Even if small businesses are just starting their year, especially in their practice of marketing, Google’s organizational structure for local search strategies still tend to emphasize its future conversations about local search while disregarding its former conversations.

While it might feel as if local SEO snuck in the back door, studies show that the growing importance of your Google My Business (GMB) page and local search has been making power moves right under our noses to become one of the most powerful drivers of business traffic for SMB’s. In 2018, the Think With Google page, which shares consumer insights and provides marketers with guidance and strategy, reported that it had tracked a nearly 900% increase in mobile searches using the “near me today/tonight” from 2016 to 2018. The trend in local searches continued, with a 2019 study finding that 46% of all Google searches are looking for local information.
With the Local 3 Pack box appearing in the middle of reading local business details, this was nicely timed with the roll out of the major search algorithm update. The Local 3 Package was obviously made to spin sales using its contributors, Triad Triad Triad Triad, who popped up on local pages for US-local search query services businesses.

How We Can Help Boost Your GMB Map Pack Visibility in London

Our SEO Agency has been helping our London-based clientele improve their local SEO for years, and today we wanted to share some of our insight into our success. We hope that you’ll find value in our discussion below of how the Local Pack works, trends, and insights to improve your chances to be listed in the 3 Pack for your industry locally, including how to tag and manage your GMB listing, and finally how our team can help you accomplish your SEO Services.

What is Google Local Pack

Google has taken things to the next level in the microburst game by revolutionizing local listings with competing locations like Maps, whether it be Local 3 Pack or ten searches for a single entity. All three avenues will likely continue changing local SEO for website traffic with all their current and future partnerships with major tech companies.

If you know even a little bit about search engine user behavior, you know how influential this local search placement can be to your web traffic. Statistics, on the other hand, indicate that Local 3′s popularity serves as clues into how associated solutions may be distributed by Google, along with their respective locations associated of their providers.

Previous iterations of this type of mapping of the top results didn’t always appear when a user performed a search, but when the 3 Pack was launched, researchers found that it showed up at the top of search results an incredible 93% of the time. Due to the configuration and placement of the 3 Pack, this means that 93% of the time, users only see the 3 Pack unless they scroll. The impact this has had on user on-page behavior has been massive. Moz has an amazing breakdown using heat-mapping to show user behaviors in different configurations of this page that shows 44% of users click within the Local Pack.

Trends Marketers Are Seeing Around the Local 3 Pack

One thing that marketers respect is the value that our colleagues bring to the table. Without the research and reporting being performed throughout the year to provide their peers with insight into the massively complicated world of SEO, we couldn’t provide that valuable insight to our clients. There are few massive players in the marketing world that we all turn to fairly regularly – HubSpot, Moz, SEMRush to name a few of the big players. But there’s also value that comes out of the summits and events held yearly, and one of those that we found especially useful for this discussion was a session held by Darren Shaw during the September 2020 Whitespark Local Search Summit. In Darren’s presentation, he presented the results of the latest Local Search Ranking Factors survey, a poll created 10 years ago by David Mihm and last published in 2018 on Moz.

In the latest Local Search Ranking Factors survey, Shaw found that SEO professionals had a fairly strong grasp on google maps ranking factors, which are the main drivers of ranking in the Local 3 Pack.

IN TERMS OF RANKING ON GOOGLE MAP PACK, THE SURVEY REVEALED THE FOLLOWING 3 RANKING FACTORS HAD THE MOST INFLUENCE:

• Primary Category: The structure and format of your Google My Business page, with Primary Category impacting your ranking the most within the Local 3 Pack. Keyword Usage in your GMB Title is the second most influential factor in our in-Pack ranking. 
• Proximity: How close your business is to the user searching will impact the Map Pack results.
• Reviews: The review count and the number of positive reviews are highly important in gaining the trust of Google Maps users. The sentiment and reviews on your GMB listing carry a lot of weight in determining your ranking on the Google Map Pack.

Track Inbound Web Traffic from Your GMB to Gauge Impact

Your journey to the Local 3 Pack isn’t going to be instantaneous after you set up and format your Google My Business page. In your journey to establishing and improving your GMB to help your chances for placement into the Local 3 Pack listing, you must track the impact on your inbound traffic due to changes and improvements you make.

Most effective method of tracking paid listings is to embed UTM anchor code within the listing. UTM, or urchin tracking for specific parameters, are methods used in formatting a URL to track the effectiveness of various marketing campaigns. In this case, the UTM would be a snippet of code added to the end of your Gmberg’s URL as a Developer Tools tool that you could create with Google’s free ad builder tool. Once built, you could then list that URL in your GMB’s “Website” field. Tracking clicks on that specific iteration of your URL can then be accomplished through Google’s Search Console.

Get in Touch With One of London’s Leading Marketing Teams at Finsbury Media
No need to fight alone. There is no bigger challenge than London SEO for businesses that are not native to the city. Finsbury Media makes it easier by solving issues that technical search engine optimization cannot.