As a local business, increasing online visibility and reach should be an essential part of your marketing strategy. Google My Business (GMB) is an incredibly powerful tool, especially for small and midsize businesses, who want to increase online visibility and presence in your priority markets. If you have not been aware of the importance of GMB for your business advertising or you want to know how to optimize your business with GMB this article will offer you lots of great ideas. Whether you want to know how to add My Business to Google, how to follow Google My Business guidelines or how to increase online business presence for your business to work towards.
How to Add My Business to Google
Your first step will be to claim your Google My Business listing for your business. Google will then ask you to verify your listing. Be certain to include your contact information, location, address, phone, business hours, a brief description and any pictures you have. Then double check that all your information is accurate and up to date.
This claim and verification process will ensure that your business is added to Google Maps and Google’s local search results. If you have a storefront or office building that you want people to visit and recognize, then submitting high quality images is also important. Just being added to Google Maps and local search results will go a long way to increasing online visibility and reach.
Google My Business Guidelines
There are a number of important Google My Business guidelines that must be followed when setting up and maintaining your Google My Business account. Here are the most important:
- You must represent your business with accurate and up-to-date business information, including your name, address, phone number, website URL, and other details.
- Only one listing can be created but if you have multiple locations, you should create a separate listing for each of them.
- Only select the most relevant categories for your business, this will help your customers find you.
- Do not include irrelevant or misleading information: including using taglines, keywords, or phone numbers in the business name field.
- When uploading images, add only high-quality images of your business that will help customers recognize it and that represent you well.
- Don’t ever ask for fake reviews or write fake reviews yourself.
- Regularly update your profile, keeping your current business hours, any special hours, and other details.
- Don’t engage in prohibited activities like spamming, misleading customers, or making fake listings.
Stick to these guidelines and you will remain in good standing and be able to continually improve your online presence through optimization.
How to Increase Online Business Presence
The best way to gain traction for your business online is through Google My Business optimization. These five recommendations will help you grow your online presence.
- Encourage your customers to provide reviews of their experiences with you on your GMB listing. Positive reviews will boost your credibility and help raise your ratings on Google and increase online visibility.
- Just getting these reviews is not enough though, you must also respond to your reviews. By responding to both positive and negative online reviews with compassion, promptness, and superb service, you will build a solid reputation for caring for your customers and being responsive to their needs.
- Monitor your GMB insights by going to the insights tab in your GMB dashboard. It allows you to monitor the different ways people are finding and interacting with your listing. Monitoring this information will allow you to better determine future decisions about how you want to continue optimizing your listing for even greater visibility.
- By adding photos and videos to your GMB listing you will create a more attractive and engaging site for potential customers. Make sure to upload only high-quality images of your location(s), products, services, and team members.
- Using Google Posts allows you to share updates and promotions directly to your customers on your GMB listing. They can be used to highlight your latest products, services, new employees or special offers.
This is a lot of information and will have to be processed and learned over time, but these are the best tips for Google My Business optimization. For help with the process there are SEO marketing agencies that do this for you.
Conclusion
Following these guidelines and tips for optimizing your business website will likely have real benefits for people making local searches for your business. The importance of GMB rests in its ability to provide quality information for people using the Google search engine to find what they are looking for. When your business can provide GMB with the information consumers need within the guidelines that Google has established, your site will receive more traffic from computer and mobile device searches than ever before.
If this seems like a lot of work for you with all that you already have on your plate running your business, you do have options! Zö SEO has loads of experience in helping small to medium sized businesses meet the guidelines and exceed expectations for their websites. And even though Google has a much longer first page of search results than previously, getting your business as high on that page as possible is our aim and goal! Contact us for more information on how to boost your online visibility and see your traffic grow quickly!
