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Setting Up & Optimising Your Google My Business Page

Posted: 28th May 2018

What Is “Google My Business” Page ?

Google My Business is essentially Google’s business listings. By having a Google My Business page you can show up in Google map results and grow your local business presence in your relevant area.

 

Why Do You Need A Google My Business Account ?

 

  • Improves Online Visibility And SEO performance
  • You can get positive reviews for your business
  • Allows vital business information to be shown for example opening hours, address and phone number.
  • You can post business news and offers

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How Do You Set Up A Google My Business Account?

 A Google My Business listing is completely free and easy to set up.

  1. Search “Google My Business”

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2. Click on “ Start Now”

3. Fill In The Name Of Your Business

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4. Then fill out the location data

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Verifying Your Google My Business Listing

 Once you have set up your Google My Business account, you need to verify the account.

  1. Enter the name of the person the postcard needs to be sent to
  2. Then the enter the business address the postcard needs to arrive at
  3. Click send post card
  4. Then after a week or so the Google My Business verification postcard will arrive
  5. The card will contain a verification code
  6. Login into your account, click “verify now” and enter the verification number.

 

How To Improve The Visibility Of Your Google My Business Listing ?

  • Add eye catching photos of your workplace and workers
  • Add Google posts
  • Gain positive reviews
  • Fill out all the vital company information like address, opening hours, special hours, phone number, website url, services, payments, business description and opening date.
  • Choose the correct business categories

 

Adding The Right Photos To Your Google My Business Page

Firstly I would always avoid using stock photos in your account and instead use real photos of your business, location and workers. This is better for SEO purposes and secondly makes your business more lifelike for potential local customers.

 

Ideas For Maximising Photo Potential

  • Hire a professional photography
  • Post photos on a regular basis
  • Make sure images are authentic to your business
  • Use the photo category options.

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Google rewards well filled out accounts and having lots of photos which are categorised into the Google My Business photo segments shown above is an important part of this.

 

Google Posts And Why You Should Use Them

Google posts allow businesses to write about new events, news, products and general business on goings. You can then link from these posts to the specific news, event or product you are referring to in the post. Google posts appear in the knowledge panel on the right hand side of search results.

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Why Use Google Posts ?

  • Gives immediate value to the user by presenting up to date company information
  • Posts can help drive traffic to your website.
  • Help drive leads and increase profits

 

How To Write A Google Post

Writing a post is easy. Firstly login into your Google My Business account and navigate to the left hand option menu.

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Click on posts and you will be brought a page with three options

  • What’s new ( this is the general business update option)
  • Event ( write about upcoming company events and input dates and times)
  • Offer ( write about upcoming/current product and service offers)

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To fully optimise the post you should add 100-300 character description. A image with the dimensions of 800px x 600px and a call to action button.

 

How To Get Google My Business Reviews

Reviews are important because they are a ranking factor in map results and also positive reviews encourage potential customers to trust your business. A lot of people take the number of positive reviews seriously when deciding to call a company from an online search.

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Getting positive reviews is relatively straight forward and usually the best way is to politely ask customers that have been pleased by your services. By following this Google tutorial you can create a link for your customers to click on and leave a review (https://support.google.com/business/answer/7035772?hl=en-GB)

 

Ideas On How To Get More Google Reviews

  • Send email link to customers
  • Share the link on social media
  • Have a review button on your website

 

Filling Out Vital Google My Business Information

It is of the upmost important to fill out as many of the information segments as possible. The correct business address, phone number, opening times and URL are the bare minimum that should be filled in. The more information you can give, the better chance you have of gaining high map rankings.

To fill out the information segments, click the info button on the left-hand navigation bar.

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Once you have navigated to the information tab, you will see the options screenshotted on the left hand side. You should be able to fill out most of these options depending on your business type.

 

Make Sure To Add Services

The info tab gives the option to add the services your business provides and to add a description about each service. We highly suggest adding each service your business provides because as we have mentioned before the more information you provide in you’re my business account , the better chance you have of increasing map visibility.

Once you have clicked on the service button, you will be shown the following screen

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It is imperative you add the item name and you have the option of adding a price and a 1000 character description. We recommend adding the 1000 character description for each service but the price is very much down to your business model.

 

The Importance Of Picking Relevant Business Categories

Picking categories is in the information section of Google My Business but we felt it was so important we have dedicated a separate heading just for choosing categories. Google My Business allows one primary category to be picked and up to 6 sub categorises. The categories section is used to describe your business and help local searchers find relevant results.

For example  if you type in “family lawyer Edinburgh” the following map pack results are shown ( from my current location anyway)

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The law firms in the top three of map results have picked their primary category  as “ family lawyer”.  Although there are multiple ranking factors and proximity measures that make up map pack rankings, choosing a specific primary category that relates to your business goes a long way to helping map pack rankings.

It is important to pick additional categories that relate to more specific services that your business offers. This can help you gain multiple map listings for a variety of keywords.

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Do I need An SEO Consultant To Set This Up ?

The aim of this tutorial was to show you exactly how to set up and optimise a Google My Business account and most business owners are quite capable of setting and running their own GMB account. However as SEO Specialists we will make sure all the bases are covered and we can integrate a solid GMB set up with a full SEO strategy and make sure you increase your presence online. If you are interested in finding out more about StruanBairdSEO Services please visit my site.

 

 

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Business Comment is the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce’s bi-monthly magazine. It provides insight on Edinburgh’s vibrant business community, with features on the city’s key sectors, interviews with leading figures and news on new business developments in the capital.
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