Google My Business: How to Set it Up
Google My Business (GMB) has killed the era of yellow pages. Covid 19 made online visibility extremely important, due to which GMB is no longer an option. If a customer fails to find your business details online, he probably would switch to an option that he feels is transparent. This becomes the first contact area for new customers, which may add recall value to your brand while generating leads.
Google has grown to become the primary search engine globally. Due to this, most businesses look to gain visibility through effective SEO techniques. Google offers business owners the to manage their businesses and generate leads through My Business. A complete GMB listing significantly improves the visibility and SEO of a business. In addition to that, it helps users tag their locations and collect reviews on their business or product. Other benefits include:
- Local SEO - Gives your business a priority in your area.
- Review management - Customers can add reviews to your profile. Over 90% of potential customers read reviews before buying a product online.
- Analytics
- Management and communication tools - Customers can use to communicate with you, efficient for lead generation.
- Free to use
Google My Business helps achieve higher search ranking positions for keywords related to your business in your local area. Furthermore, it helps customers skim through your business to give them a brief idea related to your business. The information is divided into the following areas:
- Opening hours
- Company name
- Address
- Reviews
- Relevant Category
- Type of Business
- An image of the business
As customers continue to google physical and online businesses before visiting them, the importance of all these areas has also started growing proportionally. To keep up with the trends, let’s discover how a business owner can create and maintain a GMB profile.
How to Set up Google My Business?
Google has promoted its My Business feature by making the setup easy, intuitive, and free for businesses. A business owner can create his GMB listing by simply following the steps below:
- The first step is to make a google account. These accounts are free to make and can be made using accounts.google.com.
- Next, go to the business gateway at google.com/business and click “Manage now” to get started with the process.
- Check to see if a profile with your business name already exists. If not, proceed to “Add new account”.
- Create the account and add the business name. Make sure that the name you add is exactly the same as your business name, as this is what would help users find you.
- If the business has a physical location, add the location tag. If not, do not add a random location.
- If the business is a service, select yes on the “deliveries and home visits” question.
- Next, add your contact details. Make sure that the details are accurate so that the customers do not have any difficulty contacting you.
- Verify your business.
- Add business hours, business descriptions, photos, and messaging functionalities for an optimal experience.
It is of utmost importance that the business descriptions, photos, business hours, and services be updated with all honesty if there are any changes in the business. This is to ensure customer trust and satisfaction related to the business. Furthermore, always keep an eye on customer questions and messages to have a good customer service reputation and reviews.
Importance of GMB in 2022
The post-pandemic era has educated and trained users regarding online shopping, reviews, branding, and business visibility. According to the statistics, GMB businesses saw twice as much organic traffic to their businesses by registering their profiles. More than 60% of smartphone users were found contacting businesses directly through the “click to call” feature on the business page.
GMB has proven to increase website traffic as well. According to the stats, 56% of actions on the GMB listings are customer website visits.
Businesses have progressed toward more data-driven approaches to marketing and sales.GMB statistics help these businesses stay updated with current trends and plan their marketing and sales efforts accordingly. Stores or businesses missing on GMB profiles are missing out on a key aspect that can directly improve their SEO.
How SEO benefits businesses
SEO or search engine optimized pages automatically increase the organic reach and brand value of a business. Apart from that, an efficient SEO strategy can help benefit businesses in the following areas:
- It is free. With the right technical knowledge, audiences can be built without PPC strategies for free.
- High ranks on a search engine automatically increase credibility.
- SEO best practices help your businesses rank for specific keywords.
- PPC and SEO work miraculously together. The paid-organic blend significantly reduces the cost-per-click for a website.
- The reach for the business is significantly increased. With a creative funnel in place, this lead can be converted into a sale.
- A long-term SEO strategy can help you rank higher than your competitors. Strong brands rank for many keywords that surround their brands, making them visible for practically everything a user searches related to that business.
- Higher website visits translate to better quantifiable results. Engagement drives conversion and brings the ROI in the long term.
Most businesses that we search on Google now come with a business page attached to them. From a customer’s point of view, this helps to be the first area of contact. Reviews, Q/As, business descriptions, and pictures drive the purchase decisions for around 90% of the population. Businesses with a fully maintained log of reviews and up-to-date business pages in accordance with the trends automatically gain a competitive advantage over others in the market. Google itself helps these businesses rank in their local searches. So, having an efficient SEO-PPC blend in addition to a maintained business page can turn out to become an efficient lead-generating tool.
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