1. 'Own Your Backyard' Approach

Miami is a very large metropolis of a city to target as a whole; and if you’re running Ads and paying for clicks, it can get expensive depending on your industry, leaving you depleted of your budget and with little to no customer conversions to show for it.

• We recommend taking over the area immediately around your local business address.

Our strategy always starts small and focused, once you’ve stamped a name online for your immediate 10-mile radius and your business is claiming the top spots on Google, the strategy can then begin to shift and focus on the next set of areas that are easily in your reach.

2. Google Business Profile is 'Major Key'

Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business, aka the Google Map Pack) is very important to success on Google’s Search Map for local businesses. If you’re not constantly managing the business profile and keeping up with the latest features you will become stale to Google’s algorithm.

• Once you’re managing the business’s Google account, the long play is to keep up with new features, Business information, and post announcements because they do expire.

3. Online Reputation is getting 5 Star Reviews

Your next strategy moving forward is building up your review reputation with as close to a 5-Star rating as you possible can (you 2.5-star outfits are not going to go far without some serious work on reputation management for your business, especially in Miami, where the word gets around locally very quickly) because word of mouth + online reputation will make or break any business.

• Reputation is your greatest asset, your goal should be getting as many positive reviews as you can from your customers, which means making sure you’re providing an amazing service/product to your patrons.

Those are our top three to focus on when it comes to ranking a local business in Miami on the Google Map.

Let’s Recap Goals

Ranking on Google Search Results Page and Business Map Section in Miami

1. Focus on your local area before expanding and diluting your focus/reach.

2. Claim/Manage the ‘Google My Business‘ account and keep up with features and posts.

3. Get quality reviews from your customers, constantly and forever.

4. Bing and Apple want more search share!

Here's some extra credit to get going in the right direction since Google is set to lose some search share to hot competitors Bing and Apple.

Apple Business Connect

Apple just launched their answer to Google Business Profile, known as ABC or Apple Business Connect earlier this year in January 2023.

It would be a great idea to head over to 'ABC' using the link below and also claiming your business profile on Apple Business Connect.

https://www.apple.com/business/connect/

Bing Places for Business

Bing has always been behind Google by 96%...complete domination. Microsoft using ChatGPT now has a chance to beat Google in search using their advance Ai chat bot by OpenAi.

Bing Places for Business will definitely be a tool for ChatGPT to pull from. Bing also makes it easy to migrate the main settings over from your Google products, Like Google Business Profile and Google Search Console.

Okay, so what's Next?

Chances are there are dozens of great citations that you need to be on where Google, Bing, Apple and Social Media Platforms all collect data from in order to 1) better understand your business, 2) verify your business information and consistency across many major reliable data entities online.

Why are these other citations and directories so important?

As you may have noticed or remember long ago, getting verified on the main data giants such as Google will take you through a pretty intense verification process. A decade ago this verification process was almost nothing, you'd fill out a form and bam you had a business listing on Google, those were the early days!

Now? Google sends a myriad of options to choose from to make sure you have a actual brick and motor business location and that you are not a strange entity that may lead Google's user astray, there worst fear is having a user on Google have a bad experience with their search results!

A verification process can include processes such as:

• A post card verification method where they send your business address a postcard in the mail with a pin code.

• A phone call to the business where you answer and have a live or automated call with a Google entity to verify your business.

• A video recording, either live or via their Google Business Profile app in order to verify you actually have a real brick and motor business establishment to verify your business on Google's Map pack.

So all these data points, and others like Yelp, Bing Places etc, help determine that you are a actual business entity that people can trust and rely on and you are putting the right efforts online to prove it.

The End Game of All Digital Efforts

All these digital marketing efforts we do to get more visibility and grow online boils down to having a respectable business that takes care of their clients above and beyond. From this starting point it becomes easy to create marketing assets for any business, since it is easy to prove their authority, expertise, portfolio, services and care when they do it right from the beginning with a heart of passion and service for their community while doing what they love and set out to do.