How to Rank in Google’s Local 3-Pack

It wasn’t long ago that the local pack in your Google search results included ten businesses. Then, that number was reduced to seven. Now, only three lucky businesses appear in the search engine’s local pack. 

Are those businesses really lucky, or did they earn their enviable positions by doing some homework and taking action? The odds are good that they chose the latter path to make it into the 3-pack. The chances are equally good that they’re continuing to focus on local SEO to retain that position. If you’re not sure where to start, our SEO specialists are here to help you! Below, we have a quick explanation on how Google chooses the local 3-pack and what you can start doing today to help your ranking. 

Google’s Criteria for the 3-Pack

Whether you run a brick-and-mortar location or your business serves a defined area, you need to take  steps that can land your online listing in the local pack. On mobile screens, in particular, the local pack occupies a lot of real estate and provides users with a lot of valuable information. For these reasons, many users won’t even scroll past the local pack to view their organic search results.

To ensure you’re taking the right steps, it can help to understand the criteria Google uses to identify the websites that land in the local 3-pack. Here are the factors Google considers for ranking sites:

• Relevance: This is a measure of how well your site matches a user’s search term.
• Distance: Distance refers to how close a user is to your location.
• Prominence: This factor refers to how popular and well-known your business is. Google considers both on- and offline measures of your business’ popularity to determine its prominence.

Steps You Can Take Today To Join Google’s Local Pack

While it can take time for search engine optimization to yield the desired results, there are still things you can do in the context of local SEO to improve the chances that your site will eventually land in the local 3-pack. And you can do some of them as early as today.

Here are some tasks you should prioritize to make it into the local pack:

• Optimize your website: To make Google think your site is relevant, you need to optimize your website by ensuring your content includes the name of your city, state, and region along with relevant keywords. You should also improve your site’s user experience and the quality of the links that point to your website.
• Update your listings: While you can’t control a user’s location as it relates to your own, you can update your listings to ensure your company’s name, address, hours of operation and phone number are correct across directories.
• Encourage people to share reviews online: One simple way for you to show Google how popular your business is among locals is to increase the number of online reviews your business has. Encourage your clients to share reviews, and be sure to acknowledge each new review with a “thank you.”

Partner with our Vancouver, WA SEO company 

If you want your website to appear in the local 3-pack, we encourage you to partner with our SEO agency because we offer all the services necessary to help you achieve your goal. No matter what vertical you compete in, we can improve your local SEO to produce better results.

Get in touch with NW Media Collective Inc. to schedule a consultation with our team today.