Are you looking for a free platform to increase your business’s online presence and engage with your customers? And the answer is a GMB listing that is Google My Business. Google My Business is a one-stop shop, to manage and optimize your Google listing all by yourself at zero cost.
How To Create Google My Business Listing For My Business
- Log in to the Google Account you want to be associated with your business.
- Go to google.com/business and select “Start now” in the top right-hand corner.
- Enter your business name, phone number, services, category business hours, payment options, and other details.
- Verify your listing. There are several ways you can verify your GMB listing. By postcard, phone, or email.
If you have more than 10 locations for the same business you have an option of bulk verification
With these steps, you will have valuable basic data which will make potential users find more information about your company.
How Google My Business Listing Helps My Business
- These days more and more search queries are becoming location-specific. Like “search query + near me”, “ search query + City”, “ Search query + location”. For example, the search query “Pizzeria near me” returns results with Pizza shops (three locations) near the user’s current location. Pizzeria who doesn’t have Google My Business listing will lose that chance to get in front of potential customers.
- Google always returns a result based on the user’s intent, to get visible in local search you must have perfectly optimized Google my business listing. Having a complete and optimized GMB listing can increase your chances to show up for Google’s local pack, Google Map & local search.
Important Features of Google My Business Platform
- Google My Business Posts
GMB post gives you a chance to reach more customers. You can keep your customers updated and engage through these posts. These posts are like mini social media posts or ads which appear in search through your business profile. These posts could be
- Announcement of any upcoming event
- A link to the latest blog post on your website
- Launch announcement of new product
- Special/seasonal offers
- So on….
You can share updates, announcements, events, offers, and even the products directly with your customers. You can engage your customers with videos and photos in the post and also add an action button.
Make these posts more effective with these simple tips:
- Simple high resolution, well lit and clear photos/videos 400px by 300px, in JPG or PNG format.
- The maximum size for videos should be 100 MB
- Keep your post brief with only the necessary details. The recommended length is 150-300 characters
- A strong and clear call to action such as call, visit, buy
- Well written headline upto 58 characters
- Insights
This section gives you an insight into how your customer found your business, which search query is used, and whether they found your business on search results or maps.
“Queries used to find your business” could be a very good keyword research tool for your business. It provides you the most popular queries for your business used by unique users to find your business.
Also, a good start for you to create a new piece of content.
Insight section also shows you whether the customer searched for your business address or name directly or did they find your listing while searching for a particular product, service category.
You can also check customer action data here. After customers found your listing on Google, how many customers visited your website, requested directions, called you, or messaged you.
- Reviews
As per latest Brightlocal data 82% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses. Only 53% of the consumers would consider a business with less than 4 stars.
Average consumers read 10 reviews before trusting any business.
97% of the consumers who read reviews, read business’s responses to reviews.
Reviews always help your business to stand out from the crowd. Google My Business Reviews appear next to your listing in Google Search and Google Maps. It plays a significant role in how customers behave on your listing once they find your listing on Google.
Google encourages you to ethically build reviews and also to respond to every review. For this, you must follow review guidelines.
- Messaging
Who would not like to get connected directly & engage with the potential customers who are looking at your GMB listing? This messaging feature enables your customers and potential customers to send you a text message.
- Questions and Answers
Google offers a new way to engage with your customers through question and answer features on your Google listing.
Your potential customers who find your business on Google Search or Google Maps can see frequently asked questions on your Google listing and get answers to their questions easily.
With this feature, you can answer your potential customers’ queries instantly. If you have a Google Maps on Android, you will get a push notification when the question about your business has been asked.
- Products
You can showcase your products along with images, details, pricing, and call to action buttons (Buy, Get Offer, Learn More, etc.). This is an amazing way to engage your customer right on your GMB profile. These added products appear on your Google my Business profile on desktop as well as mobile.
- Services
Businesses selling services can use this tab to list their services on GMB listing. E.g. If you run a hair salon you can list all your services along with description and prices. It makes the potential customer make an appropriate decision.
So make most out of your Google My Business listing by completing all the features listed above. We highly recommended completing your GMB listing because it is one of the primary ranking factors in local search results. Completely optimize GMB listing increases your chances to get rank in a local 3 pack and local organic results.
Now log into your Google My Business account and get started.
If you need any kind of assistance in completing and optimizing your Google My Business listing, please contact us.
