Why are Google Maps important? We focus on many SEO aspects including SERP performance, social media optimization, quality backlinks, etc. But when it comes to medical marketing for a DME company or any healthcare practice that focuses on potential customers from the neighborhood or city, or even visitors or tourists to the city from other countries, local SEO or geo-focused strategies are important.
Local Search Is Priceless and Maps Play a Big Part
The reasoning behind that is people looking for certain businesses or locations usually search with the place name, or the suffix “near me”. You need to be able to get yourself conspicuous when people search that way, more than you are conspicuous to people searching with more generic keywords. The latter may just be searching for some information.
Those searching with place names and long-tail keywords are more serious searchers and are closer to making a purchasing decision. Studies reveal that 80% of local intent searches actually end up in a conversion. To target them, you need to focus on those kinds of keywords and, to come up well in the search results for these keywords, you need an optimized Google My Business (GMB) profile, and Google Maps are an integral element of it.
Why Maps Are Important
We all search for maps when we want to find out the location of a restaurant, mall, theatre or picnic destination. Being on the maps shows that you’re a legitimate business with a quantifiable physical location. It also enables you to come up in the maps pack in the search results along with competing businesses.
If you want a favorable positioning in the maps pack, your Google Maps positioning must be optimized. There are prominent listings that come up in the maps pack, and with better optimizing you can be one of the three listings. Your GMB profile must have all the relevant information for your listing to be optimized and visible and in the maps pack.
How to Optimize Your Google My Business Profile
The GMB profile must have information such as your business name and description, phone number, website and physical number, which is super-important. Equally important are reviews. You need to have positive reviews in your listings, provided they are genuine and not fabricated. You should also have photos of your practice or business, its staff, the products or services you offer, as well as videos.
YouTube Performance
Speaking of videos, YouTube rankings can also play a big part in getting your business noticed. After Google, YouTube is the most commonly used search platform. With videos, you can get your YouTube presence optimized. Doing well in YouTube search can easily give your website traffic and your physical location a lot of potential customers. With YouTube analytics and tools such as TubeBuddy, you can get all the information you need to finetune your YouTube presence and make yourself quite conspicuous. You can also research your competition with tools such as Vaizle, Socialinsider, NoxInfluencer, Rival IQ, etc.
With Maps listing, an optimized GMB profile and top YouTube rankings, your DME business or medical practice can succeed in the midst of competition. These factors are important for local healthcare search engine optimization.
