How to Be the #1 Local Business on Google Maps

Want to double your traffic, phone calls, and sales—without spending a dime more on ads? In this solo episode, I’ll walk you through exactly how to rank in the top 3 spots on Google Maps (aka the Local Pack)—and how to stay there.

You'll learn:

• Why the Local 3-Pack dominates local search results
• The exact steps to optimize your Google Business Profile
• How to get more 5-star reviews (and why they matter more than you think)
• The local SEO website tactics most businesses ignore
• What mistakes are silently killing your rankings
• And the massive payoff of ranking top 3

🔍 Whether you're a service business or a brick-and-mortar shop, this episode gives you a tactical, research-backed roadmap to local dominance.

Thank you for listening! We hope you’re taking away some valuable insights to help you dominate your market. Don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review—it really helps us reach more business owners like you.

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Stay tuned for our next episode, and keep pushing forward with Alpha Marketing!

Transcript

00:00 Hey there, and welcome back to Marketing Alpha. Today's podcast is going to be something really interesting that we haven't done before, surprisingly.
00:09 But I'm going to go into the details on how to be the number one local business on Google Maps. So, in this, I'll essentially cover how to double your traffic, how to double your phone calls, and ultimately double your sales without spending any more on advertising.
00:24 So, businesses in the top three Google Maps spots, the local pack that everybody probably knows about and has heard about on Google Search, get 126% more traffic, and 93% more customer interactions than those ranked in positions four through ten on that Google Map Pack.
00:43 If you're not familiar with the Google Map Pack, it's essentially, you search, you know, roofers near me, and it's the little- Google Map section that shows the Google Business Profiles and the different reviews.
00:52 So those top three positions, the ones that are shown in search results, get 126% more traffic and 93% more customer interactions.
01:01 So it is our goal and your goal to essentially rank within that top three for the most important keyword that's relevant to you.
01:09 So let's dive a little bit more into, you know, why this is- so powerful and give you a step-by-step process in order to start ranking for the top three and ultimately double your sales.
01:20 Alright. So, over 44 to- between 44 and 48% of local search clicks go to the top three positions in the Google Maps listing.
01:30 So essentially 50% half of the clicks go to that Google Maps section. That is so- Hohoo! Powerful, because there's essentially three sections of a Google search when you're doing a local search.
01:41 You have the ads, right? You have the map, and then you have the regular organic listings. The regular organic listings is the OG Google search results that everybody kind of is familiar with.
01:51 Alright, so over 50% though go to the map section. That's so powerful. Users rarely click more places. They just pick from the first three too.
02:00 So they rarely- Rarely. They click, like, a few more businesses. That opens up, you know, four through ten as well.
02:05 They rarely click on that, and usually just pick from the top three. Especially mobile traffic. And nowadays, over 50% of traffic is on mobile devices.
02:16 So 50% of traffic is on mobile devices. More of those mobile users are just clicking on the top three businesses.
02:23 We need to get your business to- traffic there, and you need to get your business to rank there. The other thing to note about, uh, uh, really another interesting statistic is 76% of nearby searches result in a visit within 24 hours, and 28% lead to a purchase.
02:38 So essentially, of those people that are searching a third of the time, it's actually just resulting immediately into a purchase within 24 hours.
02:47 But at least 76% of- the time, right, three quarters of the time, people are contacting the business somehow or reaching out to them or visiting them locally.
02:56 So essentially, there's so many different ways on why this is important and why it's so powerful and why you need to rank between positions one, two, and three.
03:07 Now, another key metric here is that the businesses with the best-star ratings and review count often win- the most clicks too.
03:15 So if you have the highest rating, meaning a, uh, one to five-star rating or a five-point-o-star rating, as well as you have the most reviews, you generally win the most clicks.
03:25 So it's absolutely imperative that you have the most reviews and that you have the highest rating on Google search results.
03:33 So let's dive into a step-by-step guide on how to rank number one on- Google Maps and how to show in that Google map pack results between one and three.
