Why You Aren’t Using Google My Business Correctly

Upwards of 40-50% of Search is local based. What this means is that it is someone looking for directions to a store, place or product locally. This could be coffee, pizza, a hairdresser or a restaurant. Makes sense right? 

Because of this, Google invests heavily into one of its core products - Google My Business, and new updates and features appear on this product almost monthly. Most likely you or your business already has one of these set-up, it’s pretty basic to do all you have to do is sign-up, follow the correct steps, get verified and bingo you have a profile. Most likely after setting this up and adding a couple of photos you haven’t touched it though right? instead you have focussed on traditional marketing, SEO, and social. That’s often where the mistake is made.

So why is it so important?

If we split search intent into 3 basic categories,

 1. Informational - people looking for information.

2. Intent - people looking to purchase a product or service e.g a haircut.

3. Navigational - people wanting directions.

In search it is more than likely for types 2 and 3 that Google My Business is what shows near the top of the search result, and if you don’t show up because you don’t have a profile or your profile is so poorly optimised that it refuses to show, you have no visibility and therefore lose potential traffic and sales.

So how do I optimise my Google My Business?

Some basics to get started and base your optimisation strategy on is to remember three common principles on what Google will reward: Quality, quantity and frequency. What this means is:

The quality of content you publish has to be good, e.g good, authentic relevant photo’s and reviews.

You have to have a large quantity of everything, e.g the more the better.

And the frequency you interact with Google My Business has to be often, a monthly cadence of new reviews, photo’s and updated posts will tick this box.

What you can actually do and get rewarded by Google for in Google My Business is nearly endless. Key tasks you should endeavour to complete on a monthly cycle are:

Updated and new reviews. Adding new photos. Adding new media posts that are hosted on the profile. Adding and changing a variety of products that can be embedded on the platform. Continuously changing and testing descriptions.

Doing all of this over a consistent period of time will undoubtedly lift you in the ranks of local SEO.

What if my business doesn’t have a fixed address?

You can set profiles up as ‘service areas’ so they don’t show a fixed address. Instead they will show the area that you service, e.g all of Auckland or New Zealand. It will allow you to have all of the same features as a profile with an address but without showing where you are located.

How can I measure its success?

Because Google My Business shows in organic search it will show up in GA as ‘google/organic’ inside analytics. To get a real idea on how it’s growing in conjunction with the effort that you are putting into the product, build a UTM tag that identifies GMB as the campaign source. Inside the profile there is also an ‘insights’ tab which gives you a run down of impressions and other useful metrics to help inform growth.

Summary

Treat Google My Business as it’s own marketing channel, have a product owner and up skill them and empower them to own this channel for your business and brand. The more time and resources you put into this tactic, the more you will get out of it and keep on top of your competition.