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Take Your Google My Business Listing to the Next Level

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In our last post, we told you about a free platform called Google My Business (GMB). To review some of the basics, check out our article here. 

Make sure you have added all the primary profile elements of your GMB listing (address, business hours, phone number and website address) and then take some time to enhance your listings with photos and a brief description of your business. You can make all those edits and additions from the Info section in your profile. 

GMB Info Section

Now, let’s take your listing to the next level!

Posts

Google My Business (GMB) posts show up in your business’s Knowledge Panel (the right section of a search engine results page on a desktop view or often the top of a mobile view). You can use a Google My Business post to promote your next event, to share information about your latest sale or to cross-promote your most recent blog, just to name a few ideas. There is a seven-day lifespan on GMB posts except for a live event promotion, which will get automatically pulled once your event ends. Space in a GMB post is limited to just 300 words, so make sure you have a clear call-to-action and a catchy headline, and include an eye-catching image to increase your click-through rate. Google My Business Posts

Read more about GMB posts on the official Google page here.

Insights

The insights section of Google My Business shows you how people are finding your business online and provides you with analytics about your listing. There’s some really interesting data here so make sure to check it out. You can see exactly what queries people type into Google to arrive at your listing. You can also see whether your customers used regular Google search to arrive at your GMB listing or if they searched via Google Maps to find your GMB listing.

You can also drill down and see what actions people took on your Google My Business listing such as a visit to your website, a request for directions and calls to your business. Once you see the calls and visits coming directly to your business via your Google My Business, you will be more motivated to enhance your listing! Note: To be able to track activity on your Google My Listing entry within your Google Analytics account, use UTM tracking.

GMB Insights

Reviews

As we all can attest to, reviews are a crucial factor in determining whether we will trust and try out a new business. Multiple platforms and websites are dedicated to eliciting reviews from customers and publishing them online. Google is one of the primary players in the review market, and they have created a set of recommendations for replying to reviews. You can access those here. 

Timeliness is key in responding to reviews. You can set up an email alert to be triggered whenever someone submits a review via your Google My Business listing.

Questions & Answers

In 2018, Google added a Q&A section to GMB listings. Customers can post direct questions about your business and services. Again, you can stay ahead of the conversation and set up to receive an email notification when someone posts a question about your business. Make sure you are getting those notifications by checking in your Settings section. You and your team should reply to questions as quickly as possible.

Messaging

People looking up your company on Google can now directly text you via the GMB app. Once you download the app, you’ll be able to message with customers who are actively viewing your listing. Read more about messaging here.

Bookings

If you operate a business that uses an online booking platform, you may benefit from integrating that platform with GMB’s bookings tool. People typically want to be able to take an action right from the spot on the web where they find info about your business. Read more about how to integrate your booking tool with GMB.

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Keep Your Business Info Up-To-Date

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If you haven’t claimed and verified your business, get started with this link.

Update your business information

When information about your business changes, update it with Google My Business. Keeping your account up-to-date makes sure that Google has the most accurate information to share with potential customers. In some cases, Google may not accept changes if they believe they’re inaccurate.

Here are the types of business information that you can update with Google My Business:

  • Business hours
  • Physical address (If you change your address, you’ll need to complete the verification process again to confirm the new address.)
  • Phone number
  • Category (What kind of business do you run?)
  • Website

You can also add new businesses to Google My Business. 

Add owners and managers to share responsibility

By adding owners and managers to your Google My Business listing, you can delegate responsibility to other members of your staff while keeping ownership of the page.

There are 3 kinds of users:

  • Owners: listing owners have the widest set of privileges and access, and can make high-level administrative decisions like adding other owners and managers or removing the listing from their account. 

  • Manager: a manager can do most of what an owner can do, like edit business information, manage Hangouts (which let you hold video calls with customers), and view Insights about how many people are viewing and interacting with your listing. You might make a trusted staff member a manager of your listing to help keep your information and web presence up-to-date.

  • Site manager: a site manager can interact with customers on behalf of your listing by posting pictures and responding to reviews. Friendly, tech-savvy members of your staff might make good site managers.

A site manager sign-up link can be found in the Business Profile of claimed chain locations on Maps and Search. New users who sign up for Google My Business, as well as existing users who try to access claimed chain listings, can verify as a site manager. The sign-up link makes it easier for franchise owners and store managers to manage listings for locations they own or operate.

Site managers will be verified by Google to make sure their profile data is accurate. Owners can still manage user access through their Google My Business accounts.

When signed in to Google My Business, a site manager can request to upgrade to listing manager or owner of a verified listing. The listing owner can approve or deny the request.

You can remove owners and managers at any time. Learn more about owners and managers

Source: Google

 

 

 

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