still have citations when you can get them. It is less important than a lot of the other stuff we talked about. So I'm going to put it in D tier. Just do it when there's time. Next up, we have city name in your website content. So city name, neighborhood, whatever area you're trying to rank in, just including that in the written content on your linked website help. It actually does, but that doesn't mean put every neighborhood in every suburb that's in a 50 mile radius. That's not going to help you rank there. This means the city that you're actually in that you're trying to rank for. So include that city name throughout your website, including in page titles, headlines, subheadlines, and body text, wherever it makes sense. But don't overdo it. Just do it in a really natural way. But this is really powerful and easy to do. So it gets an A for me. Okay. So no SEO list would be complete without talking about links. So let's just talk about them. First up, we're going to talk about backlinks from other websites. These have always been a really strong ranking factor for SEO, and even for the local map pack. The thing is though, they're a little less powerful than they used to be. And they're pretty hard to get. It's a lot of strategy involved. And usually it's, you know, writing articles for other websites, and then they'll link back to your site and the author bio, super time-consuming stuff. So what I'll say here is you want to prioritize backlinks first from other websites that are relevant to your location, then websites that are relevant to your industry. And you want to try to get them to link to the same page that your business profile links to for the most power. If you're going to do it again, it's usually the homepage, but overall, I put this in the D tier. If you have time to do it later, go for it, but only after you've maxed out the higher tiers first. And we do have the number one most important thing you can do coming up in just a bit. Next, what about links that you can much more easily control? You know, internal links from one page in your website to another. I'd actually prioritize this above getting external backlinks. Much easier to do and almost as powerful. So it's a much better bang for your time. And the best thing you can do here is prioritize links from various pages on your site to the landing page that your business profile links to. Again, that's usually going to be your homepage, but don't just link to that page. Have a good variety, but just link to that page a little bit more than your link to the other ones. So I'm putting this in B tier. Okay, so this one is a biggie. I've seen so many videos over the years here on YouTube, including from myself back in the day, that talk about geotagging images. So the idea being you take the photos on your website or on your business profile and you add a bit of invisible code to them that tells Google that that photo was taken in a certain location. And this used to work as, you know, like extra credit that could help put you over the top and help you rank. But it hasn't been a thing for years now. Probably the biggest waste of time on this list. This one is definitely enough. Now we have your Google business profile category. So this one's divided into two parts, your primary Google business profile category and your additional Google business profile categories. So Google has over 4,000 business categories to choose from. And you want to find the one that's closest to your business and that's closest to the words that people use when they search for you. For example, if you're a dental office and you want to rank locally for dentist Kansas City, you'd want to choose the category dentist over dental clinic, which, you know, probably gets way fewer searches anyway. So that's your primary category. But then you still want to max out your additional categories to get even more ranking power for more searches. So just pick as many that apply to you as you can, but don't start reaching for categories that are a stretch. You know, that can actually confuse Google about what you do and that can hurt you. So these two ranking factors together are not only going in the A tier, they're actually the most important thing you need to get right to help you rank in the map. And being found in the map is great for business. But when we talk about being found online, there's a huge shift happening that you need to know about. So this video is a must see if you want to stay ahead of your competition, both in the map rankings, as well as in organic searches underneath the map. So I'll show you what's changing. And more importantly, the huge opportunity that it's going to open up for you in your business. So click right here, and I'll meet you over there in just a second.