When a user does a search, the search engines rely on signals such as local content, social profile pages, links, and citations to provide the most relevant local results to the user. To rank higher on the Google 3-pack, you need to pay attention to a lot of things. Let’s simplify the process with a local rank tracking tool.
You will learn:
- Know about local SEO and Google 3-Pack
- Tips to get higher on Google 3-Pack
- A local rank tracking tool – Tool that helps you to monitor your ranking.
Since local businesses focus on driving in customers from the nearby area, it is beneficial for them to practice local SEO. When users search for a local business, search results will be displayed based on relevant metrics that help produce the best results that match the user’s intent.
So, in this article, you will learn these metrics and how you can optimize for them. I will also introduce a local rank tracking tool to help you keep track of your local SEO.
Local SEO and Google 3-pack
What are these?
As the name suggests, local SEO focuses on attracting customers to smaller localities such as those in a particular town or city. It’s usually practiced by local businesses who generally aim to reach a specific audience to drive footfall to their physical location or develop business within a service area.
When you conduct a search for a local business, Google generates a list of potential businesses that fit your search query. The first things you’ll see are the three Google My Business listings.
By doing good local SEO, your business will be shown to potential customers who can then use your physical address and navigate to your physical location. Thus, if you want to drive in more leads for your business, you need to work on getting into the local SEO 3-pack.
The Google 3-Pack is what Google uses to display the top three results for local SERP results. It uses the user’s location to make sure the results are geographically relevant. For instance, if a user searched “restaurants near me” the Google 3-Pack would display three restaurants near the user’s current location.
You cannot rank for the Google 3-Pack anywhere because businesses that appear on the Google 3-Pack are location-dependent. But you can always strive to squeeze your business into the 3-Pack in your neighborhood.
The importance of the Google 3-pack:
The three-pack displays more information about a company, such as business hours, business description, business address, and much more. Appearing in Google’s 3-Pack is a great deal. According to Report Garden, Google’s 3-pack goes to the top of 93% of queries with regional intention. If you are already using local SEO, then you can test how your business is doing online.
One more truth is that roughly 56% of local businesses haven’t claimed their Google My Business listing. So, you can definitely know your ranking first, then optimize your profile to skyrocket before those latecomers.
4 Tips to get onto Google 3-Pack
#1. Get positive reviews for your business:
Do you know that reviews signals account for 15% of the local SEO pack ranking? Reviews drive traffic for local businesses because people look for reviews to check if it is worth visiting.
From deciding which products or services they should buy to what they should eat and travel, reviews have become an integral part of a business on the internet. That means, managing your online reputation is more important than ever.
Let’s put yourself as a point of view of a customer. When you crave some bread, which bakery would you visit? Bakery with higher users’ ratings, right?
How to get more reviews:
- Ask for a review after closing a sale: After a purchase, if your customer seems satisfied, you can reach out and ask for an honest review in return for a coupon code or discount for their next visit.
- Share your top reviews through social channels: Another way to get more online reviews is to share the glowing reviews you’ve already received. When others see that people are leaving you great reviews, they’ll be more influenced to review your service.
- Respond to all reviews as soon as possible: Responding to every review on time is very crucial. When people see that you respond to every review, good or bad, it gives the impression that the business truly cares about consumer sentiment. Thus people get the motivation to review a service or product.
#2. Fill out your NAP citations:
Citation happens when someone mentions your business online. Usually, these citations display your business name, address, and phone number, which is called NAP. If you can build your NAP citation correctly, you’ll be benefiting a lot.
You need to make sure all these citations are correct so users are not misled. Most importantly, make sure your hours of operation are correct.
If your citations show wrong information, you’ll be losing your potential customers. Your NAP citations could be inconsistent in many ways. E.g.,
- Changing business address and not updating previously built citations, directory listings, etc.
- Having a different store address to the company registered address and using both online.
- Using different phone numbers for attribution tracking purposes.
In short, you need to make sure your existing citations are correct and consistent.
#3. Do local link building to raise your ranking:
A backlink is always crucial for any SEO. As a local business, try to earn locally-relevant links. These are links from other local businesses that drive traffic back to your business’s website. It helps the audience to search for your website easier.
