For businesses large and small across all market sectors, a Google Business Profile that’s optimised to rank in the local map search results has become an essential online marketing tool. When Google’s ‘map pack’ was first launched, these map rankings were mostly for walk-in businesses like restaurants and hairdressers, or services covering a wide local area like plumbers and locksmiths – but that has changed.
Now, pretty much any product or service that is the subject of a local search – either by the addition of a location like ‘manchester’ to the query, or searched for on a device whose location is known, like a mobile – is likely to display map listings in the result. This means that businesses need to not only have a Google Business Profile, but also one that can rank in these map results, if they want these searches to find them.
Google‘s figures show that:
- a complete Google Business Profile on Google Search and Maps means searchers are nearly three times as likely to think your business is reputable
- a complete Google Business Profile means searches are 50% more likely to purchase from a business, and 70% more likely to visit them
So with a complete business profile vital for converting searchers into customers, and the right local optimisation crucial to ensure that profile ranks and is found in the first place, it’s clear that an understanding of how to create and effectively opitimise a Google Business Profile is more important than ever.
It’s this need that has lead one of the leading Local SEO specialists, Grapefruit Digital, to expand their presence in the North of England, to be better placed to provide the expert Google Business Profile and locally-focused optimisation more and more businesses are demanding.
Grapefruit Digital are specialists in Search Engine Optimisation. Unlike other agencies who offer a variety of services across Social Media and paid advertising, SEO is all they do – with their expertise in Local SEO having helped a wide variety of businesses achieve the map rankings that can drive up to 50% more organic traffic from the search results.
This knowledge of how to optimise Google Business Profiles to appear in the map results benefits from the same focus of Grapefruit’s wider approach to SEO – making sure it delivers a return on the investment and grows the client’s business. Map rankings are just vanity if they don’t deliver more phone calls and contacts from potential customers, which is why Grapefruit are looking to offer the potential of their proven Local SEO services to more businesses across the North.
With new offices in York, Leeds, and Manchester, Grapefruit are now better able to provide the Local SEO services businesses in these major northern cities need to grow their online presence.
Recent data shows that 98% of consumers used the Internet to find information on local businesses, and with 46% of searches on Google having some kind of local intent, and 93% of these local intent searches showing a Google ‘map pack’, it quickly becomes obvious the potential better local SEO and Google Business Profile optimisation offers businesses – and why Local SEO services like those provide by Grapefruit Digital could represent the best investment in online marketing. For more details, visit their website.
