Optimising for Local pack: 8 Actionable Tips To Improve Your Rankings

As a local business owner, your SEO pack will look slightly different than online businesses and websites. 

Your focus is to improve the visibility of your brick-and-mortar store and increase store visits. And one of the ways to do that is to optimise your local SEO. 

More specifically, local pack SEO, which significantly improves your business visibility online and locally. 

What is local pack SEO and how can you improve your ranking for the same? 

Let’s find out. 

What is Local Pack and Why is Local Pack SEO Important?

The local pack or the Google 3-pack is the top three local business listings on Google’s search engine pages. Various factors determine these rankings and they depend greatly on the business location, search query, and the user’s proximity to the local business’s location. 

The search results are specially curated for the user’s search query and it showcases results below paid ads and above organic search results. For example, say you searched for “Dentists in Melbourne,” and you’ll get the top three listings and clinics to visit. 

For search engine users, the local pack helps them get optimised results of the best business in their nearby area. Of those users who search locally, 44% of users click on the local pack search results. Getting a high volume of traffic has higher chances of transiting to a high traffic, user inquiries, store visits, and increased revenue. Some of the other reasons why local pack SEO is important are

Increased Visibility: A major chunk of the audience who search for local search queries are clicking on the local pack search results. Increased visibility means more clicks, brand awareness, and store visits. 

Influence Buying Decisions: People who discover your small business in the local pack are more likely to make a direct purchase shortly after. Google decides on the local pack results based on their location, credibility, and trustworthiness. For users, that already makes it a lot easier to trust the business and consider making a purchase. 

Greater Control of your Local Reputation: Apart from sourcing local business information, users also use local search results to check business ratings and reviews. A decent rating above 4.0 further builds trust amongst first-time users who discover your business in the local pack. Businesses with no reviews or poor ratings are unlikely to get the same level of traction. 

Qualified Traffic to your Website: The traffic coming to your website from local searches is already highly qualified considering the search intent matches the search query. Local search queries are also those that are coming from the users at the bottom of the funnel who are ready to convert. They’re directly looking to buy a service or a product and the links, contact information, and address allows them to quickly connect with you. 

How Google Ranks Sites in Local 3-Pack

Out of hundreds of businesses in a vicinity, how does Google decide which three will make it in the local pack? 

Google considers three primary factors in choosing the local pack businesses. These are:

Relevance: Does the business match the search intent of the user? 

Distance: Is the business within the vicinity of the user? The closer the business is, the better chance of it appearing in the local pack. 

Trustworthiness: Is the business well-received by its previous customers? Is it well-rated? Reviewed? Google considers these factors when evaluating how prominent your brand is. 

To land on the local pack, you need to embrace local pack SEO practices. Listed below are some tips you can consider. 

Tip to Improve Your Local Pack SEO

1. Create a Google Business profile 

Creating a Google Business profile is the most important and basic step you can take to build your online presence as a local business. It is a free tool provided by Google where you can add your business data. 

Google leverages this data such as your opening and closing hours, reviews, and accurate location on maps to display the right information to the user. Google Business profiles provide the following details to the users in the local pack:

• Business Information
• Directions and Google Maps
• Reviews and overall rating
• FAQs and their answers
• Hours of operation and busy times
• Service or product price range 
• Photos

When optimising for a Google Business profile, ensure you fill out all the required fields such as photos, service lines, product categories, descriptions, items, operating hours and days, etc. High-quality content can be an added advantage and increase user engagement with your listing. 

What a lot of businesses miss is adding relevant categories. For local pack SEO, this can help Google match your business to the search query. Google is adding new categories so businesses can be as specific as they can and have a higher chance of appearing on the right search results.

2. Optimise your NAP

NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number. You need to add the right details across your local platforms and over your social media accounts. While this may seem like a trivial point to consider, Google places significant importance on the consistency of NAP to provide higher rankings. 

It ultimately comes down to the user experience for Google too as it wants its users to have easy and the right means to contact the business. NAP consistency helps you build customer trust as they know you’re a legitimate business with accurate contact information across all platforms. 

That’s how they are more likely to make purchases from you and encouraged to visit your store. Along with NAP, also ensure that you manage your citations. They are the mentions of your local or franchise business online. 

You can leverage the NAP listing management tool that helps you simplify your local listing optimisation. It also allows you to monitor your listings, manage reviews, and create listings on other networks. 

3. On-page Optimisation 

While optimising your Google Business Profile, you also need to optimise your website so that it amplifies your efforts for local pack SEO. 

