Chances are, you’ve got a good amount of competition out there, and that same competition is on Google Maps. You need to give consumers a reason to choose you over the others, which is why you need to make your profile stand out.

The first step toward optimizing your profile is simply to make sure that it’s complete. That means adding a description of your business, up-to-date hours, address, phone number, etc. It’s also important to select the right business category and any applicable subcategories.

Images are a great way to show off your business, your team, your products and/or before and after photos of your services. Google also happens to love images, and will prioritize businesses that have them in their profiles.

Don’t just add images while building your profile and then never add them again. For best results, add high-quality images to your profile on a regular basis. These can include images of your physical local, team, company events — anything your customers might want to see.

Whether someone is looking for a great place to grab a bite or a plumber to clean out a slow-moving drain, they want to know that they’ve chosen the right local business for their needs.

Reviews are a critical part of the decision-making process for people searching for local businesses online. Google is all about providing a great experience for its users, which is why it favors profiles that have reviews — and get reviews on a regular basis.

The last thing that Google wants is to send its users to visit an old business location or to call a phone number that’s no longer in service. And, if you have one phone number on Google My Business and a completely different number on Top Rated Local® or even your website, it can hurt your rankings on Google Maps.

Google prioritizes businesses that have consistent, accurate business information across the web. That means that your phone number and address need to be written out exactly the same way. Listings management software can help to streamline the process and make it much faster.

Just like adding images to your profile shows Google that you are active and in business, so does posting regularly on your Google My Business profile. It also helps to keep your profile fresh and up to date.

Post the same kinds of things on Google My Business as you would on your other social profiles. This includes highlights of your products or services, offers and deals, events, promotions, helpful tips and advice, business updates and more.

Google Maps listings are a lot like regular organic listings in that they depend a lot on your website itself. Google doesn’t want to show its users slow, clunky websites that don’t work well on mobile devices.

Having a mobile-friendly website starts with a responsive design, which will reconfigure itself for the device it’s being viewed on. It’s also important to keep your website fast by optimizing images, using a reliable web hosting service, etc.

When you optimize your website for search engines, it’s important to think about the kinds of keywords consumers are using to find services or products like yours. For a local business, this can be a bit different.

For example, instead of searching for “hair salon” in a local search, a lot of people will search for “hair salon near me” or “hair salon in Dallas.” Optimizing your site for “near me” and geo-targeted keywords can help to improve your local rankings.