Google My Business
Get found with a Google My Business listing
By Robin Anderson
Google My Business is a FREE tool offered by Google that allows businesses to add essential information to create a business listing, making it easy for customers to find your business via search, maps, including obtaining key business details, such as easy access to your website, customer support, and more.
Why sign up?
Have you ever googled your business to see where it ranks in search? Not necessarily by business name, but using keywords that many would use in an effort to find a business that has the products and services that a customer would look for?
As a startup, your ranking in Google search may not show up on the first or even second search results page. So how do you get your business to rank higher? Google My Business. Signing up for a business listing boosts your ranking. A listing allows your business to be easily located on search. As you know, the key to reaching your customers is to make it extremely easy for them to find you. The less work they have to do, the greater the likelihood your business will be the lucky recipient of the ‘click’.
The purpose of creating a listing on Google My Business, is to make sure your business can be easily located through Google Search.
Here is an example of our Google My Business Listing:
A Google My Business listing includes one-click access to call your business, get directions, send a message, or redirect to your website. You can customize your listing with pictures. Easy access to customer reviews, allows businesses to follow and respond quickly and easily. And with Google’s analytics, businesses can see what is most important for their customers - getting directions, accessing your website, and more.
Google My Business works best for those that businesses that have a physical/mailable address. They will want to verify your business location, which takes approximately 5 days. To do so, you will enter in the address of your business when signing up. They will physically mail you a postcard with a verification code and instructions on how to enter the code to complete the process of verifying your business listing. The purpose is to validate that you are the owner of the business.
Be as thorough as you can when filling out your business listing profile. The more thorough you are the easier it will be for customers to quickly gather in the details they need to locate you. The information you provide will be indexed by Google, which will help your ranking, making it easier for others to find you when conducting a search.
5 Steps to Signup to Google My Business
1. Go to Google My Business.
2. Click on the blue button ‘Manage now.’
3. Verify your business by entering your address. A postcard will be sent via USPS to the address provided. The purpose is to verify that you are the owner. Simply follow the instructions on the card.
4. Continue to fill out your business profile with the Service area your business covers, your business hours, phone number, and website URL.
5. Additional categories are designed to help amplify your business within search engines. You can add product and/or service offerings, along with a brief description of your business.
Here is an example of Tesla’s business listing:
Google My Business allows you to customize your listing. For example, Tesla has taken advantage of the additional capabilities by including their Customer service chat and phone number making it easy for their customers or potential customers to communicate directly with them. Having their Sales number boosts their ability to attract interested customers by connecting them with their Sales department. And finally their stock price, for those who may monitor the health of the company as a business.
For startups and small businesses, Google My Business includes a Marketing Kit that will help you to create marketing materials such as posters, stickers and posts for social media, with the goal of helping you to reach customers and sell.
According to Moz.com, the following Google My Business fields have the most impact on your ranking:
Business Name
While you can’t do anything about your business name, those businesses that have ‘keywords’ meaning words that relate to the type of business you are in tend to perform better in ranking than those whose names are more arbitrary.
Categories
This is where spending a little time filling out your business listing comprehensively as you can, may end up being very beneficial for your business ranking. Google has close to 4,000 categories. Select those that most closely match your type of business. Continue to monitor this as Google adds and removes categories regularly.
Website
Having a website, and including it in your listing is very important. For those businesses that may not yet have a website, see our blog here about the importance of creating one and how to do so easily.Reviews
It is always important to respond to your customers when they submit a review. For the positive ones, a simple thank you is sufficient. For those that may have an issue, offer to learn more and move the conversation offline - via email for example. That simple act will show others that your business is concerned about their customers enough so that it takes the time to resolve issues...
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Location, location, location. For the year 2020, this translates into having a presence online. One of the best investments you can make is to create a listing on Google My Business. Help your customers locate and buy from you with ease.
Need help getting started with marketing your business? Contact us for a free 30-minute consultation.
Fun Fact
Before Google existed, when you needed to look up local business details such as location and phone number, you would use the Yellow Pages. The Yellow Pages was a telephone directory, provided an alphabetical listing of businesses within a geographical area, and was supported by advertising. It came about in 1883 in Cheyenne, Wyoming, when a printer producing a directory ran out of white paper and used yellow instead. The first Yellow Pages publication was formed three years later.