@tjrobertson52

Keep seeing these local SEO hacks online for immediately ranking high in Google Maps and the local pack and they're a bunch of nonsense. There's one hack that actually works, which I'll share in a bit, but I keep seeing these ideas like just optimize your description or geocache your images or make sure the text on your services matches your service pages.

And yes, you should complete your whole Google Business Profile because it's quick and it does help, but none of these things are going to immediately make you rank well in Google Maps. There's only one hack that you can do quickly and that's adding your main keyword to your title and your Google Business Profile. You will rank higher for that keyword.

Now, whether that's worth doing as another conversation, we find it usually is if we can do it subtly, but there is some risk associated with that, but that's it. Now, there are dozens of things you can do to improve your ranking in Google Maps and the local pack, but most of them are going to have a small impact or they're going to take a lot of work. How close you are to the searcher.

If your business is located close to the searcher, you're going to rank higher. So you can open more locations. You can open fake locations that comes with some risk.

The number of reviews you have on your profile matters, getting reviews is hard. Faking reviews is probably not worth it comes with a lot of risk. If your primary category and the secondary categories you're in carry a lot of weight, most businesses already have that set up.

And your brand, if Google sees you as a trusted authoritative brand, you're going to rank higher for everything, but that takes a lot of work. And this is why clients pay us money.