03:42 The first and obviously most simple thing that we need to start with is optimizing your Google business profile. You need to claim and verify your profile if your profile is showing suspended right now.
03:51 You need to do whatever you can to contact Google to get it fixed. I know there's companies that work with Wolfpack all the time that have issues with suspensions and we do everything that we can to contact Google Maps.
04:01 Google and get in touch with them to fix it and you need to do the same. But first, you need to create a profile if you don't already have one.
04:07 You need to use your correct business name. There's no keyword stuffing here. So do not add a bunch of keywords or whatever.
04:13 You need to use your legal entity name, either a DBA or what's actually officially on the state license, right? Umm, to actually do business.
04:22 You need to select an accurate primary and secondary, category. So once you add the business name, you start creating your profile.
04:29 There's categories. Categories are essentially the type of business you are. So for example, pest control service is a category. Or home inspector is a category.
04:38 An additional or secondary category could be commercial real estate inspector if your primary category is a home inspector. If you're primarily a home inspector, but you also do commercial real estate inspections.
04:48 Or maybe you do mold air quality testing. That could be another secondary or additional category you could add to your profile.
04:57 So if you're a roofing contractor or whatever else, make sure you're checking the additional categories to be added to that Google business profile and you're not just selecting the primary one.
05:06 And make sure you select the primary one. That's the correct one. Next we need a right keyword rich. Shh. But natural business descriptions.
05:15 So when you add your business in, you're going to add the business name, the category, and give it a business description.
05:21 That business description is super critical to search engine optimization. We're optimizing the ranking for search engines. So make sure that you're utilizing, uh, some type of keywords within that description.
05:34 And a simple tool for this is just going to chat GBT to say. like, Hey, write me a keyword rich natural business description for my Google business profile and give it all the context and needs such as your website in order to generate that.
05:47 Then finally, we're going to add high quality photos and videos and keep them fresh and up to date. It's not enough to just add simple pictures of your particular product or your service.
06:00 For example, home inspectors. inspectors. and pest control guys. I know you are so interested in posting like, oh, this is, you know, this type of pest or, oh, this is this type of home inspection defect.
06:11 What people want to see is actually the relationship and the end goal. What it looks like to win with your particular company.
06:20 So you should envision that with these photos and what we mean by that is essentially handshakes to the customer. People.
06:25 People smiling. You completing the service. You actually in the photo looking professional and clean with a polo or whatever else doing that particular job.
06:35 If you're coffee shop, it's you handing coffee to a customer that is at the desk coming up, right? They want to see the satisfaction and the win.
06:43 And that's what you should be producing in your photos and in your videos. Now, the last two. Thank Things here are going to be adding services, products, and attributes.
06:53 So service products and attributes are essentially adding the details about your business, like what services you offer. You can add pricing to that and descriptions, make sure that's completed fully.
07:03 Um, I would also utilize chat GPT for this. So say, like, Hey, chat GPT. This is my particular company. This is my website.
07:10 Generate services and descriptions for my good. Google business profile and ask it to do that. Products, if you're an e-commerce store or you sell particular products, you could do the same thing there.
07:21 You're going to add product photos. You're going to add product titles and descriptions and make sure it is keyword rich or rich with SEO.
07:29 Uh, so you can optimize for that. And then finally attributes. Attributes are kind of like additional tags on your Google business profile.
07:37 Like wha- Google chair accessible, for example. And the final thing, uh, that I was going to mention is using Google posts weekly.
07:44 Um, so Google allows you to provide updates onto your Google business profile. You can update that every single week. Now it does consider, uh, in the realm of SEO help Google rankings supposedly.
07:57 There's no real detail as to how much it helps. So don't think that it's- It's going to magically be your magic pill to, like, rank higher, right?
08:05 It's not going to do that, but essentially it can help. So we might as well do every little thing we can in order to maximize that.
08:12 But going back to what I've stated earlier reviews are going to be one of the most impactful things, uh, to your Google business profile.
