Google My Business (GMB) | Connect With Target Customers
So you’ve got your business up and running, and you’d like to start creating your Google My Business (GMB) listing so customers can find you when searching online. Unfortunately, you don’t have the time to sit down and figure out precisely what you need to include in your business listing. By all means, as professional business marketers, we use GMB, too.
In particular, for our official website presence to enjoy its unique services and solutions support for various reasons. For instance, people searching for your business on Google may see links to your business’s social profiles. That’s in addition to your other business information in the Knowledge Panel through Google Search Results.
And, for your information, Google gathers business information from various sources. It may include it to give customers a more detailed business overview. Furthermore, social profile information is automatically added to listings for eligible companies. So, if you haven’t claimed or added your business to Google My Business yet, why not try it?
As such, we strongly recommend you first go and add your business to GMB by visiting https://business.google.com/ to get started for free. After all, you can follow us until the end to learn how the Google My Business (GMB) service works and how to use it. Plus, you’ll learn how Google sources and uses info in business profiles and local search results.
Understanding What Google My Business (GMB) Offers
To enumerate, just like we mentioned, Google My Business (GMB) is a free and easy-to-use tool for businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps. Verifying and editing your business information can help customers find your business and tell them your story.
We recently installed the new business edition of the Google Custom Search Engine for our website users. It took about 5 minutes to set up and will likely pay for itself many times. You can use it by using the search box on the right rail. Google’s custom search engine is easy to customize, fast to implement, works across multiple domains, and is cheap.
It costs $100 a year for up to 5K pages and $500 for 50K pages. It also lets the owner see search frequency and your most popular queries. After all, there is too much information to fill out, photos to add, and services to include that make you want to pull your hair out before you even start. That said, below is a simple GMB tutorial video guide:
GMB gives business owners more control over how their business appears to customers searching online. Google My Business lets business owners speak directly to potential customers before conversing. And now, let’s learn how to get started with a custom GMB profile properly and effectively.
Google My Business (GMB) — Connect With Lead Customers
As mentioned, Google My Business is an online marketing platform that can help you improve your visibility and reach potential customers. Setting up a Google My Business account lets you quickly post information about your business, including pricing and availability, reviews of your past customers, and more.
Google displays profiles (including business profiles) on Google Search and Google Maps to provide users with the most complete and up-to-date information about places and third-party websites and applications through APIs like those on the Google Maps Platform. Google may also use profile information to generate insights and leads for enterprise customers.
For example, if customers search for a restaurant you manage, they can find the information you’ve added, such as when you’re open and where you’re located. They also might get the information you haven’t added to your business profile. Such as a website link to your menu or photos customers have uploaded of meals they’ve enjoyed.
Overall, the combination of information provided by you and other sources lets customers make informed decisions about your location. Also, as a result, users may find personalized recommendations and matches based on their preferences. In reality, the information in profiles is compiled from various sources.
Some Sources Include:
- Publicly-available information, such as crawled web content (e.g., information from a business’ official website)
- Licensed data from third parties
- Users who contribute factual information (such as addresses and phone numbers) and content (such as photos and reviews), including business owners who claim profiles through Google Business Profile
- Credible information based on Google’s interactions with a local place or business
In short, whether it’s a DIY journey or working with a local SEO company, the first step in local SEO is to claim and verify your GMB listing. Remember that having an optimized GMB can help you improve the chances of your local business showing up in Google’s Local Map Pack, Google Maps, and the organic rankings.
Every day, millions of people search on Google for businesses like yours. In that case, make your Business Profile stand out and turn those searches into your customers with the Google My Business app (download on Google Play).
The Google, My Business App, Allows You To:
- Respond to reviews, message your customers, and see your followers in the Customers tab.
- Make edits to your Business Profile and see those changes on Google in real time.
- Upload photos, create enticing offers, and share what makes the business unique.
- See in one glance how and how much your customers interact with your Business Profile right from the app’s Home tab.
- Get real-time notifications on Google to know when a customer connects with your business.
- Focus on what you love and rest easy knowing that Google My Business is on the clock, helping you get more customers.
- Manage multiple locations from one dashboard and invite others to manage your listing.
Permission Notice:
- Location: Needed to use your current location as your business location
- Contacts: Needed to auto-complete email addresses when inviting others to manage your listing and to make Bookings for Customers stored in your device contacts
- Storage: Needed to access photos taken at your business location
What Is New!
Easier than ever to attract new customers:
- Post button – a one-stop-shop to easily add posts and photos to your Business Profile
- Profile tab – review your Business Profile info, photos, and posts, all in one place
New ways to interact with customers:
- Customers tab – the home for connecting with your customers on Google
- Messaging – respond to messages from your Business Profile within the app
- Followers – see and post to your followers on Google
So, which is an example of Google My Business (GMB) per see? Well, in the first place, our Custom Search Results Page is a great Google example of a credible search results engine that we have customized to suit all our web users’ needs best. Whereby it allows you to locate your specific topics online quickly.
Equally important, it’s worth mentioning that you can input the list of the Keywords or Meta Tags associated with your query. In addition, you’ll find more answers through the jmexclusives FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) Page. However, many factors influence whether the social links appear in your Google Business listing.
Including:
- Consistency. Use the same name in your listing and social profiles to represent your business.
- Authenticity. If available, verify your profile using the social media site’s verification process. This helps Google determine that an owner or authorized business representative manages the social profile. Note that not all sites have verification processes available to all users.
- Structured data. Use social profile markup on your official website to specify which social profile link you’d like to appear in your listing.
