Whenever you run a search on Google for a local service, you mainly get three types of search results.

• Paid Results
• Map pack Results
• Organic Search Results

The screenshot below does an excellent job of showing this.

Paid results section

Map results section

Organic results section

If you own a ‘local’ business, you want to rank in the map packs.

That’s because they attract a lot of attention.

In fact, a recent study shows that Google Map Pack receives 44% of the total clicks for every local search made on Google in the United States.

But ranking in a map pack is also helpful because map pack listings are ideally suited to local businesses.  

After all, every listing has a link next to it for driving directions and a map with a pin representing each of the listings. This then makes it incredibly easy for people to reach out to your business after they see it within a map pack.

How to Rank Within Google Map Packs

The factors that are of significant significance in local pack rankings are:

1. Google My Business signals
2. Citation signals
3. On-Page signals
4. Link signals
5. Local customer reviews signals
6. Behavioral signals

As you might’ve guessed, all of these topics are covered in the rest of this playbook.

Thus, it’s worth noting that a high map pack listing is usually just the result of you having a well-rounded local SEO strategy. If you cover the basics of local SEO, you’re going to achieve a high map pack ranking naturally.

Because of this, there isn’t one specific thing we can suggest here. The only thing we can say is that if you want to rank highly in a map pack, you need to complete all the other suggestions in this playbook.