Complete Guide to Google My Business – How Does It Work?

Discover all the advantages for your business of using Google My Business! Learn how to implement this tool and how to follow best practices to achieve better results in this guide.

Whether you have a small business or a more established one, whether you have been running it for a long time or are still waiting to open it, Google has the 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, so that it appears 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 Optimisation (SEO), which is a Digital Marketing practice that seeks to improve business results through organic traffic – that is, unpaid traffic.

Don't know what SEO, On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO or Link Building mean? All these terms are basic concepts in the world of SEO, and if you don't know them, your business could be missing out on great opportunities. Learn the basics of Search Engine Optimisation in this guide.

In this complete guide to Google My Business, you will get an overview of how this specific tool works, all its advantages, and how to start using it. Are you 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 its platform. It is 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 you will have a huge audience. The more visible you are – or the more often your business appears in search results – the greater the chances of attracting people's attention to you. It is an innovative and more practical alternative to conventional advertising.

We are therefore referring to the concept of Local SEO, that is, the practice of actively seeking to improve our business's ranking for local searches, such as "vets in Funchal".

SEO can generate tremendous results for small and large businesses that operate locally. Want to know more? We also 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?

Advantages 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 nowadays almost everyone uses a smartphone, can you imagine the potential visits and sales you could obtain just through organic search and a simple Google My Business profile for your company?

Creating, verifying, and properly optimising your Google My Business account therefore becomes an invaluable opportunity, making it essential to understand how to use this feature and all the tools it offers in an intelligent way that can generate results. This is precisely the aim of the Google My Business guide you are reading.

But what other advantages can Google My Business offer your business? Let's take a look:

2. Google My Business Allows You to Appear on the Map and in Google Local Packs

Do you want customers to notice your business's location and have it appear at the top of the page whenever they search for certain keywords on Google? You're talking about the Google Local Pack, and this is your solution. 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, check out this article.

The Local Pack occupies huge spaces on the first page of Google search results, and it's one of the first things any Google user will see after typing their search, if Google deems it relevant to show local results for that query. It allows users to see the information they need at a glance, such as reviews, opening hours, distance, website, and other details.

The Local Pack is a type of enhanced result on Google. To help you better understand what this means: Google uses specific information present in the page's code to display, when relevant, other types of results on search engine results pages, not just text. You're certainly used to seeing various results with images, suggestions, quick definitions, and more. These are examples of enhanced or rich results.

Explore the gallery of enhanced results available on Google.

More specifically, the Local Pack displays nearby places related to your search. It also includes other relevant information about those places so that any potential customer can access it (the information we mentioned above).

See for yourself the local result Google shows for our agency.

According to Moz, a highly capable entity when it comes to studying Digital Marketing topics, Google My Business is the biggest determining factor for Local Pack rankings.

So, if your goal is to connect with your target audience, checking, updating, and optimising your online information, Google My Business can certainly help you.

2. Google My Business Allows You to Receive Customer Feedback

You should never underestimate the power of customer reviews, especially when it comes to search rankings. The same Moz study we mentioned above states that online reviews make up 10% of how search engines rank results.

Yes, if you want to appear in first place, you'll have to be better ranked by Google than your competitors.

Therefore, to improve your business's presence on Google, using Google My Business is a great help, as it allows customers to view comments and ratings of your business. Take a look at our agency's case:

Besides the fact that reviews improve the quality of your business's Local SEO, they also influence your customers' decision-making.

It's a well-known fact that consumers use reviews to help them make purchasing decisions.

In fact, up to 93% of customers can be influenced by online reviews. In other words, almost all of them.

These small blocks of text are testimonials from real consumers who weren't paid by the company to promote its product or service. As a result, people feel the business is more credible, and many see existing reviews as a quality factor, giving them greater confidence and comfort in making a purchase.

More and more people are checking customer opinions before choosing a local business.

Since people love reading 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 is important to get positive reviews, but remember that even the best companies get negative reviews. If this happens to you, handle them professionally and don't take them personally. Instead, use them to improve your product or service. Negative reviews, when used properly, can provide useful insights 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 Insights

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 provide you with insights into key areas to help you create strategies 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 receiving. This is particularly important for checking the effectiveness of your campaigns – whether they are working well and getting the attention you want, or if you should use a different approach.

3.2. Search queries

Google My Business provides a report where you can learn and understand how consumers find your business. It shows how people are searching – specifically which keywords they enter – to find your business.

3.3. Engagement

Google My Business can show you how your audience is interacting with your posts. It allows you to see which messages they share and what types of comments they leave. This way, you'll get an idea of the types of material that work well for your business.

3.4. Audience

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, gender, and even the countries they come from. All this data is useful when building a campaign.

3.5. Website link clicks

Google My Business can also show you the number of clicks on your website link from a local result. Your website is made available to the user, along with other information as 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 audience engagement, website traffic, and boost company sales, you should spend some time studying the numbers.

4. It is free and easy to use

As useful as a product may be, its potential will not be maximised if it is too expensive, impractical, and difficult to use. Fortunately, that is not the case with Google My Business.

This efficient tool is free and easy to use, so even start-up companies 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 instantly verified. Once that is done, your business is ready to star on page 1 of Google. Additionally, it has excellent tools to help you analyse performance and find ways to improve your business's ranking.

Google My Business makes it easy to promote your products and services online, whether for startups or local businesses, increasing visibility and improving your chances of appearing in search results. It can help potential customers find and contact you quickly. It is a free tool you can use to enhance your online presence, connect with your customers, and boost your company's revenue.

Shall we capitalise on your organic visibility?

Are you ready to broaden your business horizons and get in front of more customers?

You can do it independently, and it will certainly generate some results if you develop the best strategies within the tool. To do this, you can quickly create your account or claim your property if it already exists on Google. Just follow this Google guide and you will soon have access to your account, with some paperwork involved.

However, Search Engine Optimisation is one of the most robust practices in Digital Marketing. Mastering organic results can take years, if you ever manage it at all. Writing content optimised for search engines is not a mathematical formula, but rather highly contextual. You need to establish authority, inform, and follow a vast range of best practices as effectively as possible. Similarly, to optimise your business's local presence in search engines, it is necessary to implement a complete and effective strategy, test, and iterate constantly.

We can therefore see that the truth is it is not as simple as some make it out to be.

Not everything can be good; while organic results bring visits and organic (i.e., unpaid) outcomes, practising good SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is extremely complex and a highly demanding discipline.

At Be-Wide, we take into account all the difficulties our clients may face in enjoying the benefits of organic traffic and offer a comprehensive, all-in-one SEO service. In this service, we will use good SEO practices on your website to improve the ranking of your pages on Google (and other search engines). In addition to traditional SEO, which only deals with website pages, we include in this service the optimisation of local results, achieved through Google My Business.

In other words, for the same price, you will increase your visibility in search engines in every possible way.

If you truly believe your company's future lies in the digital world and you are looking for real, ongoing results, check out our Search Engine Optimisation services and get in touch with us.