08:20 Alright, besides all that, make sure you complete out all the rest of the information within your Google business profile. So make sure you're- adding your website, your office hours, contact information, all that good stuff to the Google business profile as well.
08:32 But those are your key things to optimize the Google business profile. Now, there's other things that I'm going to get to a little bit further as well, such as NAP consistency in local citations, but that's a little bit further down the line.
08:45 The next thing I want you to focus on is dominating with reviews. use. 63% of consumers read Google reviews before visiting a business.
08:53 The majority of customers are looking at your reviews. So ask for reviews after every service and automate the requests. With Wolfpack, we have automated review requests.
09:02 It filters out negative reviews. It's essentially the perfect system you need in order to nom- dominate online for review requests.
09:10 Now, it's dependent on you completing a job. So you complete a job, you complete a service- Notice? Boom, sends them an email and a text message to ask for review immediately.
09:18 That's our goal. And then boom, it sends another notification 24 hours later that says, Hey, you didn't respond to my first request.
09:24 Can I get your feedback here? And it filters out any particular negative feedback that you may have. So you really need some type of automated system if you don't have one already to automate your review requests.
09:36 Then you need to automate your review- Thank you for watching. Sponsors or have somebody dedicated to review responses. Once a customer leaves a review, you need to reply to that review.
09:45 All reviews, good and bad. If you do have a bad review, make sure you're responding professionally. Do not slander or anything like that.
09:52 Look up in chat if you need helpful tips on how to respond professionally to a bad review. Now, I'm going to say there's a thing in here that talks about keeping your average- Have a good review rating above 4.5 stars.
10:03 I'm going to say you need to be 4.8 or above. If you're not 4.8 or above, you're going to have difficulty.
10:09 It does- It is a little bit dependent on your industry, such as restaurants. The review rating is a little bit more competitive.
10:15 Um, compared to, like, pest control services could be 4.8 and above. Roofing contractors might be a little bit lower. It just depends on your individual industry, so compare against your competitors.
10:25 I'm headed. But I want you shooting for 4.8 or above in your review rating. So volume and the recent, uh, recency of your reviews also matter as well.
10:37 So volume is essentially like how many reviews you're getting in your review rate. Right? If you're not doing many jobs, Google's going to pick up on that because you're not getting many reviews and going to know that this guy isn't, um, that busy or not that popular.
10:50 versus another company that's getting reviews left and right from every single job, Google's going to know that, hey, they're getting a lot of recent reviews and they're getting a lot of reviews, meaning they're doing a lot of work and a lot of people are happy and satisfied.
11:01 So maybe we recommend them more often. Now, the third thing within this is any P consistency and local citations. So once you do steps one and two, now we're looking at the name address phone number, um, and local.
11:14 So your business name, address and phone must be identical across all platforms. You could fix listings. And then what I mean by local citations is listings such as Yelp, the Better Business Bureau or Facebook.
11:34 And there's a bunch of other directories. Amazon Alexa has one. Chatcha Bt has. Uh, Next one now. Um, Yahoo Local being places is another one.
11:42 Of course, you need to make sure your business is on all of those platforms. And it's complete and accurate. It has the right name, address and phone number.
11:49 If you have a secondary location, you need to do the same thing for the secondary location where you have the correct name, address and phone number.
11:56 And you should have a different address and a different phone number for the particular location. And the citations should all be the same.
12:01 And you should have duplicate. So for example, Yahoo Local should have the two business locations if you have two separate Google business profiles.
12:08 If you only have the one, just keep it the one in the standard. There's tools like Bright Local and White Spark that can help you manage citations and automatically push your name, address and phone number to all those important directory sites.
12:19 Um, Miles Local is another one. Obviously, Wolfpack Advising does this service as well if you want to reach out to us.
12:25 Now, after you do NAP Consistency and Local Citations, we're going to move off over to Local SEO on your website.
12:33 The first main point I have here is having a dedicated Service Plus City landing page. This is so, so critical.
12:41 Your home page is going to be your centralized home page around the area that you serve. Service and City. So for example, Roofing Contractors in Orlando Lando floor.
