How To Optimise Google My Business For Better Performance!
Google My Business offers you a free business listing on the most used search engine in the world What better marketing real estate could you ask for?
Low cost, high value and easy to manage, it’s a great place to increase your chances of being seen online.
But setting one up is only a small part of the journey, so let’s boost your listing today!
so you’ve started from fresh, or claimed your listing… you’ve filled in all the relevant details and your Google My Business page is complete.
Good job!
But how do you make it extra special and search friendly, using all the tools available on the platform from the search engine visits?
You may have noticed that I mentioned Google My Business as being low-cost, and yes, by that I mean it’s free.
The only cost is that of your time, and only you can set that value.
But, should you follow my advice, optimising your Google My Business page for optimum performance should be a total breeze.
The information you provide through Google My Business can appear in Google Search and Google Maps, so keeping it up to date and optimised is key to success.
So, with that in mind, here are some crucial tips for optimising your listings…
Tell them everything!
When someone searches for something you do, sell, or offer, then local search results will favour your listing if it’s the most relevant.
You wouldn’t want to appear for garden sheds if you’re a garage door company, would you?
Because of this you need to make sure you don’t leave things to chance because Google might be clever, but it’s not THAT clever.
Make sure your listing communicates with potential customers what your business does, where it is, and how they can purchase your products or services
Keep it keyword cool
Just like other forms of search, Google will look for a variety of signals in order to serve the searcher your listing.
These signals are things you can put in place in the form of keywords and search phrases.
The kinda things people will type into Google in order to find your product or services.
So if you serve vegan and gluten-free food in Folkestone, then make sure you include those keywords!
It’s also really important to Google that all mentions of your name, address and phone number are consistent across the internet do some research and make sure that the info on your Google My Business page matches what’s on your website and elsewhere across the net.
Let them know when you’re around…
Nothing is more annoying than wandering down to the restaurant you’ve wanted to try for ages only to find it was shut for a national holiday you didn’t know about! Don’t be that business.
Keep your opening hours up to date.
Consider it a very important element of customer service.
You can enter your business hours on Google My Business, but you’ve got to make sure you update them whenever they might change.
Google also offers the ability to customise hours for holidays and other special occasions so you don’t have to reset them every week.
Add some personality with your photos
What’s a better way to prove you’re the real deal, than by posting a photo?
Photos will help your business listing performance more than you may think. In fact, if you have them, you’re likely to receive 42% more requests for directions, and 35% more click-throughs to your website than listings without photos.
or so says Google Your most important photo will be your profile image, the one that will get the most exposure and, hopefully, have the most impact.
But don’t forget to also add a cover photo and additional images to show off your business, painting it in such a way that will make your business irresistible to the user.
And finally, manage the way people speak about you
Your Google My Business listing is a great place for customers to leave reviews about their experience for the world wide web to see.
Because of how public these reviews are, it’s important to manage and respond to them, illustrating business values and customer service.
You can ask people to leave a review once they’ve visited your store or used your service, hopefully inspiring future customers.
Other than people saying nice things about you, there’s also the added bonus of positive reviews increasing your business’s visibility in search.
So, by implementing a few of these things onto your Google My Business profile, you can expect to see some more GIANT results.
We’ll look into it in more detail another time, but you can even look at the analytics within the Google My Business platform to monitor the success of your efforts.