Discover all the advantages for your business when using Google My Business! Learn how to implement this tool and how to carry out best practices for best results in this guide.
Whether you have a small business or a more established business, have been operating it for a long time or are still waiting to open, Google has a perfect solution to promote it: Google My Business!
This free and very easy-to-use tool aims to increase the organic visibility of your business, in order to appear in front of users who search for your activity on Google (or other search engines).
Google My Business is thus an extension of Search Engine Optimization (or Search Engine Optimization – SEO) which is characterized by being a Digital Marketing practice that seeks to improve business results through organic traffic – ie unpaid traffic.
Don't know what SEO, SEO On Page, SEO Off Page or Linkbuilding means? All these terms are basic concepts around the SEO world and if you don't know them, your business could be missing out on great opportunities. Get to know the basics of Search Engine Optimization in this guide.
In this complete guide about Google My Business, you will have an overview of how this specific tool works, all its advantages and how to start using it. Is ready?
What is Google My Business?
Simply put, Google My Business is a free service provided by Google, designed to help promote local businesses on their platform. It's a tool that allows business owners to manage how their business appears on Google and make it stand out.
But the key question is: why should you use Google My Business?
Since a large part of the world's population uses Google, this means that you will have a huge audience. The more visible – or the more often your business appears in search results – the greater the chances of attracting people's attention to you. Is innovative and more practical alternative to conventional advertisements.
We are therefore referring to the concept of Local SEO, that is, the practice of actively seeking to improve the positioning of our business for local searches, such as “vets in funchal”.
SEO is capable of generating tremendous results for small and large businesses operating locally. Want to know more? Also we created a guide with all the information you need to know about local SEO best practices and how they influence your business.
But the key question is: why should you use Google My Business?
Example of our agency's Google My Business Page Result
Benefits of Google My Business
Thanks to current technology, it is now much faster and easier to promote your product or service. According to Search Engine Watch, 50% of people who use mobile phones for local searches end up visiting the store.
Since almost everyone today uses a smartphone, can you imagine the possible visits and sales that you can get just through organic search and a simple profile of your company on Google My Business?
Creating, verifying and properly optimizing your Google My Business account then becomes an invaluable opportunity, being necessary to understand how to use this feature and all the tools it offers in an intelligent way capable of generating results. This is precisely the purpose of the Google My Business guide you are reading.
What a other advantages can Google My Business offer your business? Now let's see:
2. Google My Business Allows You to Appear on Google Maps and Location Packs
Do you want the customer to notice the location of your business and do you want your business to appear at the top of the page whenever they search for certain keywords on Google? You are talking about Google's Local Pack and this is your solution, and there are two essential reasons why you should pay attention to this tool.
First of all, if you don't know what the local pack refers to, see this article.
The Local Pack occupies huge places on the first page of Google search results, and it is one of the first things any Google user will see after writing their search, if Google understands that it is relevant to present local results for their search. It then allows users to see the information they need at a glance, such as reviews made, time, distance, website, among other information.
Sample Google Local Pack List for Search “digital marketing agency” where our agency ranks first
The Local Pack is a type of improved result existing at Google. For you to understand better what this means: Google uses specific information, present in the code of the pages, to present, when relevant, other result types on search result pages than just text. You will certainly be used to seeing various results with images, suggestions, quick settings, among others. These are examples of improved or rich results – “rich results” in English.
Discover the gallery of improved results available on Google.
More precisely, the Local Pack displays nearby places related to your search. It also includes other information relevant to the respective locations so that any potential customer can have access to them (the information referred to above).
See for yourself the local result presented by Google about our agency.
According to Moz, a very capable entity when it comes to the study of Digital Marketing themes, the Google My Business is the biggest determinant of Local Pack rankings.
So, if your goal is to connect with your target audience, verify, update and optimize your information online, Google My Business can certainly help you.
2. Google My Business Allows You to Receive Feedback Customers
One should never underestimate the power of reviews of customers, especially when it comes to search rankings. The same study by Moz, mentioned above, states that the reviews online make up 10% of how search engines rank results.
Yes, if you want to appear first you will have to rank better for Google than your competitors.
In this way, to improve the presence of your business on Google, using Google My Business is a great help, as it allows you to view the comments and rating of your business by customers. See the case of our agency:
Reviews of our agency on Google My Business
In addition to the fact that reviews improve your business’ Local SEO quality, they also influence your customers’ decision making.