12:50 Now Orlando has a bunch of cities surrounding it, so you're going to have different dedicated landing pages for the different cities surrounding the Orlando market.
12:59 Same thing with Miami, same thing with Colorado, like Denver area, same thing with Los Angeles, and all these other big popular cities.
13:09 Your home page is dedicated around the main metro, and you have a dedicated Service Plus City landing page. So Plumber in, uh, let's say, St. Petersburg.
13:20 Plumber in Boca Raton, Florida. And that dedicated service page is going to include all the relevant and particular information. If you don't know what to add here, it's essentially kind of like your home page, but it's going to be centralized around that particular city and market.
13:35 So you can include information around that city, particular issues you may find. If and subscribe See next With that, if you're a plumber or a home inspector, for example, and keep it really customized for that individual city.
13:44 You can also add local business scheme up markup. If you're not familiar with that, what that is. Your, uh, WordPress system or your website system usually automatically does it for you.
13:55 But you can always Google it or reach out to some type of SEO pro, such as Wolfpack advising or maybe another company you're already working with.
14:02 to our friends. That it's kind of familiar with schema market markup, because it is a little bit technical, but it's very important in terms of getting your rankings up there.
14:10 Now, I want to make a point to here. Is that your Google business profile and that website should link to this service and landing page that you want to rank for.
14:20 So if you want to rank for, let's say Orlando, Florida, right, and your main metro is central Florida and Orlando.
14:26 really. You know, Florida, your Google business profile address should be in Orlando. And then that city and plus landing page or the service in city, that should be centered around your homepage.
14:37 So your Google business profile links to your homepage. Now, if you have a secondary location, that's where things get a little bit dicey here in a little bit change or a little bit different.
14:46 So if you have a second location, maybe it's dedicated around Lakeland. Florida, which is a suburb or another city outside of Orlando.
14:54 You're going to have a separate Google business profile profile. You're going to have separate citations and that website page that link on those profiles are going to go to that dedicated page on your website.
15:05 You're going to have to organize it a little bit further. When you get to that point, you start really needing somebody dedicated to SEO whenever I really recommend it because it's easy to mess.
15:14 Thank you. You're going up and kind of make it super clunky and messy and confusing for most users. You make it super clean and understanding of a user land is on your home page.
15:24 They know exactly where to go, how to find the right information and where you service and all that particular information.
15:29 Um, but going back for the majority of businesses, you're going to have one location, one Google business profile that is going to link to your home page and that should be all- all centered around the main metro you want to serve.
15:41 Now, something to keep in mind here too, this is a little bit more advanced, but if for example, you want to rank for, let's say Miami or Denver or, uh, Houston, these are all big metros with tons of competitors.
15:55 If you don't have a ton of reviews, if you don't have a good rating, you're not going to rank well for that.
16:00 If your Google business profile is outside the- of Houston or Denver or wherever I'm talking about, you're not going to rank well for that.
16:07 So you might as well go hyper local to your individual suburb. For example, in Tampa Bay, it might be Riverview, it could be Wesley Chapel, it could be the city of Brandon.
16:17 It's suburbs outside of that where your Google business profile might be actually geared towards, and then you're going to create your homepage around that.
16:24 It starts to get a little bit complicated because you might want to get- of the impression that you serve the entire Tampa Bay market, but you want to hyper compete or really compete for your individual city where you're located like Brandon.
16:36 And it's important to talk with an SEO because they would kind of outline like what the pros and cons are of each and kind of how to weigh it as a business decision, uh, business decision.
16:46 Either way, I'm digressing here because I'm getting a little bit too detailed into the weeds about things, so ultimately I- I want you to match your Google business profile address around your metro and your home page around that too in order to get it all in rank and, uh, look very seamless to the consumer
17:02 . Now, the final two things I'm going to mention on this is you need to embed your Google map or embed your Google business profile map section with review rating on that service page and you're going to add internal links to your Google business profile from your- website.
17:15 So on your website, you're going to add a link from your website to your Google business profile. So that way Google sees, hey, these two are associated, especially if you have multiple different locations.
