How to rank higher on Google Maps

Twelve steps, in order

1. Claim and verify your profileAn unverified profile cannot be managed and rarely ranks.
2. Choose the right primary categoryIt should describe what the business is, as specifically as Google allows. This has more influence than anything else on the profile.
3. Add secondary categories that are trueOther things you genuinely do. Not everything you could conceivably do.
4. Use your real business nameExactly as on your sign and your paperwork. No towns, no services added.
5. Set your address or service area correctlyA staffed address customers can visit, or the areas you travel to if you do not serve people at your premises.
6. Keep your hours accurateIncluding bank holidays. Wrong hours lose customers and attract complaints.
7. List every serviceIn customers’ words. Each one is another search you can match.
8. Add real photographs, regularlyThe premises, the team, the work. Customers decide with their eyes.
9. Ask for reviews, steadilyA few every month beats fifty in a week.
10. Reply to every reviewBriefly and personally. Future customers read the replies.
11. Link to the right page of your websiteA page that matches the profile: same name, same address, same services.
12. Make your details consistent everywhereDirectories, social profiles and your own site should all agree.

Google’s own advice is in its guide to improving your local ranking.

What you cannot change

Distance. A search made in Acomb will favour businesses in Acomb, however good a competitor in Haxby may be. Two people a few miles apart see different maps for the same search.

This is why checking your own ranking from your own office is misleading: you are seeing the result for someone standing where you are. It is also why the realistic aim is to lead the map across the area around you, and to reach further through the ordinary results with good local pages.

Why you might not appear at all

• The profile is not verified, or verification was never finished.
• It has been suspended. See what to do about a suspended profile.
• There is a duplicate. Two profiles for one business confuse Google and split the reviews.
• The category is wrong. You are being matched to the wrong searches.
• You are too far away from where the search was made.
• The profile is new. Give it a few weeks and some reviews.

How to check your position honestly

Search from different places, not just your desk: ask a customer across town what they see, or change the location in the search. Better still, use the figures in your profile, how many people found you, called and asked for directions, which measure what actually matters.