GOOGLE MY BUSINESS: THE LOW DOWN
The benefits of Google My Business:
- Increased visibility in search
- Your business displayed on Google maps
- More traffic to your website
An optimised GMB page helps Google understand more about your business: who you are, what services/products you sell, where you’re located, and what your website is (so they can crawl it for more info).
The more Google knows about you, the more types of searches your GMB listing can appear in.
If you bear the above in mind when completing the sections of your GMB profile it will help you to maximise the benefits of having a profile.
So, let’s take a look at the three top issues which might be affecting how well your Google My Business profile is working.
NUMBER ONE – LOCATION
Are you a shop with a set location or are you a service that visits people at their location? This is the number one thing I have to fix for people in their GMB dashboard. Get this wrong and it massively affects how and who Google shows your business details to.
To fix this, go to your GMB dashboard and click on the ‘info’ tab on the left hand menu.
If you are a shop or have a set physical location that people come to you at, add your address. Eg. dog groomer with a salon, vets, pet shop
If you provide a service that you go to people’s houses to ‘deliver’ leave your address blank and go ahead and add in your service areas.
These settings change how Google shows your business in your knowledge panel. For examples of both please see the image below and compare with your own business and knowledge panel.
Whistle & Hound is a business on the high street. The knowledge panel shows a map with a pin at the address and a screenshot from Google Streetmap.
Charlie Bears Pet Care is a dog walking service in Croydon. Google shows a map with the area covered by the dog walker highlighted in red.
NUMBER TWO – BUSINESS DETAILS
You business details are incorrect or incomplete. It’s important to make the most of your GMB profile and optimise it to its fullest to get the most out of it. This means checking your dashboard on a weekly basis, making sure all the areas are filled in and correct.
For example, once verified you can add more than one category so if you are a dog groomers and a shop, you will have created your profile with just one category, now you can go and add the other one.
Have you added a business description? Does your business description include your services, keywords and areas you cover?
Are all sections of the photos tab populated?
Have you got up to date recent photos?
NUMBER THREE – REVIEWS
How many reviews have you got? One, two, none?
How do reviews make you feel when you are searching for a business? They make you feel good right? They increase your trust, you go ‘ooh, 5 stars, must be good’ kind of subconsciously.
If there are three business and only one has reviews, which one you gonna click on? The one with the reviews right!
So many businesses don’t have any reviews on GMB, don’t be that business, get a jump ahead and get those reviews!
Now not only are people more likely to click on your business profile with reviews but there’s another reason why reviews are important. Once you get 5 reviews Google will start to take notice of your business more and show it to more people. Top tip – make sure you reply to your reviews for an extra bit of google love.
Rosie’s little bit of magic to help get your reviews in.
One of your lovely clients or customers wants to leave you a review and asks how they do that. Awesome you think, but then you find it’s quite difficult describing how they have to search for you, find your knowledge panel and then find the review button, a bit like following directions with two many steps we get lost along the way.
So how about making them an instant magic link that when clicked takes them straight to the right page and then a lovely little review box pops up in front of their eyes for your business!
That would be pretty awesome right?
* * * * *
Do you need some help with your GMB? With all the changes that Google are making right now some profiles are getting ‘stuck’ in old mode and need a bit of a helping hand getting changes to stick, especially in the service area section.
If you’d like me to wave my magic GMB wand over your dashboard please give me a shout!
