TECH TALK WITH MIKE: How to optimize your Google My Business listing – Evening News and Tribune

Initially known as Google Places for Business, Google My Business is an important tool for businesses looking to leverage location-based marketing. It is a free marketing tool from Google that enables business owners to manage the visibility of their business on search engines. GMB is best suited for businesses looking to improve their brand awareness and visibility to local clients.

However, like other digital marketing strategies, making the most from Google My Business goes beyond setting up your account and waiting for results. You should optimize your business listing to enable search engines to display your business as part of the search results. Below is a guide on how to optimize your GMB and its benefits.

Google My Business is part of Googles Knowledge Graph. This is a service that businesses and individuals can optimize to position their services on the first page of Google search results. Knowledge graph displays various information, including phone numbers, operational hours, address, customer reviews, offers/promotions, and photos.

Below are Google My Business optimization steps:

Create or claim your business Begin by creating or claiming your business listing on Google. Some businesses, especially those that have been operational for some time, can show up automatically on Google maps. If your business doesnt show up, you can easily create a business listing. If it shows up, simply claim the business.

Verify your listing After creating or claiming your business, Google will send a postcard with detailed instructions on how you can verify your business within five days. Ensure that you verify the listing. Otherwise, your performance and visibility on Google will be affected negatively. Without verification, Google wont display the business, allow edits to your business information, or provide insights.

Complete your business profile Like social media accounts, you should complete your business profile with accurate information for the listing to rank higher. The main goal of completing your profile is to provide customers with sufficient information about your listing.

The basics include, choosing an accurate business category, writing a clear description, and completing all other important fields. Also, remember to include your phone number and local area code. Some other important tips to optimize your business profile include:

The main benefit of optimizing your Google My Business is to improve your businesss local search visibility. Current Google algorithms factor user intent as search queries increasingly become location-specific.

For instance, if youve searched for a business near you before, Google often shows results of open business within your current locality. The businesses displayed have GMB pages and are one step closer to getting online customers than businesses without GMB listings.

Some of the other benefits of optimizing your Google My Business listing include;

Making it easier for customers to find your business. Customers wont be frustrated by old phone numbers and wrong addresses anymore.

It is an additional website citation. Information provided through GMB is displayed on Google search and Google Maps.

Google My Business provides beneficial insights about your business, helps to collect reviews and gives your business better credibility.

You should ensure that your business has a detailed and updated Google My Business page. If you havent, you are missing out on this simple method of ranking higher in Googles search engine results. Therefore, you could be missing out on crucial traffic and potential customers.

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TECH TALK WITH MIKE: How to optimize your Google My Business listing - Evening News and Tribune