Are potential customers able to quickly find information about your business when performing a local search online?  

Think about someone in the area who has a need for what you sell.  They pick up their phone and enter a search term in Google.  Do they find your business?  Are they able to learn something about your business that will prompt them to take another step?  What they find (or don’t find) during the next step is crucial.  

During the initial searching stage, people are forming opinions about your business before they visit your website.  Google Business profiles help create memorable first impressions. Some argue that Google wants to keep visitors on their platform and be an equivalent of the home page of your website, so it’s important to keep a robust profile.  Keep the following in mind.

1. Claiming and contributing to your free business profile on Google improves local search rankings.  This is where you can control how your business appears in Search and Maps.

2. Your profile shares the essential details of your business while a potential customer is contemplating their next step.  It contains your location, hours, phone number, web address, services provided, photos, videos, news, reviews and some branding elements like a logo and cover photo. 

3. Here, you may respond to customer reviews. This demonstrates you are listening and are dedicated to the customer experience.  Review responses also contribute to improved local search rankings!

Perhaps the most impactful and underutilized feature of Google Business Profile is Updates. New updates may be shared with photos or videos, details about what’s new, the benefits of your products and services, or information regarding upcoming events and current offers.  A user finds these by clicking on Updates, which can be found right next to the Overview section.  Call-to-Action buttons like Learn More, Sign Up, and Order Online complete this marketing effort to bring the customer your way.

You can increase the number of calls, direction requests and website clicks by using more images.  Many more images.  Studies by BrightLocal showed a direct correlation between the number of images and actions that came from Google My Business, which is what it was formerly called. Analysts found that businesses with over 100 images received 520% more calls than average!  Categorize them to make it user-friendly.

Don’t lose out on potential business!  Understand how Google determines local rankings.  Per Google, local results are based primarily on relevance, distance and prominence.  These factors are combined to help find the best match for each search.  For example, your business may perfectly suit the needs of someone near to you. However, Google algorithms might decide a business that’s farther away from your location is more likely to have what a person is looking for, and therefore rank a farther business higher in local results. Avoid this by keeping your listing complete and accurate.  

Opportunity awaits! Take a look at this study, performed by Google My Business Gold Product Expert, Ben Fisher, that was published on Moz.com: 

He looked at a total of 2,000 Google My Business profiles that comprised the top 20 results in the Local Finder of 10 U.S. cities. He searched for highly competitive keyword phrases  including real estate agent, mortgage, travel agency, insurance or insurance agents, dentist, plastic surgeon, personal injury lawyer, plumber, veterinarian or vet, and locksmith.

• A total of 59.60% of businesses had posted a Google My Business Post on their Google My Business profile.

• Of those, 17.5% of businesses had an active post in the last 7 days

• 40.4% have never created a post

See the opportunity to improve your local ranking among competitors? Now is a good time to lay the groundwork for the future.  

Need to announce an early closing, holiday or seasonal hours?  Use your account to edit hours on the spot. 

Remember to go through the verification process - it’s easy and makes your business twice as likely to be viewed as reputable by potential customers.  You can also set reminders to log in to your dashboard to regularly make updates, respond to reviews and learn from the data provided in Insights. 

Review and use Insights to help guide other marketing decisions. Top keywords used in searches is provided at month’s end. These keywords should appear on your website or in blog posts.

Here’s an example of how helpful the data in Insights can be:  I worked with a client that utilized both billboards and Facebook mobile ads. It was a little tricky to navigate to their restaurant from the highway exit. Luckily, Insights allowed us to see where people were when they requested directions to my client’s business.  Knowing where potential customers became confused was extremely helpful when confirming locations for billboards that included a depiction of where the restaurant was situated on a frontage road.  It was also useful in pinpointing their ad delivery radius for mobile phones. 

You’ll find some interesting features in the Marketing Kit as well, such as free social post designs that populate information from your profile. 

If you don’t have brick and mortar locations, you can still use Google My Business to your advantage.  Businesses without websites can even have Google build a basic one through this service, without any fees. 

Manage your profile easily through Google Maps and Search! Either enter your business name or “my business” into the search bar.

Finally, a streamlining tip: after writing a complete, succinct business description that includes keywords a potential customer might use in a search, make use of it across other online directories like Yelp or Facebook. (Definitely check out search query results in Insights for help with search terms used!)  It’s vital that your business name, address and phone number are written exactly the same on all of these.  (If you used “Avenue” on one, don’t use “Ave” on another.)  

Applaud yourself for taking the right steps to improve your local ranking!

Added in 2021: The “years in business” label became available. Adding your opening date adds to your credibility!

Changed in 2021: The name changed from Google My Business to Google Business Profile.