5 Ways to Optimize Your Google My Business Listing

Any serious local business should have their marketing strategy start at Google My Business. Today we’re providing a simple guide on how to make the most out of it for your business.

Google My Business (GMB) is a service that helps both established and starting businesses improve their local visibility on the web and also helps facilitate their access to location-based services.

Free, fast and easy to set up, the GMB dashboard groups together a set of features that allow local businesses to be visible on Google Maps and appear on the listings of the Google Local Pack (or Map Pack).

Below, we offer you some tips on how to make sure your business is successfully registered on Google My Business and how to fully optimize your profile.

1. Claim Your Google My Business Listing

This is the obvious first step if you haven’t claimed your listing already.

If you have an established brand, or your business has been around for a while, it could be already listed on GMB. Do a simple Google search and see if your business shows up on local listings.

If that’s the case, you can claim your business listing and verify that you’re the owner.

Some businesses just claim their listing on Google My Business and leave it as is. This is a big mistake and can lead to many businesses missing out on hundreds of customers. GMB, if used properly, is a great tool to better promote your business to a wider audience.

2. Create a Complete Profile

When setting up your GMB page, make sure to enter important business information precisely, like the business name, address, and category.

You also want to have every box filled and questions answered. Google developers put these questions there for a reason: it’s all about giving customers accurate info to find your business.

Bear in mind that anyone can suggest edits about your business data so it’s advisable to regularly log in to your GMB dashboard and check that all data are correct and up-to-date.

3. Customer Reviews

Besides visibility in local search queries results and easy geolocalization on Google Maps, GMB also helps businesses maintain a close relationship with their audience.

As Google takes customer feedback very seriously, Google algorithms take into account the rating of your business and, more importantly, customer reviews.

Customer feedback can be an excellent and easy way to promote your business online. You can implement an easy system to request customers to leave reviews in your store itself, or on your website. To get the most out of these reviews, make sure to never leave a customer review unanswered; customers love to be heard!

4. Photos and Videos

Photos, of course, are the first thing that catches a customer’s attention when they visit your Google My Business listing.

Quality photos give potential customers the desire to know more about your business, anticipate the experience they’d have, and ultimately improve conversion.

Also, and this is very important, your photos should reflect the reality as much as possible! Perfect online photos that are unfaithful to the product or service is a recipe for disaster, disappointment, and a long list of angry feedback. Be honest with your customers!

And now, thanks to a recent update, GMB now facilitates videos.

5. Google’s Booking Feature

Last October, Google introduced a new feature to help businesses in the U.S. to easily implement a booking button into their GMB listing.

This feature is great for service-based businesses as it creates an easy way for prospective customers to get in touch with you and opens the opportunity for them to visit your business. With one click directly from your GMB listing, customers can make a reservation or an appointment which is an excellent opportunity to convert a prospective customer’s thoughts into a direct action to visit your store.

GMB is becoming a vital part of many businesses’ online presence and fully optimizing your page is vital to increasing the size of your audience and improving your company’s reputation. Remember, customer conversion begins with informative, organic content that shows your business in a positive light. This is easier now more than ever thanks to GMB.

Do you have any tips or tricks for using Google My Business? Let us know your ideas in the comments section below!