5 Ways to Optimize your Google My Business Listing
Just a few days ago, I saw a stat that surprised me.
Only 44% of local businesses have claimed their Google My Business Listing.
This was really interesting to me. After all, 60% of people use their smartphones to search for local products or services.
Information is at our fingertips! So how come local businesses haven’t claimed their rightful spot on Google? This question remains unanswered!
If you’re in the group of non-Google-users, try to answer these questions:
What do your customers find when they search for your business online?
How quickly can customers find your contact info?
If they want to know what your business hours are, how can they find out?
You need to make sure this information is available with a quick google search (or your competition will grab these customers first).
But how?
Google My Business, or GMB, is an online listing of your business’ hours, reviews, updates, images, physical location and so much more. Although this information is likely on your website, GMB indexes this content to provide consistency and access to searchers on the web.
When used correctly, GMB is a powerful tool that can increase your revenue and provide important information about your customers. GMB is an incredibly valuable (and easy, and free) tool that helps you:
- Communicate with searchers online to provide important information about your business
- Manage your online reviews and reputation
- Gather insights about how your customers find your website and listing
- Gain more leads by providing an easy way for customers to reach out
- Increase your website’s SEO (25% of local SEO impact comes from Google My Business!)
I’m going to explain how you can optimize your GMB listing for free to make more sales.
If you haven’t claimed your business on Google yet, do that.
Start here. Many businesses claim their listing and forget about it. What businesses don’t realize (and here is where you’ll be ahead of the game), is that there are a variety of other features you can use to consistently optimize your listing.
Complete all the information Google asks for (and then some)
There are several questions that Google wants you to fill out in order to complete your Google My Business listing. When you’re done this, you’ll have very basic data for your customers to find. This will get the job done, however, there are a variety of other optional elements you can add to put your listing closer to the top. These include:
- Photos of the inside and outside of your business’ space
- Your business’ description
- Services you offer + pricing
- Frequent posting of any updates you have
- All the contact information you have for your business (all of it)
TIP: It is important to check in with your Google My Business listing frequently, because searchers can actually suggest and make changes to your listing without you knowing!
For example, your business category could be changed from specifically, “doughnut shop” to generic “candy store”, which could negatively affect your search rankings.
Start using Google My Business Posts
Google posts are almost like social media posts that show up in Google’s search results. These posts will ensure that your business’ content is always fresh and updated, which will place to you closer to the top of Google’s results.
Not sure what kind of things to post about? Here’s some ideas:
- New events or tradeshows you’ll be attending that you’re prepping for
- A new product you’re launching
- Is your latest blog post amazing? Promote it!
To grab a searcher’s attention, make sure you add a photo to go along with your post. I bet a lot of your competitors aren’t taking advantage of this – so use this as an opportunity to stand out!
TIP: Use emojis in your posts! People are beginning to search with emojis (i.e. [sushi emoji + near me] to find the closest sushi restaurants) so make sure you’re accommodating that. Try not to go overboard though.
Set up the Messaging Feature
Did you know that your customers can message you through your Google My Business listing? This is a great way to reduce the steps it takes for customers to contact you, making this process easy and seamless for them.
TIP: You can set up these messages to go directly to your phone number, or you can download the Google My Business app and receive messages there – the latter might help to keep your personal + business lives separate.
Start conversations with the Q&A Feature
The Q&A feature allows searchers to ask questions about your business that you can answer. This is the perfect opportunity to hear directly from your customers and respond to them appropriately. Win-win!
Get your customers to review your business
Google encourages businesses to ethically ask for reviews from customers. By collecting as many positive reviews as you can, your business will stand out in a sea of search results. Online reviews will impact searchers’ trust, and willingness to buy.
Get more out of your Google My Business Listing
Google is always looking at the engagement that you and your searchers have with your Google My Business listing. The more interaction you have, the better your chances are of ranking higher in organic search rankings. This means you need to continuously optimize your listing.
As new features come out, plan on using them to keep your listing fully optimized! And check in on this blog – I’ll be adding new features here when they’re available.
Hopefully these features have given you a new reason to login to your Google My Business listing and get started! Alternatively, you can lean on me for daily, weekly or monthly updates to stay fully optimized.
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I’ll be eternally grateful.
