Once you’re set up with your business’s Google Business Profile, in order to get your listing noticed, you need to optimise! In this guide, I’ll take you through how to optimise your Google Business Profile. If you’ve not yet set up your Business Profile in Google, have a look at my 10-step guide.
The first step to optimise your Google Business Profile listing is to take some time to complete all the information that Google asks for. There are two main reasons for doing this:
- Google aims to serve local results that are the most relevant to what the user is searching for. So, if your business profile has as much detail and information as possible, your listing is more likely to show up in searches for users looking for businesses like yours. In other words, completing your profile will improve your search ranking.
- If you don’t complete all the information, someone else might instead. Anyone can suggest a change (‘suggest an edit’) to your business listing. To retain control over your business information, make sure that you fill everything in and regularly keep an eye on your listing.
If you are having trouble with your Google Business Profile and need help correcting information, you can seek answers via the Google Business Profile Community Forum. There is also a Google Business Profile Facebook page and a Twitter account. And if you’re looking for some help and advice on optimising your local SEO to get more business from people in your local area, get in touch with me for a chat!
Here are my top tips on how to optimise your Google Business Profile listing:
Tip one: Add your products and services –
During set-up, you were asked to choose a category that fits your business best. This is your primary business category. After set-up, you can add other business categories (make sure they’re relevant), and under each business category add your own custom services that detail what your company offers. For example, my primary category is ‘Marketing consultant’ and the services I’ve added are: search engine optimisation (SEO), paid search (PPC), search marketing strategy, website optimisation and marketing support. You can add a price (if you want to), and you should include a service description, providing potential customers with detail about the services you offer.
The more visually appealing products section allows you to add a product image, price, description and a call-to-action (CTA) button such as ‘Buy’ and ‘Learn more’ that you can link back to the product page on your website. I recommend that you put your products into categories (which you create), to keep them organised.
Tip two: Add your opening hours and ‘special hours’ –
Add your opening hours so that your customers know when your business is open. You can set them for each day and if you’re closed for lunch, for example, you can set morning and afternoon opening times. This means that your profile will be marked as closed during lunchtime. You can also set as open 24 hours a day, if this is the case for your business.
You can add hours for specific services that might be different to your regular opening hours.
There is also the option to add ‘special hours’ for holidays or any one-off days that your business will be closed. These can be set-up in advance.
Tip three: Add an opening date for your business –
Adding an opening date for your business is a relatively new feature on Google Business Profile. It’s worth adding this information, as it will show up on your profile. You don’t need to write the exact date, as month and year is fine.
Tip four: Write a compelling business description –
You have 750 characters to tell your audience who you are, what you offer, why your company is great etc. Do not keyword stuff or include links in your business description. Also do not include information about special offers or company updates – use the ‘Posts’ area for this instead. Google has some guidelines on business descriptions, which are worth giving a quick read through.
Tip five: Add photos and videos of your business –
Including photos and videos are a great branding opportunity and a chance to showcase your company: your employees, your products and your services. Add a picture of your logo and a cover photo of the front of your office/shop, for example. This will help customers to find and recognise your business when they visit. You can see Google’s photo guidelines here for image size information. Videos are very effective at bringing your business to life and Google has some video guidelines too.
Tip six: Add attributes to your profile –
Attributes are a great way of highlighting specific features of your business and answers to questions that customers may have. These could include: Does your café have a takeaway service? Does your hotel have free wifi? Your business category determines which attributes are available for your profile.
Tip seven: Add posts to your listing –
Creating Posts in your Google Business Profile allows you to engage with your customers directly in search engine results and in maps. Posts appear low down in your profile (below your business description), so they’re not hugely noticeable in my opinion. However, you can see how they’re performing (number of views and clicks) and decide whether they’re beneficial for your business.
The types of posts that you can test are: offers, what’s new information, event and product information. Posts come up with a button (‘Order online’, ‘Book’ etc) so they are a useful method for encouraging engagement with your listing (by getting visitors to your website, for example). Each post needs an accompanying image (or video) and unless it’s changed, it will remain there for 6 months. The time period used to be 7 days before the post was removed. So, if you do post, remember to check it (or ideally update it) to make sure it’s still relevant. If the post is an event, it will expire on the event end date.
Tip eight: Set up messaging (if you have the resources) –
The messaging feature allows users to message your business directly from your profile in search results or on Google Maps. If you have the resources to respond immediately to chat enquiries and it makes sense for your business, then this could be a great feature for you (to test at least). Having this feature enabled means that users will expect an immediate response. So, if you don’t have the resources then don’t use it. Messaging can be done via your Google Business Profile account or via the Google Maps app.
Tip nine: Respond to your customer’s reviews –
Responding to customer reviews shows that your business values your customers and their feedback. It’s also extremely useful for your ongoing improvements to your customer’s experience of your products and services. You can encourage your customers to leave feedback by providing them with a link. You will find a shareable link that customers can use to leave reviews in the ‘Home’ section of your profile.
Tip ten: Answer your customer’s questions –
The questions area on the Google Business Profile is hugely underutilised by business owners. If you don’t monitor and respond to customer’s questions, it can lead to misinformation about your business as yes, anyone can respond to questions. You may have noticed that those who often respond to questions are those badged as Google Local Guides (you can find out more about those here). They are usually helpful, however, there are examples when they can be less so. It didn’t take me long to find one such example:
You can’t turn off the questions section but you can make sure you’re alerted to any new questions in the ‘Settings’ area of your profile.
Tip eleven: Keep your listing up-to-date –
Just like you would keep your website and social channels up-to-date, it’s also important to keep your Google Business Profile listing updated. It’s particularly important to make sure your opening hours, contact details and products and/or services information are kept up-to-date. You certainly don’t want potential customers arriving at your shop to see that it’s actually closed when your profile says that it should be open.
Monitor your Google Business Profile performance –
Those who know me know that I love data that helps us understand how our activities are performing. The Insights section of your Google My Business logged-in area gives you valuable information, including:
- How customers search for your business – whether customers found your listing directly by searching for your business name or address; whether customers discovered your listing by searching for a category, product or service; or whether customers searched for your brand or a brand related to your business.
- The search queries used to find your business on Google.
- Where customers find your business on Google – the number of views via Google Search vs the number of views via Google Maps.
- What actions the customer took after they found your listing on Google – number of visits to your website; number of request directions (in Google Maps); number of customers who called you and the total actions.
- How many times your photos have been viewed and how many photos you’ve uploaded to your business listing.
It’s worth keeping an eye on the Insights section and tracking these. The search queries, for example, give you an idea of what your customers are searching for, providing you with useful content for Posts.
If you’re looking for some help with your local SEO strategy and would like some advice on how to attract more customers in your local area, I can help. Get in touch with me for a chat.