Google My Business is a free listing that allows you to create a profile for your business. You’ll do this by filling out the information on Google.com/business, and they’ll send you a verification code to take the listing live. Once you have it up and running, you can do a few things to help it rank faster on Google.
Here is a look at what we do at R5 Website Management to help our clients Google My Business ranking.
1. Fill Out Your Listing Completely
Filling out your Google My Business listing requires you to add your hours, contact information, categories, services, hours, and other essential details. Basically, if there is a space for you to add information, you should fill in that field. This will allow Google to review the listing and pull it up for potential customers looking for your services in their area.
Here are the different areas you can expect to fill out on your listing:
- Hours – you should designate your regular hours of operation plus any special hours. Google will usually email you leading up to a holiday to remind you to tell your customers if you are going to be open on that day. But, you can actually set this up ahead of time for major holidays you know you’ll be closed.
- Services – you should add all of your services to your Google My Business listing. You can create custom services, so if you have things that are not showing up in their auto-fill section, you should add them to that section. I will caution you that if you don’t have content on your website to support the services, Google may remove them from your listing.
- Website links – depending on your business category, Google will give you different places to add custom links. You should have a place to add an appointment link if you offer online appointments. Usually, I just put a contact link in this field if the client doesn’t have a booking system. If you’re in health care, you should have a place to add your telemedicine link. And, since COVID, there is usually a place to add links for your COVID update.
- Products – if you sell products, you can create listings for those products on your GMB listing. You can add the product images, create the descriptions, add the pricing, and then link to your shop.
- Categories – on your listing, you can select the main category of the services you offer with a secondary category. For example, if you’re a functional medicine doctor, you can choose a medical doctor as your primary category and a doctor’s office as a secondary category.
- Attributions – there is a complete list of attributions you can select for your listing. This allows you to share information about your COVID policy, inclusion information, specifics of the building, and more.
- Description – this is a description of your business and what you do for your customers. Make sure to include keywords in this description of things people might be looking for.
If there is a space for you to fill out any information, do your best to add something there.
2. Use Specific Landing Page Link on Google My Business
As I mentioned, GMB gives you the option to add different links to pages on your site. If you have an option to link and a link that matches the description, make sure you add it. For example, if you are a restaurant, you can add your menu link. Of course, there is a place for COVID updates, telemedicine options, etc.
3. Make Posts Regularly
Posting on your GMB listing is like posting on Facebook for your business. You can create posts that showcase your recent products, services you offer, etc. I recommend that you post links to your website and connect those links back to the site because Google recognizes these as backlinks.
We usually like to publish posts once per week for our clients. In the past few months, Google has been rewarding engagement on your listings even more.
4. Add Geotagged Images
Geo-tagging an image means that you add a location tag to the image through coding. We use a website to add this code to the image, but you can achieve this by just turning on locations when taking pictures on your phone. Your phone will automatically embed that code on the image. When you upload it to the image section of your listing, it will reinforce with Google that those images are from local areas.
5. Get As Many Reviews as Possible
One of the easiest and fastest ways to get a review is to ask your customers directly and send them the unique review link for your listing. You can do this by emailing them as soon as you’re done with the service you provide and sending a follow-up email asking a second time if they haven’t done it yet.
Another great idea is to add a review widget or popup to your website. This will allow people to easily find where they can leave a review. But this also acts as a reminder that they should leave feedback for you.
Contact Us For GMB SEO
Here at R5 Website Management, we work with businesses to show up on Google by optimizing their GMB listing. Our process will help you see an increase in clicks to your website and calls directly from the listing itself. For more information about Google My Business ranking, please reach out to us today through our contact form here or call us at 469-431-5151, and we’ll be happy to get back to you right away.