Apart from these strategies, you can also follow the below-mentioned ways to get backlinks.
- Offer services, sponsorships, scholarships, or even an office space to host events.
- Participate in or spearhead community events.
- Network with local bloggers and other small businesses in your area.
- Give interviews related to your local business if there is any chance available.
#4. Have a mobile-friendly website:
Google started favoring sites that are optimized for faster mobile speeds, even for desktop searches. Mobile responsiveness matters as it’s a ranking factor for Google.
If you’re not sure about your own site’s mobile readiness, use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly yet, you should consider a website re-design or updating your WordPress theme.
Local searches are now mostly done on smartphones or tablets. Naturally, this has led Google to prioritize responsive and mobile-friendly sites in rankings.
Use a local rank tracking tool to monitor your position
In order to optimize your local SEO, you must first know your current ranking. This can be done manually; however, it will consume a lot of time, and risk missing data. A local rank tracking tool can help you save time and provide accurate data about your ranking in SERPs. Grid My Business is my favorite tool that I want to introduce.
Grid My Business is a relatively new local SEO tool specializing in monitoring search visibility while providing valuable insights to its users. In just one click away, you can instantly obtain important information about your local business, such as real-time local rankings and local competitors, based on the search query you aim to rank.
You can also use Grid My Business to perform a bulk scan for more than one search query. It practically saves you a lot of time. To perform a bulk scan, click on the menu and select “Bulk Scan”.
You can just add your location, search queries, and the grid parameters that you want to view your results. Once you have listed all the information that is required, click on “Run Scan”. You will be asked to confirm the information again before the scan runs.
If you want to make any amendments, you can click on “back to edit”. If there are no other changes required, click on “Confirm Run Scan”.
How to use Grid My Business to monitor your rankings
With just 3 simple steps, you can know your rankings on the specific location and keyword.
Step 1 – Insert Your Business Location & Search Query
Enter business location at the field given. A list of relevant results will appear as suggestions. Select the location that best matches your business location.
After that, add the search query that is relevant to your business. Now, remember, you have already optimized your website and Google My Business listing for localized keywords. So try to use a local search query such as “cocktails near me”.
Step 2 – Select Your Grid Parameters
The grid is one of the most important features in Grid My Business (it’s even in the name!). This determines the scope and coverage you want to view your results in. There are two items to select here.
The first is grid size. This is pretty straightforward; you pick the size of the grid you want to view your results in. In Grid My Business, we have seven grid sizes available:
Next, select a grid radius. The grid radius is the radius between each grid point. You can choose between the imperial (miles) or the metrics system (kilometers).
The scanning radius between each grid point increases at an interval of 0.1. The maximum radius you can select in Grid My Business is 100 (both miles and kilometers).
Step 3 – View Your Scan Results
Once you have everything all set up, click on the “Run Scan” button to run your scan. Do note that it may take some time for the results to load. You can wait for the results to load or you can also choose to run a new scan with a different search query and location.
Once your scan result has loaded, you will see a grid that looks something like this. The numbers on each grid point indicate your local ranking position for the search query that you have added. From here, you can easily identify opportunities to optimize search queries with local intent.
When you click on any grid point, you will see a maximum of 20 business listings on the right. The listings are organized based on their current local rankings on Google 3-pack.
How to use Grid My Business to adjust to your competitors’ position changes
With Grid My Business, you can keep track of business listings that appear in the local 3-pack and react quickly to any position changes.
Look at what changes they have made to their site:
- Did they increase the number of backlinks?
- Did they update their Google My Business listing?
- Did they redesign their website?
When you identify the tactics and strategies your local competitors used to compete with you in the local SERP, you can make adjustments of your own to ensure you don’t fall off the results.
TL;DR
You can never underestimate the impact of local SEO on your business. Your business can benefit significantly from a boosted local presence, and appearing on the Google 3-Pack will help you attract more customers and improve revenue generation.
Using a local rank tracking tool like Grid My Business to know your ranking on the SERPs is a crucial part of local SEO. With the insights coming from the tool you can then build your content marketing strategy to rank higher.
