This article is an important introduction to your Google Business Listing, also called Google Business Profile. Keep reading to discover important tips on how to best use your Google Business Listing, as well as some secret search ranking factors uncovered.
What is a Google Business Profile?
A Google Business Profile (also known as Google My Business and Google Business Listing) is a free tool for businesses and organizations that lets you manage your online presence on Google, specifically in Google Search and Google Maps.
If you’re just getting started with building up your online presence, a Google Business Listing is an important factor in getting found online. Remember, most customers are close to making a purchase when the business they searched for is near them. So make sure that the information they see about your business online search is accurate and complete.
Tips on How to Best Use Google My Business Listing
- keep your business listing fresh with new photos – if there are new products, services, equipment, people, finished project > post a pic
- when customers do leave reviews, add a response/reply to their comment to encourage loyalty
- add posts, even short ones are great – use these 4 Post Pillars as a guide What’s New, Events, Offers, Products
- use the Insights to see what’s working – find out the most viewed photos, posts, how they found you, how many called from your listing.
Have You Covered These Secret Ranking Factors?
There are some “secretly” significant search ranking factors in areas of your GMB (Google My Business) listing that not many businesses know about. Get these right and your listing will hit the competitive difference in online search results. There are quite a few, so I will just list those that should make sense to most, especially beginners…
- The association of an Active Youtube Account to your GMB Listing
- User added attributes in the GMB listing (eg adding photos & posts)
- Including your City/State on the webpage you link your listing to (typically home page)
- An embedded Google Map for Location on the web page listing links to
- Volume of content on the webpage
- Volume of quality content on the entire website
- Volume of quality content on the services page
- Website uses HTTPS by default
There is plenty more, but I think that’s enough for a starting point.
Why is Your Google Business Listing Important?
Your Google business listing plays a vital part in boosting your rankings for local search and in search optimisation for your website. As people use their mobiles to search for businesses (and especially when using the increasingly popular “near me” phrase in their search) the Google Map, to which your business listing is connected, is frequently displayed. Is your business visible on that map?
Increase Your Customer Reviews
Google uses many factors in determining what they present in search results, and positive reviews is a big one. My recommendation is to include asking customers to leave a review as part of your project completion or service follow up process.
This sums up our guide to the basic insights of GMB, I hope this article helped you understand Google My Business listing more and its importance as a part of your business.
Click here to create or manage your Google Business Listing.