Google My Business Listing (GMBL) is a simple and very basic Google App to list your business. It easily marks the digital presence of your business across Google including searches and maps.
Having a digital presence is one of the most important aspects of business growth in 2021 and beyond. Everything is getting digitized and customers, potential partners, prospects, employees greatly depend on digital presence as the ultimate social proof. Google My Business provides a free and extremely beneficial added brand recognition in numerous ways. It also provides an address where your potential customer can drop by and have a look without you taking them directly to your website. It’s basically a separate funnel for your business serving as a powerful lead gen & SEO tool.
How can you benefit from Google My Business Listing? (GMBL):
- Official digital address: when you have a GMBL, means you have an official business address just like a physical visiting card.
- Generates potential customers: the first thing which comes up in a customer’s mind is to Google. So when a customer Googles your business and effortlessly finds your business, address info, reviews, FAQs, quick call to action, phone call etc.. it provides a sense of trust which changes into a lead – a potential customer.
- Legit business: as a GMBL account is verified, it proves to the customer that it is legit business. Another way to convert customer into a potential customer.
- Increase in traffic: There is an increase in the number of clicks in your GMBL which leads to increased sales. GMBL provides you monthly updates on increased traffic, impressions and even phone calls from your Google listing.
- Free promotion: since it’s a free google application, your business gets free promotion. All you have to do is feed in the correct data and get your GMBL verified so that there is no duplicity or fake profiles. You can write posts, add business pictures, answer FAQs, show videos, and even add your ecommerce products for easy checkout.
What does a GMBL look like?
Everyone at this point should have already seen a GMB listing. In the above image, you can see the name, logo, address, phone number, website, directions, office timings are all given.
The above image was found by searching for pizza near me. If a person searches for “dry cleaners nearby” then if you have your GMBL your business details will come up in the latest results. How you optimize, your domain authority, and your social proof all play a part when your listings would pop up.
Now let’s get to what you want to know: how to optimize your GMBL?
List and verify: To verify your address, Google will mail you a special code that you’ll get within 5 business days at your business address. This verifies if your business does exist. Even though Google says “no virtual addresses” many times, they will overlook the location and still verify you as a specific address. A virtual address or virtual mailbox is an extremely affordable way of getting a real looking address for a fraction of what a POBox would cost. In addition virtual address centers even scan, deposit, forward and trash your mail if needed.
List all your details: listing all your details is a must. Make sure all details such as name, address, contact number, work timings, website, other social media presence, etc are meticulously filled in. It improves ranking in searches
Business Description: it’s highly recommended to give a basic but complete details of your business by using keywords related to your business
Add google reviews: Provides a way users can easily view social proof and proves as a reference of your company’s culture, products, and quality.
Respond to reviews: whenever there is review make sure you respond to all reviews. This not only provides you better SEO, it also shows users how you treat customers and customers with negative experiences.
Using specific keywords: Use your industry keywords, add categories and subcategories to your listing. You want to help Google understand your relevance in your industry.
Using optimized images: making use of highly optimized images is yet another way to optimize your google account. Putting up your logo, images of your office or workplace creates a good attractive image. Adding Geotagged images help add an extra boost to your local seo as well.
Tag google maps: tagging one’s location on Google maps is yet one of the SEO basics. With increased use of Google maps one can easily find your workplace.
Add questions and answers: this is one element that is highly overlooked. Adding simple Q&A will help users find out if your business is right for their needs.
Add products: it’s highly recommended to list your products and services, along with above said pointers. List, describe, rate, and optimize your products. If you have an ecommerce store, connect your products here as well.
Review your GMBL: every week review your GMBL through Google Analytics and see how many customers viewed your data. Create and track Goals to learn from customer experiences.
Update: updating your data whenever changes happen. For example, phone number, or email id, or web address from .com to .in. Google and other search engines want to see the EXACT address, phone, keywords on ALL directory and listing sites.
website data is SEO optimized: by using keywords and other SEO tools, get your website SEO optimized. It will improve customer traffic and leads.
Consistency and Uniformity: Again, keep your data consistent and uniform. For example- if the address website has street No. 05, then in GMBL please don’t change it to St. No. 5. Make sure everywhere, it is street No. 05. Yes, these little things matter.
Give Google all the data related to your business: handing over your business data to Google is like placing your business in Google’s hands. Google will place your data in the correct fields as long as you place the data in the right spots.
How an optimized GMBL looks?
Final Thoughts
Having an optimized My Google Business Listing is a great way to extend digital presence, brand recognition and will provide added value to your business in the long run. It has numerous advantages: more customer visits, increased sales, higher keyword rankings, impressions and clicks. So to improve the visibility of your business it is highly recommended to make use this simple, but often overlooked free marketing tool from Google.
My Google Business Listing and My Google Business go hand in hand.
It takes time to set up the GMBL account, so invest your time and efforts, if possible hire SEO experts like CuriousCheck who will make it easier for you, once your digital foundation is strong, your web presence structure is going exponetially increase.
