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If you're targeting users in different locations—for example, if you have a site in French that you want users in France, Canada, and Mali to read—don't use this tool to set France as a geographic target.

If your business sells another business brand’s product(s) or service(s), use only the name of the business, excluding the name of the brand being sold, which can't have a listing for this location

If your business location combines two or more brands, do not combine the brand names into a single listing. Instead, pick one brand’s name for the listing. If the brands operate independently, you may use a separate listing for each brand at this location.

Businesses with photos on their listings receive 42 percent more requests for driving directions on Google Maps and 35 percent more click-throughs to their websites than businesses that without photos, according to Google

The photo should be in focus and well-lit, and have no alterations or excessive use of filters. The image should represent reality.

First step to getting your Google My Business listing up and running is to actually conduct a Google search to ensure your business doesn’t already have a GMB listing.

just 1 in 60 local searches result in a click-through to a website

Once listings are optimized, you can focus your efforts on providing and measuring the effectiveness of value-add experiences such as BOPUS (buy online, pick up in-store), integrating local inventory levels with online search, facilitating local bookings or reservations, etc.

Review data appears in local search listings for locations with five or more reviews, but can be integrated in local pages, as well. This provides the social proof consumers crave as they’re deciding whether to proceed with your brand, or head back to the SERPs to keep looking

When this business claimed its Google My Business listing, it severely reduced the company’s sales. It turned out that once the business was verified, Google thought that the customers were located in the Chicago area. Google verified the company’s local listing via postcard, and Google began to list the business in the Google Maps listings.

for online businesses with primarily nationwide or international customers that do not buy at physical locations, it makes no sense to claim local listings.

Do you have a brick-and-mortar location(s) that shoppers visit? If so, claim your local business listings. Do you visit your customers at their location? This could be, for example, a service business, such as carpet cleaning. If so, claim your local listings. Do the search queries (keywords) from visitors to your website typically include a city name? If yes, you should claim your local listings.

Google can anchor you to the exact spot of the answer you are looking for and highlight the block of text that is most relevant to your query. This only works for some searches on Google mobile, that feature AMP content in the featured snippet block.

After you click on it, it anchors you to the section of content and highlights that content as well

filter out your AMP mobile pages and try to see if moving elements around on your web page can result in a better conversion metric for these pages.

A business with two to three locations should want a branded Knowledge Graph result to appear nationwide, and both the branded and local to appear around the regions where the business locations are

Some local businesses with one location have a strong brand presence, and Google actually has a hybrid Knowledge Graph panel result for this. It combines features of the both the brand and local panel.

According to many small businesses, they are being extorted; either they use Yelp’s advertising services, or face reputational ruin that will force their businesses to close.

We’re not saying businesses aren’t being extorted, but there isn’t currently a law that says someone has a right NOT to be extorted.” That’s hardly a vindication of Yelp’s business practices.

Yelp has lately been on a spree to buy back its outstanding stock. The buyback not only boosts the stock price, it makes Yelp’s board less vulnerable to the kind of activist investors that recently ousted infamous CEO Travis Kalanick from Uber’s board. So the prospects of forced changed happening at Yelp anytime soon are dim.

Don’t set up a review kiosk in your place of business to ask for reviews. A single IP address being shared amongst multiple reviews on a given platform can lead to those reviews being flagged and removed.

Don’t narrow your focus to a single platform. Diversity in where your business has reviews posted is insurance against reputation loss should something happen to your reviews on any one of the platforms.

When a customer is willing to share an email, follow up within a few days to ask them to write a review about their experience. Give them a choice of platforms so that they can pick their favorite.

Four symbols regularly appear as snippets within the map pack and local finder. These include Review Mentions, Website Mentions, “Sold Here” Icons, and also more recently Google Post Mentions.

Review Mentions appear in the map pack and local finder when a query matches up with a component of a GMB review published by a customer

it is useful to encourage your customers to mention the service or product they experienced when publishing a review

Sometimes, Google will display a brand KP or a local KP depending on what was searched.

keep in mind that it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to replace your local KPs with brand KPs for all searches.

Certain categories of businesses will have the option to add a link to a menu.  If you’re lucky enough to be in one of these categories, I highly recommend adding this link, as it gives Google an additional set of keywords that your business for which should be considered relevant.

Focusing too much or solely on organic will present long-term growth roadblocks as local organic real estate continues to disappear and become more volatile

A typical unified local SERP campaign will include: Optimized GMB listing

Online reputation strategy (responding to reviews is just as important as gaining new ones) Google Local Services Ads (if applicable) Geo-focused PPC strategy (see below – use PPC to supplement organic visibility) Retargeting (GDN, YouTube, social channels) Local link building (referral traffic is going to be the new DA) Aggregated reporting Citations and NAP consistency

It’s important that you check your business’s listings on as many of these high-quality directory sites as you can. Your main goal is to ensure that your company’s name, address and phone number (NAP) is correct and consistent on as many of these citation sites as possible.

The 22 local search experts sitting on our survey panel also believe that a mix of different citations, from a range of industry and niche sites, is preferential.