225% Increase in Website Clicks from Apple Maps

tmblast

I was able to increase the category rankings for one of my #LocalSEO clients in September, which resulted in a 225% increase in website clicks MoM (101 vs 30). Their other metrics also improved, which included direction requests, shares, schedules, and more. Apple Maps SEO will vary, but my client list falls somewhere between 5-20% of their monthly leads come from Apple Business Connect each month.  Timestamps 0:00 225% Increase in Website Clicks from Apple Maps 0:28 All Metrics also Grew 1:15 Category SoLV Growth on Apple Maps 1:53 DuckDuckGo / Apple Map Rankings 2:54 What I Did to Grow Website Clicks 6:34 In Summary  https://tmblast.com/services/hourly-seo-consulting/apple-maps-local-seo-service/

Transcript

00:00Hey everyone, what's going on? Greg here again from Team Blast. I want to talk about an Apple

00:03Business Connect or Apple Maps local SEO case study for one of my clients. They had over a 225%

00:09increase in visits from Apple Maps directly to their website. You can see here in September,

00:14we had just over 100 website visits. If you look at October through August, we're really around 20

00:20to 30 taps on the profile to go back to the websites. This was our best month ever, and I

00:26want to kind of explain why. So before I get into just website clicks, all their metrics also

00:31improved too. So directions were at an all-time high. So people can click on the directions on

00:36the app to get an idea of how far away they are from the location. Schedule. So before working

00:43with me, they had a problem where their schedule button was not showing. I was able to implement

00:46that correctly. Now we've been getting consistent leads through that. Next is photos. Photos are a

00:53big part of why you can have better rankings on Apple Maps. I suppose their best month

00:57again for people clicking on their photos and then viewing. I believe engagement is a ranking

01:01factor within Apple Maps. Also why they're ranking better. And then shares too. The reason I'm

01:06sharing shares is that even though it's not really much of an increase, we're having consistent

01:09over the threshold, people sharing the profile, whereas in the previous 12 months, it only happened

01:14one time. So how I track Apple Maps is a little different than Google. Because Google, you can

01:22track things like different keywords, like, you know, for example, like nail salon or, you know,

01:28nails near me. But for Apple Maps, they don't share the keywords that trigger your account. So what I do

01:32for my clients is I really focus on the category. So the category here is nail technician. And where they

01:38started was back at a 0% share in early September. And where I ran the last scan, they had a 44% share

01:47of local voice. So before I go into, you know, what I did for their account, I want to just explain

01:52real quick. Local Falcon uses DuckDuckGo for the share of local voice. So if I search for HVAC near me,

01:59you see three listings over here. This is the share of local voice. If I click on show more,

02:04you get all the traditional listings that you would expect to get via Google Maps. Same thing

02:09with how Apple Maps displays the results. But what I also noticed for my clients is that if you're

02:14using Apple Maps, whether on your computer or on your phone, if you're ranking better for a category

02:19like HVAC or HVAC contractor, or nail technician, anything else like that, you should be seeing your

02:26profile up higher within the results. So there's really no share of local voice. But the reason why I'm

02:31sharing this is because if you can rank higher within DuckDuckGo, so I'll go back one more time.

02:35If you can rank higher within DuckDuckGo and more dots in your radius, then you should also then be

02:40seen higher within an Apple Maps search in that same radius. You're, you know, potentially above the

02:46fold, which is key. That's how you get the most impressions, then tabs on profile, website clicks,

02:51phone calls, et cetera. So let's get into it. What was done? So I'm going to demo off TM Blast

02:57on the right hand side here. So adding photos is a ranking factor. I talked to all my clients about

03:03this. I encourage them to send me photos of their team working. Authentic photos are key. You also

03:09have to have them. The image size needs to be pretty big because Apple is very visual. So if you're a

03:15restaurant or if you're a dentist or an HVAC or whatever, get in the habit of uploading photos on a,

03:22you know, weekly basis at a minimum, I believe engagement is a big ranking factor. And I saw

03:27that too, for my client, a lot of taps on their photos, which I think resulted in better rankings

03:33too. Next local Falcon baseline scans are critical. So again, what I did for my client, I'll scroll back

03:38up. I did the baseline scan for nail technician. I knew that they were around 20 to 30 website clicks

03:43per month. They were at a 0% via the one mile radius that I was tracking. So now I was able to get

03:48that to a 44% resulted in their best month for their business. Creating showcases. So I don't

03:56have it here for TM blast, but showcases are things that can really stand out on your profile. So

04:00they could be a sale, they could be a new offering, they could be a call out. So whatever's going on

04:06with your business, you want to create showcases, showcases that there's no updates within Apple

04:09Business Connect. So what I recommend for my clients is, let's say you are a dentist and you

04:15have a back to school program for September and or October. You can call that out within a

04:23showcase and say back to school, you know, braces or, you know, Invisalign or whatever else you can

04:29call that out. If you have a dedicated landing page, you can then send traffic to there. Or you can,

04:33you know, have something like a reservation or just like call to action, like call now. So very

04:37important. Next, more local Falcon scans are critical. So again, the habit of running weekly scans

04:44for a lot of my clients for some of their core terms for Apple Maps is going to, you know, vary

04:47because again, it's not as critical, but I so encourage you that the changes you make to your

04:52profile, keep running scans and see if your rankings are improving. If they are, you can get more

04:57aggressive and then see kind of how far you can take it. Next holiday hours and basic information

05:02are ranking factors. There's no sync button from Google into Apple. So therefore, if there's a holiday

05:07coming up, you need to go directly into Apple and then you need to check that off. Also good to know

05:14are things like, do you accept Apple pay cash card, you know, debit cards, credit cards is a

05:19wheelchair accessible. There's a lot of features you can do because Apple Maps has a pretty extensive

05:23filter system. When people are searching on their phone, these micro signals are ranking factors and

05:29they also will lead to a more highly qualified click because somebody who's let's say looking for a

05:33locksmith who accepts Apple pay. If you don't check that off, you're not going to be seen.

05:38But if you do check that off, because if you do accept Apple pay, now you're in the mix to get that

05:41potential customer. And then finally reviews matter. So Apple uses Yelp primarily, but they also use

05:49TripAdvisor. There's some other third-party sites to use as well. I bring this up because for a lot of

05:54clients that I have, Yelp reviews aren't their main focus and I understand where they're coming from.

06:00Well, what I always encourage is that if your competitors are ranking better than you in Apple

06:06and they're getting about, you know, 10% or so of total phone calls, give or take, and you're only,

06:12let's say like a 2%, you want to say, how do I get more phone calls each month or more website

06:15clicks? And I'm doing everything else that Greg is saying, maybe you should try to push more Yelp

06:20reviews. You can get people to leave reviews on Yelp that's pulled directly into Apple Maps. That can

06:25then be like a relevancy and ranking factor because of proximity and also dwell time too, which then

06:30can increase your keyword ranking so you get more leads for your business. But in summary, I'll go

06:34back up over here. This is the main thing. I mean, this is a pretty big growth that took place

06:39for them. Again, this all came from better rankings, from changes to the Apple Business Connect.

06:44Apple Maps, historically for all my clients, it really ranges between anywhere between 5%

06:48to even upwards of 20% of total website clicks and phone calls. Every client is different.

06:56So if you see a baseline like this, you're like, I'm only getting 20 or 30 clicks per month,

07:01run the local Falcon scans, see how you're ranking, and then try to make some of these changes that I

07:06highlighted to see if you can increase your share of local voice so you get more leads

07:10for your business. Anyway, thanks for watching this video and stay tuned for the next one.

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