What can be done to still rank high?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Helmut Berié: Well if your services require physical proximity then your business will be considered relevant for local search (near me). If you then end up not ranking well then this is because you have strong local competitors.Again for local search it doesn`t matter if you rank well w/o the location context.
  
  ... Or I don`t understand the question
  
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  Travis King: Helmut Berié So I got to get my gmb page that is linked to my website/business to rank better?
  
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  Helmut Berié: Not a local SEO expert. So you do have a brick and mortar business?I would recommend checking out who your local competitors are and try to find out how they are out-ranking you.But yes that gmb stuff is important for that. Although I think it mainly makes it easier for Google to populate the local results in the map SERP.I think it is more important you nail the local SEO 101 stuff.Again not an expert but things like NAP, testimonials Gmb and on site, links from relevant local businesses, that kind of stuff
  
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  Jason Wells: Travis King yes, research "Google map pack seo"
  
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  Stockbridge Truslow: I`m not sure I understand this completely. Typically for a service business if I type "Pressure Washing Service " or "Pressure Washing Service Near Me" the results are going to look very similar and often exactly the same. Especially when it comes to the map pack part of things. With those kinds of services the "near me" is implied and it only changes when you move or if you type in the name of some other location.
  
  That said... there are things that can affect local results. For example, if Google knows you spend a lot of time on a certain site (and I would assume you spend a lot of time on your own site working on it) then it`s likely to favor showing you something you`re familiar with and have used before... but then if you type in "near me" it might say to Google that you want something else, instead.
  
  This is part of the "personalization" feature of Google. You really want to be logged out and in an incognito window in your browser to test what other people are actually seeing. (I suspect the "near me" search is probably closer to the "real norm" result set than the one without - but I`m not sure).
  
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  Travis King: Stockbridge Truslow I think I got it now. I live pretty far outside my service area. A lot of my competitors do.
  
  When you manually type in the location compared to when you are inside the location and let google auto input “keyword +service near me” that results dramatically change.
  
  I am going to have to get more citations, and geo tag more this season I guess.
  
  Thank you for your time. If you know any other ways of ranking it would be appreciated
  
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  Stockbridge Truslow: Ahh. Manually typing the location vs. near me as opposed to near me vs. a naked request... that`s a bit different.
  
  "Near me" is near you - wherever you happen to be (or if you`re at home or other land-line, it could be the location of your ISP routin…
  
  SCHEMA.ORGService - Schema.org TypeService - Schema.org Type
  
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  Travis King: Stockbridge Truslow thank you so much for taking the time to help.
  
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  Baseer Muhammad: Add your business in google map or in local business, add few good reviews, you are in.
  
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  Ash Nallawalla: //However if google takes over and auto in puts “pressure washing service near me”//
  
  Can you say that some other way? I cannot visualise a SERP entry with those words in it.
  
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  Travis King: Ash Nallawalla whenever you are using your phone and you type “pressure washing service” then you go to type “near whatever location”.As soon as you go to start typing near google will sometimes take over and give option to auto input near me.
  
  It will then pull your location if it has permission from you.
  
  If you go that route instead of manually Google results are way different. I was trying to find out why but I got a Lotta good answers that pointed me in the right direction.
  
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