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Google My Business tools are free and effective and leverage the power of today’s most important customer discovery platform. We believe claiming and properly optimizing the Google Business Listing is the single most important thing for local and regional businesses to do, along with a well-optimized Local SEO approach. Check out our top 7 Google My Business tips for 2019.
Keeping your account up to date ensures that Google has the most accurate info to share with current and potential customers. These updates include business hours (including holiday and special hours), physical address, phone number, category of business, website, and more. Your Google My Business listing may be the first (and sometimes only) thing searchers see when they look up your business, so having that accurate information is critical.
This is a free mobile app that helps you manage your business on the go. On the app, you can:
As a business owner or manager, you have a lot of responsibility, which means you may not have time to keep your online presence fresh. Adding others to help manage your GMB listing can come a long way. Our recommendation is to add additional owners or managers to be prepared if something ever changed with your business. Maybe you no longer have or use the email you set up the account with, an admin left your company and you need someone else to handle the GMB listing, etc.
A listing with a lot of photos helps you gain trust and credibility with potential customers wondering what your business is all about. This lets you showcase the photos that capture your business the best. According to Google, “Businesses with photos receive 42% more request for driving directions to their location, and 35% more clicks through to their websites than businesses that don’t have photos.”
Responding to reviews is a key part of reputation management and maintaining a professional image. By publicly responding to online reviews and answering customer questions with accurate information, a business shows current customers and potential prospects (not to mention search engines) that they care. 91% of marketers now agree that review signals play a role in driving local search visibility. Search engines like Google use the quantity and quality of reviews to help determine what businesses to show to customers searching for a local business.
Google Posts and Product features allow businesses to create content about a product, promotion, announcement, news, or blog update directly on Google. The post appears alongside their business information on the Google SERP (search engine results page).
Insights gives you an inside look at how people find your business listing on Search and Maps and what they do once they find it. Google recently added a new branded searches section in addition to direct and discovery searches. You can use this information to make smart business decisions. In addition, Insights will show you things like how many actions customers took on your listing, including visits to your website, requests for directions, and direct calls from a Mobile device.
At Root and Branch, we believe Google My business is becoming increasingly valuable for local businesses. While GMB does the heavy lifting for local SEO, Yelp, Bing Places, and other online business directories are also crucial for presenting a comprehensive and consistent picture to customers and search engines. If you need help managing your GMB listing, are struggling to manage other listings across the internet, or are looking for expertise with your Local SEO approach, get in touch with us today.
