How to RANK your business higher on Google Maps 2018

Most businesses don’t do enough with SEO. What’s even more ignored in the digital world is fully optimise Local SEO – ranking in Google Maps and how to rank for it.

Why Google Maps aka Local SEO?

Ranking in Google Maps is one of the best things you can do for your business. Businesses such as salons, dentists, lawyers, car repair shops, mobile phone shops and more. If you have a physical location for your business, you need to rank in Google maps.

A good ranking in Google maps can either mean you are one of the biggest businesses in your area or if you are relegated to the bottom. See this example.

Raffles Place is one of the most popular areas in Singapore. For locals working in the area and for locals around the area alike. And hairstyling and hairdressing is a social activity for a lot of people and many people during their shopping trips will like to get a nice haircut while at Raffles Place.

They google to find out what are the salons nearby and they see a result like the one below. They see a few listings, they check out the ratings and if it’s decent enough, they immediately check the distance and if that’s fine, they probably check the site and get information on the rates.

We cannot stress the importance of Google maps because the first few results you get are to do with Google maps. This holds true for other businesses as well. If you are in an affluent area, there will be search queries for doctors, lawyers and dentists because people want services near to them.

You can write all the content and do On-page SEO you want. But Google will always show the maps results first.

Now that we’ve established the importance of Google Maps. Let’s get to the next steps of ranking well.

Google My Business

Google want more and more businesses to be listed online. That way they have choices to show to their customers. To enable this, Google has started something called Google My Business.

With Google My Business, every local company can claim their business listing on Google and will be officially part of Google Maps.

The process is simple. You fill up the details in the Google My Business page – Name of the business, Address and Phone Number. Post this, Google will send a physical letter to the location with a code. Once you enter the code, your business page will be live.

Website

After the My Business page is done. It’s time to update your website. Make sure to enter the same information on the website as well, without any changes. For example, Novatise’ Address is

Novatise Pte Ltd
Crasco Building
11 Beach Road
Unit 03-01
Singapore 189675

Even smaller details like Unit 03-01 should be the same in My Business and your website.

How to rank higher on Google Maps

Time to Cite

Once you have the address and phone number in Google My Business and on your website. It’s time to list it on other sites as well. A perfect example is Yelp.

Yelp is a directory of businesses that help people take better purchase decisions with the help of reviews and ratings. Claim your business in Yelp and make sure to put down the same address in the exact same way as well as the phone number.

This brings a consistency and tells Google the authenticity of the address. If you have different addresses in different locations, it confuses Google and they don’t rank you well.

To rank well in Google, you’ll need at least 20 to 30 websites to cite the Name, Address and Phone Number of your business.

Need at least 20 to 30 sites where you have this information.

If you are wondering, where can I find so many websites to cite in. Here is a small sneak peak into the type of websites to list in.

• Google My Business

• Apple Maps

• Facebook

• Foursquare

• Yellowpages.com.sg

• Yelu.sg

• Factual

• InSing

• Zipleaf

• SGP Business

• Yelp

• The Green Book

• Street Directory

• Opendi

• Hot Frog

How time-consuming is it?

There are quite a few sites where your website can be listed. Although, you can do it yourself, it is time consuming and you need to be consistent across all sites.

You’ll need to sign-up to the sites, fill in the forms and add these details. If you don’t want to do it yourself, you could choose a local citation link building service such as ours.

It’s a one time service for just S$100, you can get citation across 40 top performing websites. We’ll share with you all the websites and the links to your citation.

It’s a small one time investment that can have a tremendous impact on your business, especially when the competition ignores Google Maps.

Check out our Local SEO services in Singapore.

Click here below to access our Local Citation service.