Google Business Profile: A Valuable Tool for Your Online Presence

Google Business Profile is a versatile and user-friendly tool designed to enhance your online presence across Google products like Search and Maps. It offers a range of features allowing you to showcase crucial details about your business, from contact information to services, photos, reviews, and more. Additionally, it empowers you to engage with customers through updates, message responses, and performance tracking.

Boosting Your Business: The Importance of Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile holds immense value for businesses seeking to connect with online audiences. This section elucidates its significance in attracting and engaging potential customers actively searching for your products or services. Furthermore, it explores how an optimized profile can improve local SEO rankings, increase visibility, and set you apart from competitors, ultimately driving more clicks, calls, visits, and sales.

Quick Guide To Managing a Google Business Profile

Claim Your Listing

Claiming your listing is the first step to creating and managing your Google Business Profile. It allows you to verify that you are the owner of the business and gain access to edit and update your profile information. To claim your listing, you need to search for your business on Google and see if it already has a listing. If not, you can add your listing by following the instructions on Google My Business. If so, you can claim the existing listing by clicking on the “Own this business?” link and following the verification process.

Verify Your Business

Verifying your business is a crucial step to ensure that your profile is authentic and accurate. It also helps you protect your profile from unauthorized changes or spam. Google will send a postcard with a verification code to your physical address within 14 days. You need to enter this code on your Google My Business account to verify your business. Alternatively, you can also verify your business by phone, email, or video, depending on the availability of these options for your business category and location.

Completely Fill Out Your Profile

Filling out your profile completely is essential to provide customers with all the information they need to know about your business and services. It also helps you rank higher on Google Search and Maps, as Google favors profiles that are complete and relevant. You need to add your business name, address, phone number, website, opening hours, photos, services, products, attributes like wheelchair accessible, etc. You also need to write a compelling business description that summarizes what you do and why customers should choose you. Make sure that all the information you provide is accurate and consistent across all platforms.

Optimize Your Profile for SEO

Optimizing your profile for SEO is important to increase your visibility and attract more customers online. SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is the process of improving your website and profile to match the keywords and phrases that customers use to search for your business or services on Google. You need to include relevant keywords in your business name, description, services, etc. For example, if you are a florist in Newton Abbot, some of the keywords you could use are “florist Newton Abbot”, “flower delivery Newton Abbot”, “wedding flowers Newton Abbot”, etc. You also need to avoid keyword stuffing or using irrelevant or misleading keywords that can hurt your rankings and reputation.

Get Reviews

Review are covered in full by the Reputation Management Expert

Getting reviews is one of the most effective ways to build trust and credibility with potential customers. Reviews can influence customer decisions, improve your local SEO rankings, and showcase your customer satisfaction and loyalty. You need to encourage customers to leave detailed positive reviews on your profile after every purchase or service. You can do this by sending them a direct link to your review form, creating a QR code that leads to the form, or using a third-party tool that automates the review collection process. You also need to respond to reviews, both positive and negative, in a professional and timely manner. Thank them for their feedback, address any issues or complaints, and show them that you care about their experience.

Interact on Your Listing

Interacting on your listing is a great way to engage with your customers and keep them updated on your latest news, offers, events, or tips related to your business. You can do this by replying to customer questions and reviews on your profile to show them that you are responsive and attentive. You can also create engaging posts that showcase your products, services, promotions, or announcements on your profile. These posts can appear on Google Search and Maps and help you attract more attention and traffic. You can also add events such as webinars, workshops, or sales that customers can join or register for on your profile.

Cite Your Listing

Citations are explored in detail by the Citations Expert

Citing your listing means making sure that your Google Business Profile information matches on other websites or platforms where your business is listed or mentioned, such as Yelp, Facebook, Bing, Apple Maps, etc. These websites or platforms are called citations sources and they help establish your online presence, authority, and relevance in your industry and location. They also send signals to Google that boost your local SEO rankings and visibility. You need to build citations by getting listed on relevant and reputable citation sources for your business category and location. You also need to maintain citations by updating them regularly whenever there are changes to your profile information.

Earn Badges

Badges are icons that appear on your profile and highlight some of the features or offerings of your business that customers may be interested in or looking for. For example, some of the badges that Google offers are “Black-owned”, “Women-led”, “Veteran-led”, “Service area delivery”, “Online care”, etc. These badges can help you boost your visibility and differentiate yourself from your competitors. They can also help you attract customers who support or prefer businesses with these badges. You need to aim to qualify for and display relevant badges for your business on your profile. You can do this by checking the eligibility criteria and applying for the badges on your Google My Business account.

Monitor Analytics

Monitoring analytics is a key step to measure and improve your profile performance and customer engagement. Analytics are data and statistics that show you how customers interact with your profile and find your business online. You can access these analytics on your Google My Business account under the “Insights” tab. Some of the analytics that you can monitor are:

• How customers find your listing: This shows you how many customers found you through direct search (they searched for your business name or address), discovery search (they searched for a category, product, or service that you offer), or branded search (they searched for a brand related to your business).
• Where customers find you on Google: This shows you how many customers found you on Google Search or Google Maps.
• Customer actions: This shows you what actions customers took on your profile, such as visiting your website, calling you, requesting directions, or messaging you.
• Direction requests: This shows you where customers are coming from when they request directions to your business on Google Maps.
• Phone calls: This shows you when and how often customers call you through your profile.
• Photo views: This shows you how many times your photos have been viewed compared to photos of similar businesses.

You need to check your analytics regularly to see what works and what doesn’t work for your profile and find opportunities for improvement. You can also use these analytics to set goals and track your progress.

Stay Active

Staying active is the final step to maintain and optimize your profile for success. It means logging in frequently to your Google My Business account and responding to any new reviews, messages, or listing updates needed to keep your profile current and accurate. It also means keeping an eye on your competitors and industry trends and adjusting your profile accordingly. Staying active can help you improve your customer service, reputation, and local SEO rankings. It can also help you prevent any issues or errors that may affect your profile performance or visibility.

Below is Jason’s recommended training resources to give you a good understanding of Claiming, completing, verifying and managing Google Business Profiles.

These two short videos will open help you understand the additional Google terms of service and guidelines linked to using Google Business Profiles.

What Is Google My Business Profile and How Does it Work?.

How to Setup a Google My Business Listing

How To Verify Google My Business Profile by Post Card, Phone and Video

Better Optimized Google My Business Page – Step By Step Directions