Introduction
Google My Business is a business directory. Business directories gather information about all businesses and organize it perfectly. It helps people in finding the required information easily.
If you are running a business or about to start one, you should list your business at Google My Business as soon as possible. It has enormous benefits from more traffic to better search engine rankings.
In this article, we will discuss what is Google My Business and how to get the most out of it.
An Overview of Google My Business
Google My Business is a free tool that allows you to set up your business profile. It offers you to add your business details in Google Maps and Search. Using the profile, you can change your timings, connect with your audience, and add updates to your profile.
Being a part of a giant digital directory, Google My Business is an essential tool for every business. Regardless of your business niche, you can sign up and enjoy its unlimited benefits.
A Google My Business (GMB) profile includes business name, business address, business website, contact information, photos, business timings, customer reviews, and so on. To ensure your online visibility, these things are crucial for your business.
In the online world, reviews are the most important thing to expand your business on another scale. Apart from reviews, you can share business photos, logos, brandings, latest blogs, social media posts, etc.
Most importantly, there is detailed analytics available to you. A business owner can review analytics and learn from their mistakes. You can study insights to understand what should be done in order to get more visibility.
When people search for your business, it notifies you. You can analyze why people are not coming to your place after searching for your business. Moreover, it doesn’t only give you information but also provide you with suggestions.
Gladly, you don’t need a physical outlet to create a profile. For instance, if you are running an online business with no physical location, you can claim a profile. You can enjoy all the benefits. However, you need to optimize your profile in a way that customers understand that they can’t visit you in person.
How to Set up Google My Business?
In this technological world, it is difficult that you don’t have a Google account already. Visit google.com/business and enter your details. In an unlikely event where you don’t have a Google account, you need to visit google.com and sign up.
Once you enter into the account, you will be provided with information already available about your business. You can keep it the same or change the information depending on your requirements.
Enter Your Business Details
Starting with the name of your business, you need to enter all the required information. Upon entering your brand name, it will ask you to add the business category.
Once you fill all the information, you will be asked to verify your listing. The purpose of this verification is to ensure that you actually own the business.
Google My Business Verification
If you are not ready for the verification, you can leave it for later. Though, your business will not go live unless you verify your listings.
To verify your business, you have to enter a physical address to receive a postal card from Google. Few other options are also available but postcard is the easiest. You can also verify by email, instant verification, phone, and bulk verification. Instant verification is for business recently moved to a new location. Bulk verification is for businesses that have a lot of franchises.
After verification, you need to provide more information about your business. It will help the audience to understand your business and find you easily. Don’t skip or leave any information. Moreover, add small descriptions as people don’t have time to read a huge paragraph. Explain your words in a sentence or two.
Don’t hesitate to include some photos of your brand, location, and employees. It builds trust and people start relying on your services.
Understand GMB Dashboard
Once you have completed the setup process, you need to familiarize yourself with the dashboard. The dashboard is your bread and butter. You will manage your entire business through this page. You can update your existing information like contact information, location, timings, etc.
Moreover, you can share content with your audience including pictures, reviews, message them about a service, or even create a website.
Google understands that it is a difficult job to manage everything by yourself. They allow you to add more users who can update information as required. You can give access to your partners or employees to manage your listing.
Google provides businesses with free credits for advertisements. Don’t miss the opportunity to get more visibility without any additional cost.
Optimize Your Business
Being a business owner, this is the most interesting step of the process. You would like to play around with your profile to get more visitors and enhance your business. Understand your competitors and study their strategies to come up with a better plan.
As soon as you have verified your business, you are one step ahead than others in local SEO rankings.
Things to Remember About Google Business
Reviews
Arguably, reviews play a vital role in improves the growth of your business. Whether you are providing a service or selling a product, people want to know about its authenticity. Your competition is providing similar services then why should they buy from you? Because you have better reviews.
Make sure that you request people to leave a review on your profile. Request politely and they will give you a positive review. Whenever you receive a review, respond to it. Make sure you have more and better reviews than your competitors.
Photos
Statistics show that the human brain process pictures 60000 times faster than text. It explains the significance of pictures for your business.
Google is allowing you to show off your branding, employees, and other routine activity. People want to know about your business. They want to view behind the scene pictures and your creativity skills.
Smartphone Applications
Get the Google My Business application on your mobile as soon as you finish the setup process. It allows you to easily track your information and update it quickly. You shouldn’t forget about your listings after setting it up. Give it some time after a week and optimize as much as possible.
Importance of Google My Business Listings
Business listings are crucial to succeed in the modern world. You should try to register your business on every business directory. With more listings, you enhance your reach and business.
GMB is important for your business but you should also create listings at CitySearch, Manta, Yelp, Yellow Pages, etc.
The positive fact about Google listings is that it improves your SEO efforts. When a local person searches with relevant keywords to your business, you are more likely to appear at the top if you have a business listing. Google Business provides you with more traffic than other business directories. Ultimately, it helps in generating more leads for your business.
Conclusion
Google knows how to stay relevant in the business. They introduce every possible service that helps the audience. Later on, they improve the service and offer more benefits to business owners and consumers.
Google My Business is an amazing tool for business owners that come with no cost at all. All you need to do is to set up your profile and include information. Google will use this information to bring more traffic to your website and enhance your sales.
Whether you are starting a business or already have a business, do not ignore this opportunity. Moreover, you will get free credits to advertise your business, which is a great advantage. Let’s go online and be the next Google My Business success story. If you need help with any of this, feel free to contact our team – we’re more than happy to help!