This isn’t surprising, as you need a Google Business Profile to stand any chance of ranking on the map pack.
Business Profile signals are increasing in their perceived importance for the map pack over time too.
Beyond rankings, Google states that customers are 70% more likely to visit businesses with a complete Business Profile. They’re also 50% more likely to consider buying from them. So it’s clear that a complete and optimized Business Profile is essential if you want to attract more business.
Here are a few best practices from Google:
Be specific when setting your business category
Set your business hours (including holiday hours)
Add your address (if you have a storefront)
Set your service area (if you visit or deliver to customers and clients)
It shows broad search volume ranges (e.g., 1K-10K), not absolute numbers.
It groups keywords and shows a combined rounded search volume.
For that reason, checking the relative popularity of keywords at the national level tends to be more productive. This is because what happens in one city is likely to be similar in the next.
You can do this with a keyword research tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer.
For example, the tool tells us that more people search for “boiler repair” than “boiler installation” in the U.K.:
This is probably the case whichever city we’re in, so it’s an excellent way to prioritize keywords.
Links are increasing in their perceived importance for “regular” local rankings over time too. But their perceived importance for “map pack” rankings has stayed roughly the same.
One way to find details that matter to searchers is to check what top-ranking pages in your area talk about. You can do this by looking at the pages. Or you can use Keywords Explorer to find keywords mentioned on the top-ranking pages.
Here’s how to do that:
Enter [service keyword] [location] (e.g., “boiler repair london”)
Go to the Related terms report
Hit the toggles for “Also talk about” and “Top 10”
Here are some of the frequently mentioned keywords on the top-ranking pages for “boiler repair london” and what they likely infer:
“gas safe” – Searchers probably want an engineer who’s on the Gas Safe Register, the official gas safety body in the U.K.
“greater london” – Searchers probably want to know whether the business supplies this service in their area.
“gas boiler” – Searchers probably want to know whether the business can repair their type of boiler.
“emergency call” – Searchers probably want to know whether the business does emergency callouts.
It would be worth mentioning these things on your page.
Google Business Manager, formerly Google My Business, is how you manage your Google Business Profile. Signing up for it is completely free and is something every local business owner should use.
Google Search Console is a free tool for monitoring your website’s search performance. It tells you how much search traffic you’re getting, where it’s going, and what keywords it’s coming from.
Rank Tracker lets you track up to 10,000 keyword rankings for “regular” organic search by country, state, city, and even ZIP/postal code.
Link Intersect tool lets you find websites that link to multiple competitors. This is useful for finding relevant local and industry-specific citations.
Grid My Business shows map pack ranking positions for a keyword in the area around your business. It’s freemium and is useful for understanding if and where local searchers are likely to see your business.
Yext is a tool for syncing and managing business information across multiple listings. It’s useful for keeping citations consistent, although you can do this manually.
Google Keyword Planner is a free keyword research tool from Google. It’s a useful source of search volume ranges at the local level.
