If you run a Google search 🔎 like, “Best REALTOR near me,” you’ll trigger what’s known as the Map-Pack (aka, the “Local Pack”)—a section of Google’s search results page that displays the top three local businesses respective to your search.

The money 🤑—in terms of getting discovered by prospective customers—is in the Map-Pack!

Trouble is, Google only ranks the top three business profiles (formerly, Google My Business) out of however many local competitors are in your marketplace.

So the question is: What can you do to get yours to rank?

There are loads of tactics to get your Google Business Profile to rank higher. In fact, here’s a bunch of blogs I’ve written on the topic:

The technique described herein, however, is one that’s often overlooked.

Perhaps you’ve noticed underneath the three profiles listed in a Map Pack, Google often displays excerpts from reviews OR phrases like, “website also mentions…” that relate to the search query.

These snippets are called Local Justifications.

In essence, they’re Google’s defense as to why it chose to rank a given profile over its competitors—as if it was calling a super-tight race or something. Google will even bold and emphasize the keywords that match verbatim with the subject search—like “best realtor,” for example.

Words like BEST, TOP, LISTING AGENT, and so on are called contextual keywords and they’re displayed often in Local Justifications.

So here’s the idea: incorporate those types of words and phrase throughout your website and, when you ask for reviews, try to prime clients (indirectly) to integrate some of that language.

Warning, though—Google’s adept to infer if a review was influenced by a business owner and, if suspected, it’ll quickly filter-out that review.

In terms of the keywords to prioritize, break ‘em into three buckets: nouns, verbs, and modifiers.

NOUNS: your business name, your category of business (e.g. real estate agent, etc.), and where you conduct business (e.g. Nashville, TN)
VERBS: terms that describe the services you perform, such as “buy,” “purchase,” “sell,” “list,” “lease,” “invest,” et al.

MODIFIERS: terms that describe (e.g. adjectives/adverbs), like “best,” “top,” “number 1,” and so on.