How To Optimize Your Google My Business Listing
A Google My Business profile is essential for Local SEO as it enables you to search in local search results for queries related to your services or products based on your location. Once listed, the information from your Google My Business account will appear on various resource application platforms.
Including:
- Your Google Plus
- Google Maps
- The Google Search
Use markup on your official website to add your social profile information to a Google Knowledge panel. Whereby Knowledge panels display your social profile information in some Google Search results. In addition to the general structured data guidelines, Social Profile markup should follow specific guidelines.
For example, the social profiles in your markup must correspond to what users see on the same page. Notwithstanding, there are other Social Profiles that Google My Business supports. For instance, you can use structured data markup in your public website to specify your preferred social profiles. As such, you can identify various types of social profiles.
Including:
- YouTube
- Myspace
- SoundCloud
- Tumblr
You can also specify other social profiles, but they aren’t currently included in Google Search results. When a user searches for your business’s name, it appears above the fold on mobile devices and the top right-hand side of the desktop search results. By all means, the users can get all your essential business information, such as phone number, address, and opening hours. Of course, the users can easily find you on Maps and track the routes to your physical location.
Don’t forget that you can get automatically connected to your G+ (Note: Google Plus will no longer be available after 2 April 2019). You can build a profile, post updates, and share the latest news regarding your business. However, if you want to reap all these benefits, you must improve the prominence of your business in Google My Business listing.
1. Fill out the necessary information
Before implementing any advanced strategies, you must ensure that your business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) are consistent and up-to-date across the web. This gives your Google My Business listings the most potential to represent your business. It would help if you also focus on other essential factors.
Such as follows:
- Put a high-quality logo
- Update opening hours
- Choose the right category
- Upload quality photos
- Update your website’s URL
2. Build Local Google Business Citations
For any business, having a consistent NAP is highly crucial to ranking well in local search results. Google considers third-party data accounts to determine which business to show up for geo-type searches. If the information about your business is not the same across the web, it will impact your local search ranking. So, you should regularly check, clean up, and build local citations on quality business directories.
3. Go on the Google’s 360 Tour
Why not give your potential customers an inside look at your business with Google 360 Virtual Tour? With Google Maps ‘street view’ option, you can let the users see your business location through 360-degree photographs. You can add a ‘business view’ simply by allowing a Google-approved photographer to take some photos. All these aspects increase your brand’s online presence and familiarity.
4. Try to get positive reviews
Like online review websites, you can ask customers for reviews and feedback, which helps a search engine like Google or Bing to authenticate the users’ experience with your business. If you have more positive reviews, it creates an impression that more people are feeling comfortable doing business with you. Besides building positive reviews, you should also focus on mitigating negative feedback. It would help never to ignore negative reviews and respond quickly and appropriately. While positive reviews give your local business a competitive edge, negative reviews destroy your credentials.
To get more reviews:
- Ask your customers for more reviews
- Encourage customers to rate your business
- Use an email marketing list
- Offer incentives to every review
- Share reviews on social networking sites
- Give incentives to employees who gather reviews
5. Strengthen your website connection
As an example, there are several strategies that you can implement on your website to boost the local connection signals between your website and Google My Business profile.
- Display your business name, address, and phone number on the website.
- Incorporate organizational schema Markup onto your homepage to showcase additional details such as social profiles, logos, etc.
- Try to get more links from high-authority websites
- Try creating different landing pages, primarily if you operate your business elsewhere.
In addition, it would help if you also focused on general Technical SEO in your strategic Google My Business (GMB) profile optimization plan. Remember, driving a lot of organic traffic and ranking well on search results will aid you in local searches.
Takeaway Notes:
As a rule of thumb, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a marketing discipline focused on growing organic visibility (non-paid) search engine results. Additionally, it is the process of improving your website’s position in the “organic” search results. For example, websites such as Google, Yandex, Bing, Yahoo, etc. often return them. Search Engine Optimization isn’t just about building yourself a search engine-friendly website.
Eventually, SEO is about improving your digital online business website for people, too. Furthermore, our Web Tech Experts Team believes that these principles go hand-in-hand. Equally important, sites with higher results will get more traffic to their pages. This is coupled with potentially more landing page visits, lead conversion, and product sales in your business. Be that as it may, you can learn more about How To Optimize Your Business Listing on Google My Business.
Eventually, it may sound unimportant, but trust us, it is the most crucial step toward your business growth. As can be seen, getting your business on Google My Business (GMB) will help you increase your chances of showing up on Google’s local search results—as well as Google Maps and organic search results. Already set-up businesses can claim this free business listing on Google My Business and include information about their company.
Such as;
- their business address,
- business phone number,
- business hours,
- the types of payment methods they accept to make the purchase, etc.
With this in mind, we hope you have gathered enough information regarding the above-revised guide on Google My Business (GMB) and how to optimize your profile for high-ranking possibility and more presence awareness potential.
Other More Related Resources:
- How Do You Generate Lead Conversions?
- What Is Search Engine Optimization?
- Social Media Marketing (SMM) For Beginners
- Email Marketing Masters Guide In Publishing
- What Is Search Engine Marketing?
Don’t have time to work on effective Google My Business (GMB) optimization strategies? Don’t worry; you can Contact Us or even Call Us (+254-724-944-456) today for free consultancy support! Let our experts do it for you! Finally, visit our official partner website blog for more details on digital online services & solutions support. Furthermore, if you have additional information, contributions, or even suggestions, please share some or more of your thoughts in the comments box below this post. We wish you all the Best!