On-page optimisation is also something Google, in general, places a lot of importance on while deciding your rankings. If you can manage to rank well organically, you are automatically improving your chances of ranking in the local pack. Some of the actions you can take to improve your on-page optimisation for local pack ranking are:

Local Keyword Integration: Do some local keyword searches in keyword research tools and look for keywords that naturally fit into your website content, meta descriptions, meta tags, and headers. The keywords need to have the name of the city or the region you’re targeting as it leads to higher chances of ranking. 

Localised Content Creation: If your motive is to improve your local visibility, your content needs to reflect that too. This involves following the vernacular tone and language in your blog posts, landing pages, articles, and topics that are relevant to your industry. 

4. Gather Reviews 

Consider reviews as the online version of word-of-mouth marketing. It is one of the most effective forms of boosting your credibility and generating quality leads from organic traffic. For example, if you’re looking for a plumbing service in Sydney and you see that the business has an average of a 2.5 to 3-star rating, you wouldn’t want to contact them even if they are closer to your location.

 Customers are willing to compromise on the location but on the quality of service, as a result of which having positive reviews and ratings is crucial for your local business. High-quality reviews can naturally result in highly competitive local search results because Google’s algorithms prioritise businesses that are deemed credible and trustworthy through reviews. 

To encourage reviews, leave a comment or a custom review link on your websites, Google Business profiles and local citations where it is easy for customers to leave a rating. If you’re not able to garner reviews, provide some perks or benefits in exchange for an honest review — good or bad. Always monitor and respond to your reviews and add first-party reviews to your website. 

5. Get Local Backlinks

Backlinks play a big role in your overall online presence which boosts your rankings. For a local business, the only difference is you have to connect with local publications and businesses that are more relevant to your audience. Since we established that building authority is crucial for local pack SEO, backlinks can help you with just that. Getting high-quality links from reputable sources with good content can help you boost your authority and trust. 

To get local backlinks, get in touch with other businesses that are related to yours. For example, if you’re a real estate agent, you can target property magazines, real estate companies, home service companies, etc. Contact local influencers and try to get mentions from them. You can also get local bloggers and opt for a collaboration post/sponsored post. 

Leverage a backlink monitoring tool that helps you keep track of which links are live and are contributing to your website traffic. 

6. Create Relevant Content 

When you’re building a local presence, you cannot have generic content. Just like how we discussed having local keyword integration in on-page optimisation, you need to consider adding local elements to your content. 

Create content that resonates with your audience. For example, consider writing location-specific articles that your target audience finds valuable. As a local restaurant, you can write about the top cuisines in your area and which restaurants are serving the best local dishes, etc. It also provides avenues for natural keyword integration rather than forcing it into the content for SEO purposes. 

The hyper-localised content improves visibility to customers in your vicinity. Ensure that you also add the headings, metadata, and image alt text, to your content. You can leverage the Google Posts feature to increase awareness of local events and updates about your business. If you’re active on your Google Business profile and add content through your posts, it will improve your local pack SEO. 

7. Optimise for Voice & Mobile Search 

Most of the voice search queries are those where the user is either asking for directions or looking for a local business nearby. Users are constantly asking questions like “Grocery shop near me” or “Top restaurants in CBD Sydney”. If you can identify and integrate these keywords into your website, you are ensuring a higher chance of ranking in the local pack search results. 

At the same time, users are also more mobile, where they’re searching for business while in transit, or outside. So it is likely all these queries are coming from their phones. 

This makes it important for you to optimise for voice search and mobile search. 

For voice search, look into your analytical tool and internal search metrics to see what queries users are asking about your business. You can also check Google’s People Also Ask (PPA) feature. 

Similarly, for optimising your local business for mobile, ensure that you have high-quality images in your Google Business profile and websites, quick loading times, and mobile-optimised content. 

Google uses mobile-first indexing and it primarily crawls the mobile version of your website for indexing and crawling. Ensure that regardless of the website platform you choose, you choose a theme that is responsive on the mobile and easily adjusts to the different screen sizes. 

8. Monitor and Analyse Performance 

Keep optimising your Google Business Profile and websites based on trends and shifts. Local pack SEO results also keep changing based on search interest and behaviour around relevant keywords and based on how strong of a Google Business profile you build. 

You also need to conduct regular analysis for changing search patterns and see how searches are trending for them. Monitor your website performance to understand how users are converting and integrate new strategies to ensure a presence in the local pack. 

Wrapping Up

Just like regular SEO, local pack SEO needs constant work to get a desired place on search results. Adhering to these tips can assure your presence and garner significant visibility that results in higher conversions and store visits. 

To employ these tactics in the best possible way, you can outsource your local pack SEO to an SEO agency like Supple. We can identify your local business needs, and your target audience, and execute the strategies that work for your business. Contact us to know more about how we can help you improve your local conversions.