Two For One: Optimizing Your Website for Google Maps & Search
Before getting too deep, let’s first take a look at what we’re optimizing for.
Since there are two algorithms here (Google Search and Google Maps), then what’s the best approach?
This is where keyword research and targeting come into play. Simply put, if you target keywords and optimize for customers—then you will be naturally optimizing for both Google Search & Maps.
I call this the “two for one” (three for one if you add AI/LLM Search). Meaning, you optimize once, but it has maximum impact on both search algorithms.
Search Engine Rankings Review
Briefly, let’s look at what each search engine looks for. You can read more in-depth about these local SEO rankings factors here.
Google Maps Ranking Factors:
- City keywords in headers
- Service keywords in headers
- Keywords in page titles
- Optimized meta data
- A GBP embed map
- Your business address listed
- Mobile-friendly design
- Schema present
- SSL secure page
- Page indexing
Google Search Ranking Factors:
- Targeted city and service pages
- Optimized page titles
- Meta data with keywords
- Keyword targeted content
- Mobile-friendly site
- Valid schema
- SSL secure site
- Website Indexing
Simply put, the majority of this information is the same. That means, if you optimize your site for content that targets customer searches, you will naturally be giving both Google Maps & Google Search exactly what they are looking for.
Now, let’s go through all these elements one-by-one and dive deeper into optimizing your website for local SEO—starting with on-page SEO.
Website Optimization — On-Page SEO — Keyword Targeting
Keyword content is what drives search traffic—and on-page SEO is simply optimizing each page for a specific keyword.
When a customer searches for a product or service, Google’s job is to give the searcher the best experience—which means the best possible results.
By optimize your on-page SEO and content elements, you improve your chances of ranking on Google Search for your target keyword.
For Google Maps, the primary page you link to from your Google Business Profile (GBP) needs to be optimized. However, Google Maps will also take your website as a whole, and the content on each of those pages, as part of the ranking algorithm.
Optimization, then, is about the entire website, but on a page-by-page basis.
Choosing a Target Keyword
Local SEO starts with targeted content.
Optimization is about search terms and keywords. If you don’t have a target keyword, then what are you optimizing for?
With proper local SEO keyword research, you’ll likely have a significant list of actual customer searches to create content around.
If you haven’t, make a plan to target one keyword for each page, and then optimize each page individually for its corresponding keyword.
Avoid:
- Under-targeting—Creating content that doesn’t directly target a search.
- Over-targeting — Creating content that targets 3+ search keywords.
Each of these has their own set of negative consequences.
It’s better to rank #1 for one keyword than #10 for many.
Once you have a target keyword, these elements help you maximize rankings potential:
- Page Title
- Meta Description
- Url Slug
- Headers
- First Sentence
If all of these elements target your primary keyword, you’ll be in a strong position to rank.
Let’s go through each of these.
Page Titles
Your page title is important. This element is not visible on the page itself, but is very important to Google and potential customers.
Essentially the meta title is the HTML information Google displays on its search engine results page (SERP) in blue.
The most effective way to structure your page title is:
Keyword | Benefit | Brand
Here’s how to do this:
- Start by putting your exact target keyword at the front.
- Add an important benefit—something that helps a customer take action.
- If you have room at the end, you can add your brand name as well.
Keep the length between 50-60 characters to stay within the recommended length.
All of this information will help maximize your Google rankings for that specific keyword, while appealing to potential customers reading through the SERPs.
Meta Description
The meta description is another helpful and important targeting mechanism.
However, Google often rewrites these meta descriptions to improve your click-through-rate (CTR)—so no need to overthink it.
Start with a strong action word like, “Discover, Learn, etc” include your target keyword, and then add a call to action like “learn more, call now, etc.”.
Make sure the length is between 70-155 characters, and you’re done.
URL Slug
Your URL slug is the next important step for targeting your specific search.
URL slugs are the editable portion of the page address that comes after yourdomain.com/
If you want to target “las vegas plumbing repair” my URL slug would be /las-vegas-plumbing-repair/
And would exist at yourdomain.com/las-vegas-plumbing-repair/
There are many different ways to do this:
- Raw Slug: /las-vegas-plumbing-repair/
- City Parent: /las-vegas/plumbing-repair/
- Services Parent: /services/plumbing-repair-las-vegas-nv/
And more. What matters most is having the keywords, and if possible the exact keyword phrase, in your URL slug.
Headers
Headers are extremely important to your website, and communicating to Google what your pages are about.
You want to have headers that tell a story.
I like to imaging the site without any text, and all Google can see is the headers. What does that story say?
This also means keeping out information that doesn’t help promote your business products or services.
The best way to do this is to think of each page like its own chapter book, with the following elements:
- H1: Book Title — There should only be one H1 tag on your page, at the top, and prominently displayed. This should target your primary search.
- H2: Chapters — These help break up the page, and call out specific content elements. These can be used to target your primary or variations of your primary search.
- H3-H6: Subchapters — This can continue down as far as you need as long as the structure remains in-tact. These can be used to add value and support your primary keyword.
As long as you have proper targeting for your H1 and H2s, and maintain a logical structure, there are no other hard rules.