17:25 Now, I have, uh, I'm on my fifth point here out of six. So the fifth one is earn local backlinks.
17:32 So sponsor local events, schools or nonprofits, get listed in local news stories or business roundups, join your Chamber of Commerce.
17:39 And local associations. Doing things hyper localized can help you guys exchange links back and forth and get, earn more local backlinks because you're in local news stories or things like that.
17:49 So doing all those local things are very important. And while it may seem like it's not really related to online, it will eventually because maybe get picked up and like, hey, there was this cars and coffee event that you went to or attended to or hey, there was this school.
18:03 Charity event that you went to in a news story, picked it up and Google recognizes those links. The final thing is engage with Google posts and Q&A.
18:12 So as I mentioned earlier, post weekly, you can offer, uh, news, uh, like events. You can make offers. You can make discounts, things like that.
18:21 But you can also, uh, have Q&A on your Google business profile. So you can preload, answer and question. Questions about questions and answers.
18:29 Sorry. Question and answers about your particular service or about your particular products. Common things that you might receive. And that would help optimize your SEO, um, for your Google business profile.
18:42 Now, another thing I want to make here real quick as well in this last point is when engaging, uh, it does give you the option to use messaging.
18:50 Only use it if you can ask. Actually, like, respond to messages appropriately and quickly. If you can't respond to messages, don't enable messages on your Google business profile because Google tracks that engagement.
19:01 So just turn it off if you can't engage with that. Alright. I've given you a ton of information. Now let's talk about some common mistakes that absolutely kill your rankings and then talk about the payoff in the end and conclude on a call that.
19:15 So, these are some of the most common mistakes that I see all the time with local businesses. The first one is keyword stuffing in the business name.
19:24 Don't do it. Don't do it anywhere. Stop keyword stuffing. Make it very natural language. The second thing is fake or paid reviews.
19:34 So don't do any fake or paid reviews or anything like that to try and, uh, gain f-ing. In the system.
19:41 Ignoring profile updates or seasonal hours. Make sure updating your hours if seasons change or if it's a holiday. And add profile updates based on what's going on with your individual business.
19:52 It's a business listing showing online. You need to keep it updated about what's updated about what's going on in your business.
20:00 Don't skip the website or citation stuff that I mentioned. Earlier. So citations are super, super important. You cannot skip that and you cannot skip the website portion either.
20:10 It is not enough to optimize the Google business profile. You have to do everything on your website too in order to help lose rankings.
20:18 And also I see a lot of people not responding to reviews. You need to respond to all of your reviews.
20:24 No matter the rating, no matter if they leave words or comments or not. Not respond to all of them. If you don't, it lowers your trust and can lower your rank too.
20:34 Alright, here's some interesting, um, breakdowns on the click-through rates based on your position. So, the business is in the number one position on the Google Map Pack.
20:51 Get 18% of the clicks. The business is ranking number two on the Google Map app. Map, pack, get 15% of the clicks. It's actually 15.4. And the, uh, the business is in number three.
21:05 Get 15.1% of the clicks. So, the top three, get almost 50% of all the- Local clicks that are on the Google Map section.
21:18 The top three get two times more traffic in 93% more calls and direction quests than any other business on the Google Map section.
21:29 So it's absolutely imperative that you're doing all of these things to increase the amount of sales and essentially double your sales that I talked about earlier.
21:38 You can absolutely do that just- based on these metrics alone. Alright, now call the action for you guys. If you want to see how your business ranks right now, leave a comment and reach out to me.
21:48 I'm happy to get my team to, uh, work with you on like, hey, here's how your business ranks right now.
21:53 Here's the search volume for your particular metro. And you can utilize that all of that information to start knocking out some of these things I've given you.
22:00 If you need some help, you have additional questions. Feel free to reach out- out to us as well. We're always happy to help in a lot of the Facebook groups that we're a part of or any type of email or communication you reach out to us on.
22:10 That's what we're here for. Anyway, thank you. See you next time.