What is Google My Business ?
Introduction
It’s fair to say as business owners there’s always a constant flurry of requests for a business to sign their business up for something or other.
Whether that be a new business directory, which advertises business in your area, or perhaps is a new social media platform that somebody is urging your business to use.
But as a business owner, well there simply isn’t enough hours in the day to listen to all these requests.
Yet, we think there’s one account that’s most definitely worth signing up for, and that is a Google My Business account.
Not only is a Google My Business account super useful if your looking to improve your businesses seo, but it is also very easy to set up.
So here we go, here’s how a Google My Business account could help your business.
So, why should my business sign-up?
No matter if you run a national business, that has many shops on the high street, or you are an independent business, that just has one shop, quite simply put its well worth obtaining a Google My Business account.
The main reason is that your business can be displayed in the Google My Business listings. So what this means is say your looking for a local dentist, well when you search for “local dentist + city or town” your business stands a chance of being displayed.
However, notice how we use the word chance, well that’s because its not just a matter of obtaining a Google My Business account and your business will suddenly appear, no, instead quite often your listing and your website will need to have SEO applied to both.
The reason for this is the level of competition that your businesses faces, so for example there may well be 100 dentists in one city, and most will want to appear for terms such as “dentists that offer teeth whitening near me”.
What does NAP mean?
NAP simply means your businesses name, address and phone number. Your seo company may use this information to help optimise your website.
So, for example, business citations may well be built and your seo agency should ensure that the NAP information on your companies’ website then matches exactly with your businesses citations and also your Google My Business account.
Okay, so how does your SEO agency optimise a Google My Business listing?
Quite often obtaining a Google My Business listing is just one part of the local seo process, yet with that said it’s a very important one.
Yet your marketing company may also be writing content marketing, building high quality backlinks and working on your companies onsite seo, so as you can see obtaining a Google My Business listing is just one area that your seo company may well be working on.
Here’s how we optimise a Google My Business listing:
We add the companies opening hours
Its important to list your opening hours correctly, as if someone travels to your business premises and its closed when your Google My Business listing is stated as being open, well this can be annoying.
If do you have a local telephone number then make sure you use it
Sometimes some businesses just have to use a mobile number, for example a sole trader painter and decorator may rely on his or her mobile to secure work.
So if the person is working away from an office or where their landline is, well often they will have no choice but to use a mobile number.
Yet if you do have a local landline number then we would recommend using this instead. The main reason is it reinforces that your business is actually located in that city or town.
Positive first impression
Sometimes some businesses sling their Google My Business listing together in an almighty rush.
However we always advise businesses never to rush creating their Google My Business listing. The reason that this process shouldn’t be rushed is because it can be so useful to your business.
So do go the extra mile to add as much detail as possible, for example if you employ staff why not have as your main photo a picture of you and your team?
Address
Make sure that you add your businesses address, whilst also making sure that you keep your Google My Business account up to date.
For example, quite often a business will change address, and in all that hustle and bustle well sometimes updating your companies Google My Business account will get forgotten about.
Yet if your website states one address, which is your businesses new address, and then your Google My Business account states a different address, well this can cause something us SEO’s refer to as being a “conflicting citation”- and this means that your business stands a much lesser chance of being displayed in the Google My Business results.
So, it’s really important that your business makes sure that your companies NAP information is kept up to date, whether that’s on Google My Business, business citations or actually on your companies website.
Should my business be obtaining customer reviews?
Yes, we would most definitely recommend to any business that obtaining genuine business reviews is important.
Now business reviews could be left anywhere, that’s on a social media website, through to Google My Business.
However, we always recommend to our clients that they should obtain customer reviews on Google My Business.
Now, you may have noticed that earlier we mentioned the word “genuine” and we done this with good reason and that’s because so many businesses do fake their own reviews.
However, this will often result in a business standing a much lesser chance of being displayed in the Google My Business results.
So we would never recommend obtaining fake business reviews, instead only obtain genuine reviews from your customers.