Following on from the easy backlinks we have written about before, here is another high power, free backlink that we have been using to boost our local SEO customers’ sites. For many of the customers we applied this technique to, they saw significant gains in Google Maps rankings and a decent boost in regular organic search too.
Apple Maps pages are now indexable
For a couple of years now Apple has been slowly building out its Apple Maps product, and pages for businesses in Apple Maps are now indexable by Google and carry a lot of weight.
Here is the Apple Maps page for WP Speed Fix. You might need to copy and paste the link into your browser bar if you are using an Apple device, as it usually opens these links in the Maps app directly.
These pages typically do not get indexed by default and need a bit of a push before Google will crawl them (and therefore count them as backlinks).
The process we use to get the listing live and indexed
- Claim the listing on Apple Maps at businessconnect.apple.com and make sure the details are correct. It sounds obvious, but it is not very often that we see customers with a clean Apple Maps setup.
- Once the listing is live and verified, generate a link to the listing by clicking the share button in the Apple Maps app. That share link should open in a web browser the same way as the WP Speed Fix listing above.
- Link to the Apple Maps listing in the footer of your site. On our site you will see a “WPSpeedFix on Apple Maps” link in the footer.
- Once the footer link is live, we typically see the Apple Maps page indexed in 3 to 6 weeks and shortly afterwards see the rank boost.
You do not need to be a local business
You can use this technique even if you are not a physical or local business. So long as you have a physical address you can set up maps listings on Google, Bing and Apple. Google has become more strict about this over the years, but for most clients, so long as they can receive postal mail at the address on the listing, it can be verified.
Google, Apple and Bing Maps all carry a ton of weight in terms of backlinks for SEO, so if you do not have a set of maps listings for your business right now, it is definitely worth spending the time getting them set up.
If you are looking to do more with your SEO, our SEO Audit service might be worth a look. If you are not sure whether it is for you, request a free site review and we will look at your site and tell you how we can help.
This article was first sent to the WP Speed Fix email list. Subscribe here to get future articles by email.