Google My Business: An Introduction
Google My Business is a free tool provided by Google. It’s essentially a way of managing your Google Business Profile and provides you with the tools to promote your business, publicise any updates and interact with your customers. Google Business Profile and Google My Business are two separate entities: your profile is how your business itself appears on Google and Google My Business is how you’re able to manage said profile.
It’s important to understand that you can optimise your Google profile just as you would your website. Google will pick up on keyword searches, relevance, how active you are and so much more.
Consistency Is Key
To optimise your profile when setting up your account, make sure your business name is identical to your store/logo signage. This will help customers to recognise your business profile and will also reduce the risk of Google noticing any inconsistencies that may negatively impact your ranking. The same advice goes for your company address – ensure this matches how it is listed elsewhere. For example, if you’ve shortened ‘street’ to ‘st’, keep this the same across all platforms.
Make sure to complete every section provided on your profile as this will most likely attract more customers.
Tips To Optimise Your Google My Business Profile
- Be sure to include holiday hours as well as regular hours – keeping customers updated on little tidbits of information like this can reduce the risk of a bad experience and therefore a negative review.
- Include keywords in your ‘from the business’ description – this will help you appear in keyword searches as well as discovery and direct searches.
- Choose a category – this will help your business appear in discovery searches. Discovery searches are searches for a product or service rather than a company. 84% of searches are discovery compared to the 16% that are direct.
- Get good Google reviews – the first three local results are always those with lots of reviews and the best star ratings!
- Post to your profile in the same way you would to your social profiles – when googling something we know what we want/are looking for. The posts on your profile are more likely to be interacted with as they may relate to whatever query a customer may have. Being active will also have a positive impact on your rankings.
Keep It Updated
Google recognises how active you are on your GMB. Other factors that will help boost your ranking are the quality of information present and using keywords throughout your profile. Your SEO works the same here as it does for your website, which means that potential customers are able to find you more easily if you have an optimised profile.
Contact Us
If you’re looking for Google My Business management, or assistance with any other area of digital marketing, don’t hesitate to call us on 01926 814547 or email us at info@trulycontent.com.
For more information on our services, click here.