5+ Tips: Dominate Google Map Pack SEO (2024 SEO)

Did you know that the top 3 results in Google Map Pack (aka Local Pack) get 48+% of local search traffic?

What’s crazier is that these results shift around a lot more than the rest of the organic search results. Although they don’t tend to shift dramatically.

You’re not going to go from bottom of the barrel to top of the pack in a few hours. But if you’re in spot 4 at noon you may find yourself in spot 1 at 3 pm or vice versa.

But that’s exactly why Google Map Pack SEO is its own special subset of SEO and requires special attention.

Whether you’re a local brick and mortar shop or looking for insights in local service area business SEO, you need to pay attention to the Google Map Pack and focus on optimizing for it.

Luckily, it just so happens we dug into the top results and are sharing our insights with you today!

Table of contents

• Google Business Profile management
• GBP images
• Business Profile updates
• Location specific website content
• Title, description, headings
• URLs
• Content
• Reviews & responses
• Testimonials on the website
• Backlinks galore
• What surprised me
• Key takeaways
• FAQs

Google Business Profile management

If we haven’t already beaten it into you yet with other articles and videos, just know that having a Google Business Profile with accurate and updated information is critical.

I won’t belabor the point here though.

What I want to focus on is the specific need for frequent activity on your profile.

GBP images

Does having a bunch of images on your GBP automatically mean you’ll jump to the top?

No.

However, all the top businesses in our research had A LOT of images of their business and their work.

And they were high-quality images of a variety of their projects, before and after, different kinds of jobs, etc.

What’s more, they had been posted over time - even if they weren’t posted within the last few months sometimes.

Business Profile updates

This was pretty analogous to what I said above regarding images.

In many cases the company posted once or twice a month. However, a few companies that stuck to the top results were posting every week and sometimes even more.

I found a few businesses that followed our recommended best practices of using UTM parameters and calls to action in their updates.

Shameless plug: If thinking of an update every week seems a little annoying to you, check out our SEO content packages that give landscapers or lawn service pros 1 full year of content for their GBP and website blog (photos not included - it’s best to get those from your work).

Lessons to take away

Even though Google wants to see a lot of content, if no one else is really adding a lot of good content you can hold onto your rankings even if you take a break adding photos, updates, and offers for a while.

You still need to make sure your business information is accurate and respond to reviews, but it does take some of the burden off of you if you’re established and not in a competitive market.

But you don’t need to post all day every day for years to get huge SEO benefits…once you’ve already gotten your foothold on the top.

Location specific content on the website

This was an interesting one.

For most of the search results there were pretty clear indications that a business (in this case a landscaping business) worked in a specific service area.

More often than not this was the only area listed, but in previous examples I’ve done - I have a video coming out for St. Paul, for example - there are several top ranking businesses that work across multiple cities and target several.

How could I tell that these businesses operated in the specific city?

Well, it’s listed in their GBP. But that’s just necessary.

Here I’m talking about their website’s information.

Title, description, headings

Whether there was a specific city page or not didn’t seem to make too much of a difference as compared to whether it was clear through titles, headings and the meta description that the area served matched my search.

Something interesting I noticed is that a few of the top results had their phone number with a local area code in their meta descriptions.

I haven’t read that this helps, but it would be another thing that confirms for Google whether you operate in a given area so it’s worth considering - even if Google doesn’t put as much stock in meta descriptions anymore.

URLs

This was another factor that helped but didn’t definitively determine whether or not you’re at the top. The third result when I searched had no mention of the city in its URLs.

However, 13 of the 31 pages on top website had the city and some form of “landscape” in their URLs.

And in the third result with a website (more on that below), the city name was in 10 URLs. This was split between 8 blog posts and 2 regular pages.

Content

Now here’s where things get crazy.

I’ve long been preaching that you should create an SEO content strategy using an SEO content calendar to help you plan and create high quality content that speaks to your audience and establishes you as an authority.

What’s more, for small, local businesses there’s not just the search traffic that is obviously directed at your service, but also ancillary search traffic for information gathering.

For example, if I’m going to see the dentist and I need to find one near me then sure - I’ll eventually search for “dentist in austin”.

But before that I’ll search for something like, “why does my tooth hurt?” or “teeth hurt when drinking cold water” or whatever else is prompting me to consider going to the dentist.

Content like that gathers up tons of additional searches for your business because Google will still take into account where the user is searching from and provide some local results.

Anyway. Here’s the insanity.

Of the top listings:

• Spot #1 had 127 blog posts
• Spot #2 didn’t have a website! (more on that later)
• Spot #3 had 30 blog posts
• Spot #4 had 207 blog posts!

So it’s clear that having that additional content makes a huge difference!

Reviews & responses

A lot of people think that you need:

1. To have hundreds of reviews to get to the top of Google
2. To score a perfect 5.0 across the board on your reviews

Well those people are wrong.

You absolutely need reviews - and the more the better generally.

However, you can rank right up there with the big guys who have over 100 reviews when you only have 20 or so.

