Local Search Accelerator Part 3 – Google My Business

Remember hearing stories of a business that was left out of the phone book? Or, it was published with the wrong phone number? Basically, invisible for a whole year.

They often went out of business or had to pay big money to get the phone number that appeared in the book.

Getting a ‘nice-looking’ website online is seen by many businesses as todays equivalent of being ‘in the phone book.’ You’re out there to be found by the people that are either looking for you or that need what you have or do. Right?

If the person looking for you knows the domain of your website, then, yes it can be the equivalent. If not, and you’ve had the site online for any amount of time, it may be starting to feel more like you’ve been left out.

Maybe you’ve already spent some money with one of those people that keeps calling about that unclaimed listing on the first page of Google. My sympathies if that’s the case. Read on, here’s three things, in plain English with no acronyms, that will make sure you’re ‘in the phone book’ and then some.

Part 1: Name, Address and Phone Number
Part 2: The Best Source of Referrals
Part 3: Google My Business – The New Phone Book

Google My Business – The New Phone Book

I mentioned your Google My Business (or GMB) earlier, and it’s time to take a deeper look at what that is and how it can effect your business.  Your business’s GMB profile shows up off to the right of the Google search results page when you google the name of your business.  It looks like this:

The GMB profile is everything Google understands about your business outside of the business’s website: its location, address, phone number, reviews, categories of business, key competitors, photos, etc.

This is critical for a few reasons – ever notice how, when you search for a local product or service, a Google Map often shows up with 3 businesses listed underneath it?  Did you ever wonder how it chooses those 3 businesses?  The answer is their GMB profiles.

Making sure that your GMB profile has current, engaging photos, lots of great reviews, and accurate information about the products/services you provide is absolutely critical to helping your local customers find you when they need you.

Once upon a time, people would go to the phone book when they needed information on a local business.  Now they go to Google – BUT they don’t necessarily go to each business’s website.  Google Maps and the information provided on each business’s GMB profile is more than enough to make a buying decision, and it’s critical that you show up correctly.

Your GMB profile can mean the difference between getting found on Google or not, completely regardless of your website – especially if you are a highly local business.

If you want to get “under the hood” with your GMB profile, there are a lot of additional things that a professional can do to help your profile rise to the top.  Things like adding your business name, address, and phone number to the code of each photo in your GMB, or creating maps with driving directions to your business from key landmarks in your town that Google can read.

If you’d like to have us take a look at your Google My Business profile and provide a simple analysis of some ways you might be able to make it work better for you, Click Here.  We can take a quick look and get back to you by email with feedback and suggestions.