The value of being listed on Google Businesses

Google My Business gives businesses the opportunity to easily be located on Google maps and Google search. Once your profile is set up, you can display important information about your business, including the opening/closing times, contact details or a link to your website. More recently Google has also released a new feature allowing you to post a link to articles or up and coming events. More about that later. The listing is free but it should be regarded as a necessity by all businesses. If your business is an online business and you don’t have a physical shop then you should still consider having a Google My Business page. Some other fabulous features of Google Business listings include:

BEING SEEN!

According to Innovation Visual, setting up your Google My Business listing is one of the simplest and most effective ways of setting your business up to be found online. More and more search queries are becoming geographically specific, and Google’s algorithms have been developed to consider user intent.

You’ve probably done a Google search at some point such as, ‘places to eat near me’, if so then you’ll notice that Google returns a list of three locations where you can eat based on your current location. The three businesses that have shown because of your search query have a GMB page and are one step closer to attracting you as a customer.

If these places to eat did not have a GMB page then they would not have shown. Think about this in the context of your business, whatever product, or service you may be selling. How can local searches benefit your business and what might you be missing out on without one?

As Google makes regular changes to its algorithms, if you want to get found in local search you need to have a Google My Business listing and be optimising it on a regular basis.

FREE FEEDBACK

People will share their feedback online whether we like it or not! Google business listings can showcase your reviews and act as social proof to your potential customers and help them decide on whether to do business with you or not. The best way to collect reviews is to ask for them. Seek out customers who you know what been satisfied with your product or service. To make it easier to collect reviews, set up a templated email but make sure you personalise it where possible before you send! PS. Don’t panic: Google finds that a combination of positive and negative reviews is more trustworthy than page after page of glowing recommendations.

BEING FOUND!

How often do you first search for a restaurant? Or a shop? Or an office? Looking for photos to identify location as well as legitimacy. Most customers will search you up online before considering doing business with you. That’s why it is also important to accurately showcase your business with photos and text.

Hootsuite sums it up well by saying, whether you’re looking for foot traffic or web traffic, Google is the ultimate search referrer. A Google Business Profile helps ensure that people find your business when looking for products and services like yours in their local area.

Your Google My Business listing shows searchers where and how to visit your business. A Google Business Profile also improves your local SEO. In particular, a listing for a local business is more likely to appear when people search for a nearby business using Google Maps.