In this example the top result in Google Map Pack had 157 reviews, but the next one only had 44 and the third had 63.

Meanwhile the 4th had over 1300 reviews!

Within the top ten one had 32 and one had 13.

So focus on getting those reviews and don’t get disheartened because you see someone else with dozens more.

Secondly, you don’t need to have all 5 star reviews. No one expects that.

For some reason the “sweet spot” of ratings seems to be between 4.2 and 4.6.

It’s good enough the people are confident in you, but not so good that potential customers or clients doubt the legitimacy of reviews.

One key commonality among all the top ranking businesses was that they responded to reviews regularly and sounded genuine/caring.

Testimonials on the website

You might think this is redundant, but I promise it’s not.

Beyond just having Google reviews the top sites without fail have their own “Testimonials” or “Reviews” page that has quotes from happy customers and clients.

It didn’t seem to matter whether or not these were pulled from Google or other sources automatically, video reviews, or if each review had its own page.

However, this may have been something that served a few purposes:

1. Added more content to the business website that Google liked
2. Provided more social proof for anyone clicking on the business, which in turn made potential clients more likely to stay on the page/contact the business. This is something Google is taking into account as user behavior becomes more and more important in search

So give a thought to adding a reviews page and starting to populate it…

Backlinks galore

Okay, this one pretty much ties it all together.

I looked at the backlink profiles for the top results and they were pretty astounding for local businesses.

When I see a local business that has a lot of blog posts I expect they’ll have a lot of links to their posts.

It’s a combination of having linkable content that naturally picks up links, and the kind of focus on SEO that tells me they likely went out of their way to acquire backlinks.

“Acquire backlinks?!” You gasp. “But isn’t that blackhat SEO???”

Well no. Not really anymore.

There are perfectly legitimate ways that SEO agencies (or businesses themselves) can go out and get backlinks.

In fact, I encourage DIY SEO-ers to reach out to small local papers, other local businesses in a similar industry but that aren’t competitors, and small online publications in order to establish relationships and exchange links.

As long as it’s relevant content there’s nothing shady about providing an expert quote to a gardening magazine if you’re a landscaper in turn for a link or guest posting on someone else’s plumbing blog if you’re a plumber.

What surprised me in this case was that so many of the links were for really large sites like:

• thespruce.com
• homesandgardens.com
• marthastewart.com

You don’t need these though. Find local online magazines in your city, county, or state that you can contribute to. Reach out to similar, non-competing businesses and offer a quote that fits into a blog post they have in exchange for a link.

Be creative.

What surprised me

My whole background is digital marketing and web development. So I’ve spent a lot of time building and optimizing websites.

That made this one kinda hurt:

You don’t necessarily need a website!

Yup. There you have it.

I said it.

And I’m blushing from shame.

But there seemed to be one business in several local searches I tried that was ranked in the top 3-5 Google Map Pack results and didn’t have a website! In more than one case there was a link to the website but it went to a dead page.

…yet that didn’t seem to affect the Map Pack rankings for that business.

That said, the vast majority of businesses that show up in the Google Map Pack do have websites and you don’t win any prizes for playing Business on hard.

So I wouldn’t recommend crossing your fingers and hoping you’re the lucky business without a website, but with a Business Profile, that stays on top.

Key takeaways

There were a lot of takeaways here. This was a really fun deep dive.

If I had to pick 3 it’d be:

1. Your GBP setup is a given, and high quality photos and updates are critical to climbing to the top
2. Have good content that is specific to your area, resonates with your audience, and is linkable. This includes mentioning the city in your URL, title, meta description, and headings
3. Get reviews & testimonials, respond to them on GBP (and other sources) and highlight them on your own site via a dedicated page

There’s a ton more you can learn though.

So don’t hesitate to check out who’s on top of your search and do some digging!

FAQs

What is Map Pack SEO?

Map Pack SEO is similar to “local SEO”, but is focused exclusively around optimizing factors that affect how well your Google Business Profile shows up in Google’s Map Pack (Local Pack). Key factors include having your services listed, photos, updates, reviews, and your timely responses to reviews. You don’t technically need a website to show in Google Map Pack, but it often helps.

Does adding a Google Map help SEO?

There are some indications that adding a Google Map to your website boosts your SEO. You can do this from your Google Business Profile by getting the code to embed on your site. First you just need to make sure that you’ve completed your Google Business Profile correctly and accurately to reflect your location and/or service area. Some SEOs also suggest that having a local phone number is also beneficial.

How to get listed on the Google Map Pack?

To get listed on Google’s Map Pack you need to create and complete your Google Business Profile. It’s free to create and requires some verification so that Google knows you represent the business. Make sure to include your services, location, hours, contact information, and add photos. Encourage customers or clients to leave reviews and make sure you respond to those reviews quickly and with professionalism.

How to do SEO for Google Maps?

If you have a strong Google Business Profile with accurate data and you’ve embedded your location from Google Maps onto your website, you’re part way there. Having your address in your website footer is also helpful. Additionally, you will want to include local schema data just to make it extra clear to search engines.