Google My Business Optimization
Do you want to give your business targeted visibility on Google? Ensuring that every part of your Google My Business listing is optimized is the first step to making customers and business partners find your business online. In this article, I will cover all you need to know about why Google My Business optimization is important and how you can optimize your Google My Business listing to make the most of local searches.
Why Do You Need to Optimize Your Google My Business Profile?
Due to economic insecurity, it is necessary to implement a more proactive marketing strategy. To do this, you need to have a robust digital presence and maintain your relationships with your audience. Forward-thinking entrepreneurs that are adept at using an optimized Google My Business page are ahead of their competitors.
An optimized Google My Business profile helps clients to choose your service over your competitors. The following are the other benefits of optimizing your Google My Business profile:
An increasing number of consumers are visiting and leaving Google without checking any other website because the information they find on the search results pages provides all the answers they need. Since more consumers are interacting with businesses through their Google My Business profile than their sites, you need to focus on optimizing your GMB profile to boost engagement and conversions.
The algorithm that Google uses to rank Google My Business (GMB) profiles considers not only proximity and relevance but the quality of information and activity as well. An optimized GMB profile will send these signals to Google thereby boosting your rank in local results. The increased rank in search results will give your business more visibility and engagement.
Optimizing your GMB profile helps to convert more customers. An un-optimized profile offers little in generating leads and customers. In this case, prospects will only find out your location and also read your reviews provided they know your business name. But an optimized Google Business profile can help your business to be discovered by consumers in keyword searches. With this, more of your prospects will call you, learn more about your products and services, visit your website, request a quote, view your FAQs, make a reservation, and book an appointment.
You need to innovate continuously if you want to stand out from the fierce competition. Irrespective of the kind of business you run (whether a brick-and-mortar store or a multiple-location firm), an optimized Google My Business profile is vital in making your business successful.
Step-By-Step Guide to Optimizing Your Google My Business Profile
The right optimization strategies will transform your Google My Business profile into a lead generation and marketing channel that is always online for your business. Here are some tips that you can use to optimize your GMB profile and boost your local SEO result.
Create your Google My Business account
You need a Google My Business account so that you can have access and optimize your Google My Business profile. So, before you optimize your GMB, you need to create a GMB account and let Google know so that they can link it with your profile.
To create a Google My Business account, visit Google.com/business and log in using your business’s regular Gmail account.
Complete The Necessary Sections
When you complete your GMB profile, you are indirectly helping Google to rank your profile higher in organic search results and increase the rate at which users take action on your profile. Some of the information that you need to fill in include your business name, website, address, phone number, operating hours, category, services, products, and lots more.
Provide a clear and accurate contact information
Ensure you have clear and accurate contact information on your Google My Business profile. The business name of your profile and the location of your business must match other listings across the internet. Google’s algorithms detect inconsistencies whenever they are assessing how credible a business is.
Also, ensure you indicate your regular and holiday operating hours so that your customers can be encouraged to visit your business without any hassles.
Optimize the ‘from the business’ description
You don’t have much control over the brief description that appears beneath your business name in your Google My Business profile. The description is a summary written by the search engine to ensure there is consistency across the platform.
The only description that you have control over is the ‘from the business’ section of your Google My Business profile. This description is found below your profile, under the reviews section of your profile. To optimize this description, use all the 750 characters and fill it with important information. Ensure you use the content from your mission statement or ‘About Us’ page and include keywords people usually use to find businesses that offer the same services as you do.
Choose the right category and attributes
About 84 percent of Google My Profile views are from discovery searches while just 16 percent are from direct searches. Choosing the right category makes your profile more attractive and effective. For instance, a real estate company profile will often show star ratings, while a realtor’s office can show a menu or reservation button. Be specific when you’re choosing a category but don’t abuse it.
Once you choose a category, Google will provide a list of attributes that you need to check off to offer more descriptions about your brand. These attributes are the features that prospective customers could be interested in.
Add photos to your Google My Business profile
The main purpose of uploading images to your GMB profile through your account dashboard is to make your profile look professional. It also signals to Google that you have an active and updated profile thereby increasing your search ranking. Since Google provides images in search results, you can boost your visibility in local searches by using images.
You can also boost engagement by including photos in your GMB profile. Your profile visitors are 42 percent more likely to look for driving directions to your business on Google if you have photos on your Business Account. To get maximum results, ensure you add at least one new image weekly.
Get positive reviews
Customer reviews play a key role in influencing the buying decisions of consumers. That is why Google makes it an important parameter in its ranking algorithm. The top three local results that come up in most of the searches carried out on Google are results that have multiple reviews and great ratings.
The following tips can be used to optimize your Google My Business profile with customer reviews:
- Start the reviews with your long-time clients.
- Make the process of leaving reviews simple for customers. You can do this by creating a shortcut link for reviews.
- Encourage your customers to drop reviews through email, social media, text, or in-person communications.
- Create a web page dedicated to ‘Reviews’ on your website with a call-to-action prompting your customers to post one.
Regularly post on your Google My Business profile
Just like social media sites, your Google My Business profile can be used for displaying announcements, offers, events, and products. Create useful posts in your dashboard so that they can display on the ‘Updates’ section of your profile.
The posts on your profile will increase the number of actions that your consumers can take when they land on your profile. This sends a positive signal to Google to rank you higher in search results. More so, consumers are more likely to engage with the posts on your profile since they have higher intent on search engines than Instagram, Facebook, and other posting platforms.
Ask and answer questions
You can encourage a customer to choose your business by answering the customer’s questions. It is unfortunate that when people ask questions on your Google My Business profile, anyone can answer; thereby leading to inaccurate information on your GMB profile. To stay ahead of the questions and answers posted on your profile, it is advisable to set up notifications. Also, create a list of FAQs as touching your business and answer the questions on your profile.
Add your products and services
If what you offer is not well stated in your business name, it is important to add the products and services section to your profile. You should also add content to your profile so that they can rank for relevant searches.
Include the name, price, and description of your products and services when adding them to your profile. The description will show up whenever a prospective customer clicks on the product.
Wrapping Up
Just like any Search Engine Optimization strategy, your Google My Business strategy must focus on providing as much useful information about your brand as possible. This information should not be restricted to your GMB profile alone but must also be available on your website, review sites, and social media platforms. The ultimate goal of an optimized GMB profile is to connect your business to searchers that need the information you provide. Hence, ensure your Google My Business profile thoroughly represents your business.