What no one tells you about ranking #1 on Google
And what I've been struggling with most...
I’ve been struggling over the last couple of weeks. Mainly because I’ve felt like there there’s so much to do… and so little time.
Trying to balance:
Building my local marketing agency (SEO-ing my website)
Networking and prospecting for potential clients
Creating content and publishing
Learning Google ads (because it makes a nice addition to my offer)
Being present in real life (it’s wedding season)
I was beginning to wonder if I’d even have time for client work.
Fortunately, I realized a big part of my stressing was the fact that I was keeping a mental to-do list of everything that needed to get done.
It was exhausting and making me irritable, because I didn’t want to forget anything.
The solution (I think), is to treat my business like a client. Working a little bit each day towards the goal of showing up in the Google Map Pack.
So I started using Todoist to keep track of EVERYTHING I need to do for Make It Marketable. And just the act of writing things down, has already helped tremendously.
I know I’m going to chip away at each project a little bit at a time—that’s how I’ve always managed to complete large projects. (With small daily steps).
With that said, let’s talk about a factor that’s responsible for 53% of whether or not your business gets into Google’s Map Pack.
The #1 Thing You Need to Rank in Google’s Map Pack
Your Google Business Profile, (or GBP for short) is the ultimate deciding factor when it comes to local SEO.
(NOTE: I personally group “Reviews” and “GBP” together since reviews are managed and displayed through the GBP.)
This is awesome, since when compared to traditional SEO, on-page content and link building were WAY more important.
An Optimized GBP Can Be Your #1 Lead Generator
Remember that there are two major benefits to using local SEO as a marketing strategy to grow your business.
1. Buyer Intent
28% of local searches lead to a purchase within 24 hours. That’s because your customers are actively searching for what you sell. (Unlike Facebook ads where you’re interrupting the scroll).
2. Less Competition
That might sound odd, especially if you’re in a highly competitive industry (like marketing, legal services, wealth management, or healthcare), but you only have to compete locally…
…Which is a hell of a lot less than internationally. (i.e You only have to compete with law firms in [your city] compared to law firms [in country] or [EVERYWHERE])
Getting Your GBP Basics Right
The first step is to go here and claim your business listing on Google.
We’ll keep it simple today and start with the basics. There are three important Elements to get right here.
1. Business Name, Address, Phone Number (NAP)
This isn’t rocket science.
In fact, I’m 100% sure you're smart enough and capable of figuring this part out on your own. So I’ll keep this section brief at the risk of offending your intelligence.
Add your:
Business Name
Address
Phone number
To your GBP.
(Yes, its totally cool if you use your home address for your business. That’s what I did.)
The only thing I want to emphasize here is the importance of this information being ACCURATE and CONSISTENT across the internet.
So take a few minutes to fill this out.
It should be written the same way on your website, GBP, and any directory listings.
2. Business Category
This is another seemingly easy thing to fill out, and yet, I’ve seen some businesses mess this up.
That’s because your primary category is actually a keyword.
In other words, it needs to be something that your ideal clients are typing into Google and searching for.
I’ll show you an example.
(NOTE: I’m going to use my business as an example as often as possible, but sometimes I’ll share other businesses to demonstrate a point)
This is PALM Health:
PALM Health is a longevity business located in St. Louis, Missouri.
They offer everything from IV therapy and functional medicine to yoga and skincare treatments.
So it’s understandable why they would categorize themselves as a “Medical Center”. (Because a lot of their services involve doctors.)
However, a careful analysis of the competition shows the problem.
This is St. Louis Wellness Center.
And when we look at the traffic coming into their site, we see…
One hell of a lot of traffic visiting their site for the keyword “Wellness Center”.
If Palm Health wants to capture some of that high-buying intent traffic, they should change their primary category to “Wellness Center”.
What This Means For You
Your primary category might be easier to identify than Palm Health’s. Things like:
Marketing Agency
Barbershop
Medical Spa
Divorce Attorney
The best way to tell is to check out your competitors and see what they’re primary category is.
You can also download a Chrome extension, called GMBspy to scope out your competition’s categories.
Like this:
Additional Categories
It might make sense for you to add secondary categories like some of my competition have in the image above.
Just make sure they’re relevant to your business.
(i.e. More isn’t necessarily better.)
While “Internet Marketing Service” makes sense for me to add as an additional category, “Website Designer” does not.
So just use your best judgment when filling this out.
3. Business Description
The last thing we’ll cover today is the Business Description.
You get 750 characters… and you’ll want to use ALL of them if you can.
Here’s what mine looks like:
My strategy here is (once again) to check out what your competitors have written in their descriptions.
(FYI, this is a term marketer’s call “swiping”.
You’ll see I do this a lot, and that’s because when I’m unsure, I ask the question:
“Who else has already solved this problem successfully?”
Then I check out their marketing.)
That said, there are a couple of items you’ll want to make sure you’re ticking off the list.
Things like, including your primary keyword (marketing agency), your city, and business name in the first sentence.
From there, you should list your primary services, and any other keywords your customers would want.
Spend some here.
Seriously.
It’s important.
I swiped a bunch of competitors websites, dropped them all into Claude (my trusty AI partner) and then worked on this for an hour.
Just Get 1% Better Everyday
That should be enough to get you started for now. Next week we’ll dive into things like photos, reviews, and Q&A’s.
I honestly thought I’d be able to cover the entire GBP in one newsletter…
But while I was writing, I realized I was enjoying going into detail and giving you examples of how to do things right.
And if I don’t want this newsletter to become incredibly long, I’d better stop here. I’ll break down how to optimize your GBP into three lessons.
But I’m curious, what do you think?
Do you have any questions? Did you like today’s issue?
Would you prefer I cover more stuff in less detail?
Just hit reply, or leave a comment down below.
Warmly,
Nicholas.
P.S. Want a free 30-minute marketing consultation from me?
I need to start generating reviews for my marketing agency.
So in return for one, I’ll analyze your website, GBP, and scope out your competitors to uncover the #1 thing holding your business back.
By the end you’ll have practical, actionable insights you can implement immediately.
Again, completely free if you consent to leaving me a review on Google.
Just hit reply to this email (or leave a comment/DM on Substack) and we’ll set up a time to chat.