Using Content to Get Into the Local Map Pack
What SEO Factors Affect Your Website Placement in the Local-3 Map Pack
Relevance: How well your local Business Profile matches what someone is searching for (keyword matching)
Distance: The closer you are to a searcher (or the area they are searching) the greater the likelihood your business will appear in the local 3-pack
Prominence: Determined by the information that Google has about a business from across the web, such as links and citations, articles, directories, and most importantly, Google reviews and ratings. Your position in organic search results is also a factor
Source: Google Guidelines
How does Google determine if a search has local intent?
Search phrases that contain a geographic reference such as a city name or zip code - ex: Pressure Washing in San Diego
Search terms that contain the phrase "near me" “nearby” or something similar
Searches for services that are typically fulfilled by a local business - ex: bakery or yoga studio
How Your Organic Rankings Affect Local Map Pack Placement
Organic rank means appearing in search results. Not paying for ads to appear in the search results or appearing in the local map pack. Google hasn’t officially stated how a website’s organic rankings affect local SEO and map pack placement, however, local SEO experts have run experiments and have been able to deduce that websites that appear in the 3-pack for local results almost always also rank organically for related keywords.
What Does This Mean for You?
The results of SEO experiments I have seen suggest that if your pressure washing website and Google Business Profile are comparable to a competitor’s website and GBP in terms of:
Number of reviews
GBP rating score
Citations
Location or service area
Then a big differentiating factor for getting into the local 3-pack is how well the website ranks organically. How well your website ranks organically will largely be dependent on website content and backlink profile. For a pressure washing company, you likely won’t be converting too many customers who read your blog article about “how to pressure wash your car” simply because the number of local people in your service area even searching for that content is extremely low.
However, the benefit of this content is that it provides another trust signal to Google that your website should be ranked higher and, thus, more likely to get into the local map pack. If you and a competitor have a similar GBP rating and number of reviews, and both your sites are listed in the same directories, then content will be a huge tie breaker.
Get a Blog for Your Pressure Washing Website
You didn’t start a pressure washing company to sit behind a computer and write an article about how to winterize your home. I get it. But the correlation between websites that are in the local 3-pack and high organic search rankings is too high to ignore. Businesses in the local map pack get 42% more clicks than businesses NOT in the local map pack. Getting into the 3-pack is one of the most important things you can do for your business to generate more top-of-funnel leads.
You need to be doing everything you can to get the edge over competitors to get into the map pack. The local SEO landscape is constantly evolving as Google continues rolling out algorithm updates. As local search gets more complicated….AND….as more and more pressure washing companies open up shop — you need to put more effort into SEO for the local map pack.
If your marketing budget is increasing and you have more resources at your disposal, then you need to spend time building relevant content for your site.
If you are wondering what kind of content my site should have, consider local city pages.
Do what your competitors aren’t doing to get results that your competitors aren’t getting.