Why Google My Business is important

If I told you there was a way you could easily reach more people in your business without any crazy or complicated SEO strategies you’d be in right?! That’s exactly what you can do through Google My Business.

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Google My Business is a free online tool linked to your Google account that allows you to create, update and manage your Google listing, this being the small box about your business that shows up in Google when you search for it.

   

Through this feature you can have full control over your Google listing, easily update essential information such as your location, contact details, images and opening hours but as of last year there’s also A LOT more you can do to really optimise your listing.

You can now post short updates or longer blog style posts on your Google My Business account, create promotions or special deals and separate ads for Google as well, with all of these features showing to improve organic performance in your local market.

Having a Google My Business listing that has all the essential information filled out, in addition to utilising those other features, can really help you be featured in the three pack result that shows up when someone googles something less specific than your business name, such as “Web Developers West Perth”.

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That’s a huge benefit already to using Google My Business, but if you’re still not convinced that spending some time on updating your listing is worthwhile, here’s some more:

• Helps you rank your website better for local SEO
  • By linking your Google My Business listing to your website, you’re automatically helping your website show up in Google for location-based and topic-based searches.
• You have more control
  • You can use your Google listing to easily gain control over information you can offer to potential customers, such as upcoming deals, prices, photos and services offered. Although all of this information is generally on your website, you’re decreasing the barriers to entry by showing this information to potential customers instantly.
• Be engaged in a conversation
  • You can use your listing to respond to customer reviews and show potential customers that you are engaged and want to talk to your customers! The more positive reviews you receive, the better visibility your listing will gain. It also gives you an opportunity to respond to negative reviews if there are any, and tell your side of the story.
• Simple access to analytics
  • Your Google My Business listing comes with analytics that shows things such as how many views your listing has received, the number of searches you have appeared in, the type of actions your visitors have taken on your listing, e.g. visiting your website and from what direction/s your customers are visiting your business from. This is really great in being able to learn more about your customers and what they are searching for online.

To check out your Google My Business listing you have to login to your Google account and then click the 9 cubed dots on the right of your screen and scroll down to ‘My Business’, from here it’s all pretty easy and self-explanatory.  We recommend starting by checking all your essential details are correct, and then work on uploading images, short updates and responding to your reviews.

 

We hope you enjoyed this post, we’ll be back with more soon, but in the meantime we’re off to update our own Google My Business listing.