Ok, you have a website, you have a plan to increase your SEO, so now let’s set up the easiest way for your local customers to find you: google business profile. And it’s free! yay!
This process is pretty simple, so it almost doesn’t warrant an entire blog post, but there are a few things about a Google Business Profile that you might want to consider
Why you need a business listing on Google Maps
This is the most important thing you can do for your local business ranking to beat the competition. If someone searches for your business category, you should absolutely come up in the “map pack.” this is based on the search results for your town and also proximity to the searcher. You can’t do anything about where the person is using their phone when they search for you, but you can definitely appear for your town and county.
Completing Your Google Business Profile
All of these platforms like you to show that you care about them, so you need to use all of their capabilities, and they’ll reward you. For the Google Business Profile that means ensuring your location, hours, website, and contact information are correct to start with (you could use a different phone number to track, but Google will send you a report with how many people called from the listing anyway).
Actively Update Hours, add photos, posts, etc.
Google will ask you to update hours for holidays, so make sure those are correct (the listing will say, “updated by owner two days ago,” so the customer will know), and then add your photos! I love this opportunity to show people what they can expect when they come to the store: exterior, interior, seating if any, parking lot. All the things.
Then you can post some of the updates from social media onto Google to be more active, but it’s not as important as the actual profile information.
Request Reviews
I know this is a little scary, because you don’t want to get a bad review, but that’s why it’s so important you give a good customer experience. Then when you ask for a review, you can be happy with the five stars! And more and more people know how important the stars are, so they are more likely to leave 5 (a few years ago, I think people believed no one was truly a 5-star business unless they were unexpectedly blown away, but fortunately people are more loving now 😅).
Getting a higher star rating will help you rank higher on Google searches in the map, so it’s important to prioritize those 5-star reviews and keep them current (you know what it’s like to see reviews from 2 years ago).
Even though it changes, it’s still important
The Google business profile can be daunting because they change the name all the time and various features turn on and off throughout the year. Is it even worth investing time in? Yes, if you have a local business, your google business profile is definitely one of the top things to optimize while you’re working on your website. This is not something to wait on until you can do it perfectly.