Personally, I avoid making headers out of elements that don’t add direct value to my business offering—elements like call-to-action buttons, footer elements, about us, and other items that don’t contain important keywords.
The above are the most important
First Sentence
The last important on-page element for targeting a keyword is the first sentence on the page.
If you notice on these local SEO guide articles, every one of them contains the primary target keyword in the first sentence.
That’s because it works! And not only for Google.
The reason it works is because it works for customers.
If you go to buy a “Vintage 1990 Magic Johnson Hoops Basketball Card #157” and:
- Page Title: Buy Vintage 1990 Magic Johnson Hoops Basketball Card #157
- Meta Description: Buy Vintage 1990 Magic Johnson Hoops Basketball Card #157
- Slug: Buy Vintage 1990 Magic Johnson Hoops Basketball Card #157
- H1: Buy Vintage 1990 Magic Johnson Hoops Basketball Card #157
- First Sentence: Buy Vintage 1990 Magic Johnson Hoops Basketball Card #157
You’re going to be pretty sure the page refers to that exact card—and buying that exact card.
People don’t like to get tricked or be confused—it goes for questions, services, products…you name it. Because people hate spending any amount of time looking for something that doesn’t answer their question or solve their problem.
Targeting is simply making sure people know they are in the right place.
Website Optimization — On-Page SEO — Additional Elements
Now that you’re targeting each keyword properly, there are a few more on-page SEO elements that will help improve rankings.
Internal Linking
Google operates on what’s called “Pagerank.” It’s the original idea that controls how search operates.
Think of it like a pipe with flowing water. Backlinks to a page are the water. Internal links are your way of sending that “authority” to other pages on your website.
As you build backlinks from other websites to your pages, the “authority” from those backlinks can be transfer to other pages on your site through internal linking.
Each internal link on the page reduces the authority sent to those pages. A page with 10 internal links will send 1/10 to each page, and a page with 5 internal links will send 1/5 to each page.
These internal links also contain anchor text—the text you use in the link itself. This can help give Google more context about your pages, and help you rank for primary and secondary terms on Google Search.
Here are a few tips:
- Internal link often, 5-10 outbound links is best on each page
- Link from important text areas in the body of your pages
- Vary the anchor text for each link to broaden keywords and terms your page ranks for
- Vary the anchor text when linking to your home page as well
- Link to more important pages more often
- Choose the links placed on your high authority pages carefully to boost important pages
- Each page should have a minimum of 3-5 inbound links
Internal linking helps utilize the full potential of your website and increases your ability to rank for customer searches.
Cities/Service Pages
For local SEO, city/service pages are key to ranking on Google Maps and Google Search.
If you have a strong local SEO website plan and silo structure laid out from the beginning, then you’ll be taking care of this naturally.
Put simply, you want to make sure you have dedicated pages that show the services you offer, and the cities you offer those services in.
You can use these pages to target specific Google SERPs keywords your potential customers make, while also showing Google Maps the services and cities you operate in.
It’s a win-win.
GBP Map Embed & Address
Lastly, embedding your Google Maps listing on the associated GBP landing page, or in the footer if you only have 1-2 locations, helps Google trust that your website and GBP are the same business.
Adding your address on the associated landing page, or in your footer, also helps add trust to Google Maps, and has been shown to increase Maps rankings.
This is easy to do:
- Go to maps.google.com
- Find your business
- Click “Share”
- “Embed a map”
Then copy the code and paste it into your site in the location you want.
All of these on-page SEO strategies will help you maximize your business potential, and make sure you get the most benefit from building backlinks for local SEO and getting high quality reviews on your Google Business Profile.
With that, let’s now look at the technical SEO optimization tasks to improve your local businesses ability to rank.
Website Optimization — Technical SEO
While the content of your site is important, technical aspects of your website are important to optimize as well.
Many of the previous elements—titles, header structure, GBP embed—may be considered on-page and technical SEO elements, but I won’t mention those again.
Let’s go through the remaining technical SEO elements that matter for local businesses.
Website Speed
Although many SEOs and developers want you to think website speed is a major factor…it really isn’t.
The rule here is this: Your website speed matters to customers more than Google.
If your site is so slow that potential customers leave before loading (over 3 seconds of loading time), this is a problem that hurts your business and SEO.
When a potential customer leaves your site immediately after clicking on your Google listing, this is called a “bounce.”
Accumulate enough of these, and this high bounce rate tells Google customers aren’t interested.
Google doesn’t know if the page isn’t loading, or if customers are simply seeing a business that doesn’t match up to what they are searching for.
Either way, this can have a strong negative impact.
You can use a tool like Pingdom to quickly test your site speed for free.
Anything under 3-4 seconds is fine. Any more than that and you’ll start seeing a negative customer, and SEO, impact.
Mobile-Friendly
Over 50% of your website visitors, and sometimes even closer to 75%, are coming from mobile phones. It’s absolutely a must that your site be mobile-friendly.
Most websites today are “responsive”, another word for mobile-friendly—and testing this on your phone is easy.
However, you can also check to see if your website is responsive from your desktop browser.
