How can you optimise your Google My Business listing?
Your Google My Business Profile is a powerful tool to help you attract potential customers to your website. Most businesses today are focusing on search engine optimisation (SEO) to improve their ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs), but optimising your Google My Business listing could have a faster impact.
When you provide an overview of your business, highlighting your features, your audience can discover and engage with your business in the SERP. The best thing is, it only takes a few minutes to complete.
If you are a customer searching for a specific type of business in your local area and more than one business is displayed, how do you choose? Most customers choose the listing that offers the most comprehensive information, showing reviews, images, and NAP (name, address, and phone number) information. Optimising your Google My Business listing helps you improve your ranking in local search results, improves engagement, and helps you convert more customers.
Whether you have already claimed your Google My Business listing or not, there are some steps you want to take, ensuring you optimise your listing correctly to achieve the best end results:
While this sounds obvious, you will be surprised the number of listings that are missing key information, such as business hours or website address. When your listing is completed properly, you increase your chances of ranking well in local results. Key areas to ensure are completed accurately includes your name, address, phone number, website address, and operating hours. Additional sections include products and services and a Q&A section, while they take more thought, they are just as important and should be completed in detail.
When completing your listing, remember to ensure your contact information remains consistent across the internet. Inconsistencies, such as changing “street” to “st” can have a negative impact on your credibility, reducing your chances of ranking in SERPs. Taking into account that sixty four percent of customer use Google My Business to find contact information, you need to ensure all areas are correctly completed.
There are some elements on your Google My Business listing that you cannot control, which is why its essential that you keep creative control over the elements you can control. One of these is your “from the business” section that is shown just below the reviews. This is your opportunity to describe why your business is unique and why customers should choose your brand. When creating your “from the business” section, remember to provide key information in the first two hundred and fifty characters, including keywords. Do not include links and do not repeat any information that is already displayed in your listing.
Images can be displayed on your Google My Business listing, uploaded by you or your customers. Customer-generated content is valuable, but are not always the best quality. As a result, you want to ensure you load high quality images that provide your visitors with value. Remember to add photographs on a regular basis, as active listings tend to rank higher in SERPs.
If you want to optimise your Google My Business profile to achieve success, you need to encourage your customers to leave reviews. Sixty two percent of customers will leave a review if you ask them. We recommend you ask your loyal customers for reviews first. You can run a competition, or offer a discount or points to customers that leave reviews on your Google listing.
Your Google My Business listing is a valuable asset, especially when it comes to your local SEO success. The Genie Crawl team have extensive experience when it comes to local SEO and optimising your Google My Business listing. Contact us today to find out more.
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