Whether you have a website or an offline business, it is important to be listed on Google My Business.
If You THINK—–
“I don’t need Google My Business as I have a website.”
“I have a small store. So, GMB is useless.”
“Google My Business is a “set and forget” thing. Don’t worry about that.”
You think like that because Google My Business is a free tool. Right? And free things are never valued—let’s accept it.
But not having Google My Business or not optimizing your GMB profile can cost you a huge number of potential customers.
Over 80% of people search businesses over the Internet. And 46% of them are of local intent, meaning that half of the searches made for local business.
Google My Business helps capture those searches as it displays the businesses on the top SERPs.
For example, if a user searches for a local coffee shop, Google will display all nearest coffee shops with their reviews, photos and map directions. Your coffee shop will be displayed in the search results if it is listed with Google My Business. A user will likely to opt for the attractive listings.
It is a basic yet effective way to brand your business online.
This is why you shouldn’t undervalue Google My Business.
However, it is important to understand some aspects of GMB like reasons, benefits and process to make the most of it.
Here we go…
What is Google My Business?
(A Quick Refresher)
Google My Business is a free tool by Google. It lets the businesses create and manage their business info (listing) like address, website, reviews, and photos. This business info appears on the search results and Google Maps as well. The business listing instantly shows all provided info to the users. You can think it as online version of Yellow Pages. The business owners can edit and add info to take charge of how their business info is shown across all of Google’s products.
How Google My Business Can Benefit Your Business?
You must have understood that Google My Business displays your business details like address, contact number and images both in SERPs and MAP. And this thing leads your business to some big (much needed) benefits given below…
1. Ultimate Visibility:
A high visibility panel near the top of the page (below paid ads) appears whenever you search on Google. This panel contains 3 local business listings and their information. It is called the Local-3 Packs. The information which pops up about your company in this 3 Pack is your Google My Business listing. The panel is followed by Google Map. The organic search results are placed thereafter.
Having your Google My Business listing occur in Local 3-Pack for search terms can give you ultimate visibility.
2. Helps the Customers Find You:
With Google My Business, you can list the exact address and location of your business on Google Map. Google also shows the directions along with your business info. This ensures that users can find you easily without make a manual search on Google Map or digging into scribbled instructions to find you.
3. It’s Free:
GMB effectively puts your business in front of many prospective customers without charging you a single penny. It is free business listing tool. Your free GMB profile will let the customers know more about your business like busiest hours or ratings. Although you may not get benefits like Google Ads, you can still manage to top SERPs by optimizing your Google My Business listing.
4. Shows Useful Information:
With Google My Business, you can show latest information about your business. For example, you can show your hours of operation, busy hours, directions, photos, book now button, business description, etc.. The display of your business listing will also look impressive and clean across all devices like tablets and smartphones.
5. Getting Customer Insights and Tracking Metrics:
How customers find you? What they do once they find your business? What are their queries about your business? Do they view your photos or make phone calls?
Google My Business has the Insights tab to show you all these analytics. It will help you know the engagement and visibility of your business listing. On the basis of this, you can make more improvement.
How to Optimize Google My Business Page?
No doubt that Google My Business page improves your business visibility in the SERPs. But that doesn’t happen with a mere creation of the listing. Or you just create it and forget it.
Be mindful of what to include in your business listing and make sure to optimize it timely.
- Create Your Google My Business profile HERE (if you haven’t set up the one yet).
- Make sure to choose a relevant category for your business. If there is no relevant category, opt for a more general one that closely describes your business.
- Turn on “Suggest an Edit” option.
- Add high quality photos. It will make your listing more appealing for the users. You can also incorporate a 360-view virtual tour of your business.
- The information should matches everywhere else as Google strictly checks how a listing is done across the different platforms or sites. For example, the address should be the same each time you feed it somewhere.
- Use a phone number with local code as it signals Google that you are actually a local business.
- Ask for reviews as 90% of people read reviews before buying. While good reviews can translate to more sales, bad reviews give you an opportunity to make improvement.
- Activate messaging feature in Google My Business will let your customers ask your question via SMS. This is because not all customers ask you over phone.
- Add a post feature to show latest updates.
Signing OFF…
So you must have understood how Google My Business can benefit your business along with the ways to do it rightly. What do you think? Do you have more ideas to make Google My Business more effective? Please share with us by commenting below.