Occasionally, I will have business owners ask me if I can get them to rank in the Google Maps 3 Pack, which is the whole point of Local SEO, without having to build them a website. Unless they are in a very non-competitive industry or a tiny town, doing so would be like running a race with your feet tied together.
Even though half of the work you do in Local SEO is not done on your website, you cannot do Local SEO without a website. This is because you cannot sufficiently emphasize your industry & city relevance to get your business to rank in the Google Maps 3-Pack unless you have a website.
In this article, we will go over the answer to this question in more detail so that you understand why having a website is essential to Local SEO.
What Local SEO Things Can I Do?
Pretty much anything that is considered Off-Page Local SEO can be done without having a website. This would include creating what I call a “high authoritative business footprint” by building out your business profiles in the most authoritative local business directories and social media sites. You would still want to fill out these profiles completely, geo-tag and optimize your image files, list your NAP info identically on each one, and link to your GBP instead of to a website.
You could also get the various kinds of high authority backlinks you would normally get and just point the links to your Google Business Profile instead of to a website.
For more information on Off-Page Local SEO, I recommend reading my article “Is Off-Page SEO Still Effective?“
What Local SEO Things Can I Not Do?
Well, a lot. Your website’s articles help you target keywords. They also allow you to link your brand more closely to your industry, city, or location.
So, not having a website will limit Google’s ability to know what keyword searches to show your GBP under. Google would have less confidence that your business was in the industry you say you are in the city you claim you are in. The articles, embeds, and optimized images on a website help support and reinforce all of these important ties in Google’s mind.
Not having a website would mean one could not interlink articles either. If done correctly, interlinking can create a lot of authority from within the site so that you are not as reliant on obtaining external links.
What Are The Benefits Of A Website In Local SEO?
The main benefit to having a website in local SEO, if put in a single word, would be “control.” Without a website, Google is left to judge a business based on what they find filled out in the various business directories, social media, and Google Business profiles.
All those profiles are very limited, depending on the information you can fit in. You can’t fit a lot of content in those profiles other than your business descriptions.
A website gives you the ability to not only provide information but to structure it in a way to reinforce and focus it to emphasize things to the search engines. You don’t have that ability without a website.
Having that control gives you the ability to make your business stand out as the most relevant for specific searches and areas of town that you want to show up in the Google Maps 3 Pack.
In Conclusion
So, in conclusion, while there are a lot of Local SEO tasks that you could still perform for your business without having a business website, you would only be able to rank in the Google Maps 3 pack in very low competitive searches, towns, industries, or niches.
Even if you are the best, most qualified, and most credible business in your industry, you would lack the ability to emphasize your qualifications and strong points and effectively communicate that to search engines.
In areas where you have any competition at all, you really need to have a website in order to be able to rank in the Google Maps 3 Pack.