How to add a Google Maps business listing: Step-by-step
Maximize your local presence by learning how to add your business to Google Maps
- Creating a Google Maps business listing is a fast way to gain local visibility and get new customers coming through your door.
- It’s pretty simple to add a business to Google Maps, even if you’re not tech savvy.
- Semrush's Listing Management tool helps you get even more value out of your Google Maps business listing and tracks your rise to the top of the local rankings.
Why adding your business to Google Maps should be a top priority for local businesses
With more than one billion active users, Google Maps is absolutely where your business needs to be if you want to attract new customers in your local area.When users search for local businesses like stores and restaurants, Google Maps takes a prime position on the Google SERPs (search engine results pages) and displays the top three listings, known as the “map pack”, “snack pack” or “Google 3-Pack”.
Because users often make a choice based on the first three results, it’s not only important to add your business to Google Maps, but also to optimize your listing to rank well.
Fortunately, learning how to get your business on Google Maps doesn’t take long, so you’ll be enjoying the benefits of an increased local presence in next to no time.
Getting started: Add your business to Google Maps
Google launched Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) to centralise business listings across all its services. So, when you add your business to Google Maps, you’re not really creating a “Google Maps profile”, you’re creating a Google Business Profile.To add your business to Google Maps, as well as on Google Search when a user looks up your business name, you’ll need to set up a Google Business Profile.
Here’s how to add your business to Google Maps in a few easy steps:
Step 1: Open the menu in Google Maps and click “Add your business.
Step 2. You’ll then be taken to the Google Business Profile setup page. Go ahead and fill in your business name and choose a category (until your business is verified, you’ll only be allowed to select one category, so pick the most appropriate one for now and come back to add more later if necessary).
Step 3. Next, you’ll be offered the opportunity to add your business’ address. Of course, you’ll want to do this if your business depends on customers visiting your location, like a coffee shop, for example.
If you go out to serve people in your area, like a plumber, and your address isn’t relevant, you can skip this and just fill in the areas you cover.
Step 4. Fill in your contact details. If you want to track link clicks and calls, you can add tracking numbers and UTMs here if you like.
TIP: If tracking numbers and UTMs aren’t available to you, Google Business Profile offers lots of interesting stats on your profile’s performance, accessible from the Google SERP once you’ve added your business to Google Maps.
Step 5. Before you can officially add your Google Maps business listing, you’ll need to verify that you’re the legitimate owner. There are a few different ways you can do this: phone, text, email, video recording, live video call, or postcard. You may need to verify via more than one method if you are a brick and mortar business with a physical address.
Postcards can take up to 14 days to arrive, so you’ll have to wait until then for access to optimize your profile and improve your local rankings.
Claiming a Google Maps business listing
You may find your business already exists on Google Maps.This may be because a profile had been created in the past, by a former employee perhaps, or it could have been auto-generated by Google based on data about your business from other sources.
The steps to claim a business are similar to those for adding your business to Google Maps, assuming no one contests your ownership.
Step 1. Pull up the Google Business Profile for your business, either via Google Search or Google Maps, by searching for your business name.
Step 2. Scroll down to where it says “Own this business?” and give it a click.
Step 3. Select “Manage now” and you’ll be prompted to verify that you really are the owner, as you would if adding your business to Google Maps from scratch.
Hopefully, the verification process goes smoothly, but if the Google Maps business listing is already owned by someone else, you’ll need to request access from them.
Google gives you a clue as to who the owner is by revealing the first two letters of their email address. Stop and think if this could be someone in the company that might have created the profile a while ago and forgot about it, or perhaps it’s an old email address of yours that you still have access to.
If the owner isn’t anyone you know, they’ll get three days to respond to your request. If they challenge your ownership, you’ll need to take it up with Google Business Profile Help.
GO FURTHER: Adding your Google Maps business listing isn’t the only way to boost your local visibility. Use Semrush’s Listing Management tool to quickly distribute your business listings to 70+ other valuable directories so local users can’t miss you, no matter where they go for information.
Semrush’s Listing Management tool keeps your Google Maps listing optimized
Fortunately, Semrush’s Listing Management tool takes a lot of the heavy lifting out of raising your business above your competitors and enjoying the boost in revenue that comes with it.
Quickly audit your local citations across the Internet
Getting to the coveted Google 3-Pack is no mean feat. You’ll want to have a reliable way to track your progress through the ranks so you can feel confident your hard work is paying off.
Rather than typing your keywords into Google Search and relying on data that’s tailored to your profile, add up to five keywords to Semrush’s Listing Management tool’s local rank tracker and get an objective view of where you stand against competitors. Or, if you have a Premium Location, go deeper with Map Rank Tracker (available as a standalone as well) and see rankings for specific areas presented as an easy-to-read grid over the area you’re targeting.
Get your NAP data out there in an instant
But citation building can be hard work if you’re creating profiles on each individual directory and having to organise all the logins and passwords so you can make updates when necessary.
Instead, let Semrush’s Listing Management tool distribute your business details to 70+ top directories so you can be sure they all have exactly the same information. You can edit them all at once too!
Keep on top of your Google Maps reviews
Reviews are great for building trust with potential visitors and can help with your local SEO, but replying to all that feedback can get overwhelming if you don’t have a simple way to manage it.
Semrush’s Review Management tool shows your reviews across all platforms in one simple interface, so you’ll know if you forgot to get back to somebody. Plus, Premium Location subscribers can reply to reviews without having to leave Semrush!
Detect duplicates and protect your local SEO
Overly ambitious interns might create profiles they shouldn’t have and directories themselves can auto-generate profiles too, confusing search engines over which one to rank.
Rest easy while Semrush’s Listing Management stays vigilant and alerts you to any duplicate profiles so you can confirm their suppression quickly and keep your online presence in order.