Here’s how:
- To to the site you want to test.
- Right click
- “Inspect”
- Click the “Toggle device” icon (pictured below)
That will let you see your website as if you were on a mobile device—and make sure you don’t have any responsiveness issues that are hurting your customers and their ability to take important actions from their mobile devices.
SSL Security
SSL stands for “Secure Sockets Layer” which simply means, your site is encrypted and keeps users personal information safe.
This is pretty standard for websites today, and easy to test.
Go to your website, and copy the URL.
Then paste it anywhere.
If the address starts with “https”, and includes the “s”, then you are good!
However, if the site is “http://” at the top near the address you will likely see, “Not secure.”
If that’s the case, then you need to have your SSL certificate set up or updated.
This can be done easily, and often for free, on most hosting platforms.
Schema
Schema is another simple but effective addition to your local businesses technical SEO.
Simply put, schema is code—JSON code—that tells Google about your business, and helps confirm or “double-check” that the information is correct.
Here are the primary pieces of information that go into schema for local SEO.
- Business Name
- Cover Photo URL
- Logo URL
- Business Type
- Address
- Phone Number
- Domain URL
- Reviews (Page Specific)
- GEO Coordinates
- GBP Link
- Hours
- Pricing
There are many different types of schema, and many different options as well. But what matters for local SEO is called “LocalBusiness” schema.
Each location landing page will have it’s own “LocalBusiness” schema with corresponding address and information listed.
If you have multiple locations, then your home page will likely contain “Organization” schema—otherwise a home page that is attached directly to a GBP location will use “LocalBusiness” or a variant.
LocalBusiness Schema Options
There are over 80 subcategories of the LocalBusiness schema which includes:
- LocalBusiness
- Healthandbeautybusiness
- Automotivebusiness
- Foodestablishment
- HomeAndConstructionBusiness
If you’re business fits into a subcategory, then you will use that in place of LocalBusiness. If not, then the LocalBusiness schema category will work just fine.
Don’t worry about searching for this information, Ai tools can do this entire schema for you very easily.
Using AI to Create LocalBusiness Schema
You’ll want to place schema on each GBP landing page.
Quick note: If you are using Google Tag Manager, I have found that the schema will not load properly from there. If it’s not working, it’s best to hard-code this directly into your website header or through a plugin.
Schema goes in the header of your website. You can use a plugin or have a developer add this if you can’t do it yourself.
Gather all the exact information for your business (listed above)—you don’t want to make any mistakes here.
For geo-coordinates, you can right-click your business on Google Maps, and then click the coordinates at the top. This will copy the location for you to paste in.
Here’s the steps to create your LocalBusiness schema:
- Open ChatGPT or another Ai tool
- Tell it you want to create LocalBusiness schema
- Ask it which LocalBusiness category best fits your business
- Put in all your business information
- Instruct the Ai to create a JSON schema and include the full script code
- Copy the full script code from the Ai
- Go to https://validator.schema.org
- Choose “Code snippet”
- Paste in your code
- Screenshot any warnings
- Paste screenshots back into the Ai tool to fix errors
- Continue until there are no validation errors
- Read through the script and double check all the business information
- Make sure the Ai didn’t add any information you didn’t give it
- Paste the valid code into the header of the corresponding page
That’s it! It may sound like a lot of steps but it’s really pretty simple. You just need to make sure to double-check the Ai because it will make up pieces of information if it doesn’t have it.
Once you paste it into your site, you can go through the validator one last time, but paste in the page URL instead.
You should see a LocalBusiness, or the category you chose, validated and live on the site.
Website Indexing
Lastly, I want to mention website indexing.
Website indexing simply means Google is aware of your website, and is including it in their search results.
If your site is not indexed—or important pages aren’t indexed—this means they will not show up in Google Search and could signal a bigger problem.
You can easily check if your site is indexed on Google by doing the following:
- Visit Google.com
- Enter in the search: site:yourdomain.com
- Click the search button
This will show you all the pages on your website that Google has indexed.
If nothing shows up, that means your website is not currently indexed.
You can check indexing on your website, or specific pages, with Google Search Console (GSC).
Adding Your Website to Google Search Console (GSC)
Google Search Console (GSC) is an important tool for monitoring website performance, indexing, and other potential issues.
It’s pretty easy to set up:
- Navigate to search.google.com/search-console/
- Go through the steps to verify your domain
- Add your sitemap in the “Sitemaps” section
If you don’t have as sitemap, a plugin like Yoast will create one for you, or talk to your developer.
What’s important here is that you’re site is indexed and working properly. If it’s not, then here are some next steps to take to address those indexing issues.
Otherwise, for most businesses, your pages are likely indexed and GSC will offer tools to monitor and improve performance.
Wrapping Up Website Optimization
Optimizing your website is important. There are a lot of steps, but none of these should be too technical or difficult.
Also, the nice part about this process is that, once it’s done properly, you won’t need to do them again.
With a little monitoring and some occasional touch-up work, you’re website will be in the optimal position to rank your local business on all of the important search platforms.
With that, our section on optimization is wrapped up, and we move to content—which starts with Google Business Profile management tasks and content creation.