It is a well-known fact that consumers use reviews to help you make decisions about consumption.
In fact, up to 93% of customers can be influenced by reviews online. In other words, almost all of them.
These small blocks of text are testimonials from real consumers who were not paid by the company to promote their product or service. Thus, people feel that the business is more credible and many look to the existing reviews as a quality factor, giving them greater security and comfort for consumption.
More and more people are checking out customer reviews before choosing a local business.
Since people love to read reviews, search engines use them to rank search results. If used correctly, this Google My Business feature can have a huge impact on your business.
It's important to get positive reviews, but remember that even the best companies get negative reviews. If this happens to you, deal with them professionally and don't take them personally. Instead, use them to improve your product or service. Bad reviews, when properly used, can provide useful information to help your business move forward.
Advanced Tip: Respond to ALL comments that appear on your page in a professional and prompt manner.
3. Google My Business Provides Useful Information
Google My Business is a useful tool for your business as it promotes your product or service and also helps you understand your market.
Yes, Google My Business includes powerful features that give you insights on important areas to help you strategize and make decisions. This tool allows you to access statistics and information that can help you determine where your audience is coming from.
3.1. Views
Google My Business can show you the number of views your profile, photos and posts are getting. This is specifically important to check the effectiveness of your campaigns. – whether they are working well and getting the attention you want, or whether you should use another approach.
3.2. search queries
Google My Business provides a report where you can learn and understand how consumers find your business. Shows how people are searching – specifically what keywords introduce – to find your business.
3.3. Involvement
Google My Business can show you how your audience is interacting with your posts. Allows you to see which messages they share and what types of comments they leave. This way, you will get an idea of the types of material that work well for your business.
3.4. Court hearing
Google My Business has a section where you can find a summary of the profile of the people who follow you. You can check age groups, sex and even the countries they come from. All this data is useful when building a campaign.
3.5. Cliques no link do website
Google My Business can also show you the number of clicks on your website link via a local result. Your website is made available to the user, along with other information as we have already mentioned, whenever your business appears in a local search result.
Quantifying information and knowing these statistics can help you create solid strategies. If you want to improve your audience engagement, website traffic and boost company sales, then you should take the time to study the numbers.
4. It's free and easy to use
However useful a product is, its potential will not be maximized if it is too expensive, impractical and difficult to use. Fortunately, this is not the case with Google My Business.
This efficient tool is free and easy to use, so even start-ups can use it to promote their business. Creating and verifying your profile can be done in a matter of hours. In fact, there are tools that can get you verified instantly. With that done, your business is ready to get its stardom on page 1 of Google. In addition, it has excellent tools to help you analyze performance and so you can find ways to improve your business ranking.
Google My Business facilitates online promotion of your products and services for both startups as well as for local businesses, increasing visibility and improving their chances of appearing in search results. It can help potential customers find and contact you quickly. It's a free tool that you can use to improve your online presence, connect with your customers and increase your company's revenue.
Shall we capitalize on your organic visibility?
Are you ready to broaden your business horizons and “stay ahead” of more customers?
You can do it autonomously and it will certainly generate some results if you develop the best strategies in the tool. For this you can quickly create your account, or claim ownership, if it already exists for Google. just follow this google guide and you will quickly have access to your account, with some bureaucracy in the mix.
However, the Search Engine Optimization is one of the most robust practices in Digital Marketing. Mastering organic results can take years, if ever. Write content optimized for search engines It is not a mathematical formula, but rather contextual. You have to be an authority, inform and follow a huge range of best practices in the best way. Likewise, to optimize your business's local presence in search engines, it is necessary to implement a complete strategy and to constantly efect, test and iterate.
We can then realize that the truth is it is not as simple as some make it seem.
Not everything can be good, if on the one hand organic results bring visits and organic results (that is, unpaid), the practice of good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is something extremely complex and a practice of high requirements.
At Be-Wide we take into account all the difficulties that our customers may have in order to enjoy the benefits of organic traffic and we offer a general and complete SEO service. In this service we will use good SEO practices on your website in order to improve the positioning of your pages on Google (and other search engines). In addition to the traditional SEO that deals only with website pages, we include in this service the optimization of local results, achieved through Google My Business.
That is, for the same price, you will increase your visibility on search engines in every way possible.
If you really believe that the future of your company passes through digital and you are looking for real and continuous results, consult our Search Engine Optimization services and contact us.