The number one concern I hear from local businesses that we talk to every day is that they are not showing up on Google Maps.
Do you have the same concern?
Without going into all the complexities of this issue. I want to quickly give you the 4 most common reasons we see for why your business isn’t showing up in Google Maps
Ready?
Here we go:
1) Your name and address do not match:
This means, whatever business name and address you have on your Google My Business listing, it does not exactly match your website.
But it also means you have wide spread fragmentation of your business data across the web.
If I find your business in 10 directories, but only 1 out of 10 match your Google My Business listing, then you have a fragmentation problem.
And fragmentation / inconsistencies — from your website to the dozens of directories that list your business — will heavily suppress your visibility in Google Maps / Google local search results.
2) Your Google My Business category is wrong
If there’s one single variable that can sink, or weigh down, your visibility in Google Maps, it is having the wrong business category.
I once had an optometrist client that was super-glued to the #1 local rankings for more than 2 years.
Then someone / somehow updated their category from “optometrist” to “optical supplies” (or something like that), and they dropped from #1 down to #15 in local maps.
It took us a while to figure out what was wrong… but soon we figured out that their GMB category had been changed.
Once we updated the category back to “optometrist”, they literally in about 5 minutes shot back up to the #1 rankings in Google Maps / local search results.
It was right then that I realized the power and the impact of the business category in Google My Business.
3) Your website’s homepage SEO structure is off
For most local and small businesses, the homepage of your website carries a substantial amount of weight when it comes to your presence and rankings in Google Maps / Google local.
Why?
Because most local businesses use their homepage URL as the landing page for the “Website” button on their Google My Business listing.
As such, the SEO structure of your homepage has to be tight.
If you are an optometrists office in Portland, Oregon, but the meta data on your homepage says something like “Medical Supplies in Portland, Oregon”, or simply says your company’s name, then your homepage is weighing you down.
Just like with the category of your GMB listing, the homepage of your website needs to be optimized so there’s continuity between your GMB listing and your meta data.
Some key components of your website’s homepage that need this level of SEO focus:
Meta title
Meta description
Onsite <h1> tag
Onsite <h2> tags
Image alt tags <img alt=”….”>
4) Lack of authority
Finally, here’s the #4 reason why your business isn’t showing up in Google Maps / Google local…
Because you haven’t done anything to build authority!
What do I mean by building authority?
Here’s a quick list of what this entails:
-Building authoritative backlinks to your website (remember the importance of your website’s homepage? Authority is referencing your homepage URL)Building authoritative citations (business data / see point #1 above)
-You don’t have citations from categorically relevant sources (see point #2 above)
-You simply lack the volume (scale & magnitude) of citations and backlinks
In summary, the more citations and backlinks you have that match your Google My Business listing, and that point to your website URL, the more overall authority your business will have in search.
And the more authority you have… the higher you’ll rank and the more visibility you’ll have.
And the more visibility you have, the more you’ll get found by new customers who are searching for exactly what you offer!
I hope this quick list was helpful.
Looking for more help on being found on Google, you can request your free Online Visibility Report and we can determine how we can best help you shine online.