GMB OPTIMIZATION CHECKLISTS
Big companies like Google are putting large amounts of R&D and funds into their local programs, and with the recent changes we need to stay up to date with local platforms we use to promote our businesses.
We own a few niche directory websites ourselves, we provide value and have fun with them but we certainly are no Google or Yelp. We see the value in providing a specialized business directory to bring consumers and companies together on a mutually beneficial platform.
Since we know how important GMBs are to local businesses we created this comprehensive guide to your Google My Business success through optimization of the factors and sections that matter. This will be updated when new GMB updates are confirmed.
How consumers interact with local search
A famous quote goes something like …
"The average goldfish has an attention span of 9 seconds, and the average 20th century human consumer has an attention span of 8 seconds."
On Google, there’s only 3 free local spots to take on the first page, and it takes more than 8 seconds to determine which one of those 3 to go with – your consumer is already getting mentally worn out.
People do not usually click past the initial 3 pack of local map results unless there is no obvious choice of the 3 or the thing they are looking for costs a good bit of money. These decisions are made very quickly for most local services or products (like the low to mid range price tags).
When consumers go online to find something locally, the actions they take can appear quite noisy.
- Purchases less than $1,000 – consumers may not even open the “More Results” tab and choose based on the first 3 businesses listed (and the guy with the ad makes 4).
- Purchases over $1,000 consumers are opening up the “More Results” tab and scoping out more than 3 options. The average consumer may consider 5 to 10 local companies for a major home improvement project, for example.
- New to town – uses Google because they might not know anyone in the area yet, but they might use Yelp if looking for a restaurant or hair salon.
- Lived here for years – may not use at all Google to find a reference for a big purchase, they might ask on NextDoor app or Facebook.
When you get a new Android phone, it basically runs on Google. Yelp is an app that you have to think to go find, download and login – do you get what we are saying?
Some are saying that Google might be getting to big ...
Google ramming our eyes with ads
Big G is not shy to show you ads, and we have never seen so many of them. If you are on mobile, it’s the entire first section of the page full of ads – and about 2/3 that much on desktop.
Google used to be tactful about showing ads, now they’re just smack in your face – like every other website it seems these days.
This means the small amount of free organic results are being squeezed into an even smaller space – making it more of a pay-to-play platform.
IS GOOGLE MY BUSINESS STILL RELEVANT?
So if Google is making it so alluring to sign up for their services, and we know they have plans to flip a switch to monetize those services once business owners rely on them – should we still be using Google My Business?
- Yes, we need to make the best out of the situation, even if it’s their goal to monopolize online search.
GMB STATS (as of 2019)
Google My Business is an online local advertising tool we need to use, and it is still relevant if not more popular with consumers than ever before – here are some statistics that prove it.
- 84% of consumers find a business by exploring Google Maps
- The average business gets 40 - 50 customer actions per month from their Google My Business profile.
- 56% of customers viewing your GMB will also click to visit your website.
- 24% of customers viewing your business profile will call you.
- 20% of customers viewing your retail listing will request driving directions.
- 75% of people will see your Google Business Listing in the regular search results.
- Business profiles with over 50 photos get 35% more clicks and calls than other profiles with less photos.
Google My Business Statistics as of 2019
RECENT CHANGES TO GOOGLE MY BUSINESS
Who are your REAL competitors? – Google fights local spam
Local affiliate marketing, do you know what that is?
It is a form of sales commission for companies like HomeAdvisor, they pay affiliate marketers who create competing business listings to get leads, sell them to HomeAdvisor who then sells those online local leads to you. A marketing scheme that completely bypasses you – the actual real business!
- Google has been fighting this for a few years, and recently removed a whole bunch of those types of listings.
Google expanding it’s Guaranteed Program for Home Services
We have seen the Google Guaranteed services carousel (above the maps section) get more exposure in more business categories. We see how this is will become more popular and Google will market it more aggressively in the near future.
- This feature is expected to have both good AND bad implications for businesses already on Google maps.
Tightening the radius on proximity sensory
A few years back Google updated their local rank algo called “Pigeon” it was meant to filter out business listings that were too similar and too close to each other, giving the searcher more variety.
- This algo has recently been tweaked to make sure a business can not appear more than once in a single maps result even if they are separate locations.
- Tweaks have also tightened the radius of the proximity filter so don’t expect your GMB to show up in all 3 nearby town or suburbs.
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GMB INSIGHTS (PERFORMANCE)
OPTIMIZING BUSINESS PROFILES IN GMB
All of the sections within the Google My Business dashboard are what make up your business listing profile. How well you setup your business profile will determine how well you perform in search.
Starting with getting your hands on your back-end GMB data, we will take you through each one of those sections.
How customers find you on Google
This section tells you whether customers are searching for your brand, or for something you offer using keywords.
- Discovery = customers using keywords to explore nearby businesses – that means they used Google and discovered you from there.
- Direct = customer searching for your brand, or came from a link to your profile
Queries used to find you on Google
Google tracks what people are typing when they make searches and at least nice enough to let you know.
- If you see your brand name as query that would be considered “direct” from above.
- If you see a lot of words & phrases that relate to what you do, those keywords are considered “discovery” from above.
PRO TIP: In this section keep an eye on what terms are showing up, if they are not related to what your business does then you may need to re-write some of your copy to replace / include the correct terms so that your business is found by the right people.
Where customers see your business on Google
Simply, the Google services that customers use to find your business.
- Search = the regular Google search results page, where either the 3 pack map or a single business profile card will appear.
- Maps = the Google maps app, or when a customer expands the Google My Business More Results tab to view more businesses than the first 3.
Customer actions
The most common actions that customers take on your Google business listing.
Phone calls
When and how many times customers call your business.
Photo views
The number of times your business photos have been viewed
Photo quantity
The number of photos that appear on your business, compared to photos from other businesses
BUSINESS INFO
Before we get started into the weeds of Google My Business settings there is one core concept that you must understand when it comes to your business and online data.
That concept is called NAPW – Name, Address, Phone, Website
Since the data online can be so noisy, it is imperative that the exact same NAPW appears wherever your business is mentioned online.
If your business name, phone numbers or address changes and the data is inconsistent data aggregates, like Google, will find it hard to trust your business.
Name of business
Ideally, this should be the official legal business name as registered in the same county as the GMB listing.
PRO TIP: If you try to force keywords into the name field then back it up with a DBA of that same name so that when you get suspended for listing spam you can get un-suspended.
Business categories
Do not dilute with too many, find the top 3 that are the BEST FIT
Service areas nearby
- Address (location) or service radius
- Retail should always show the address.
- Remote services, home services and businesses that require to be at the customer location can either hide or show the address.
In either case, you can set service areas that are nearby.
PRO TIP: Add additional service areas by the zip code, and do not expect the listing to show up beyond 10 miles from the address that was used for verification – but it doesn’t hurt to add them, especially if you run local ads.
Opening hours
Follow the same rule as NAPW for the business hours, they should be the same everywhere they appear, which makes sense.
Special hours
Make sure to apply hours to holidays, and any other special hours your company might have.
Phone numbers
Clearly a very important part of any business is the sales phone number, make sure it is correct.
If the phone number has changed, put the NEW phone number as the “primary” and KEEP the OLD phone number and list that as a “secondary” phone number. (That’s a trick so you do not have to go back to all your other business profiles just to update a phone number)
PRO TIP: Google does not always do a great job at tracking the phone calls, we usually see more actual calls than what Google has in their reports. For that reason we recommend using a call tracking service with a tracking phone number for that specific location as the primary phone number. There are loads of benefits in doing that.
Profile short name
Something similar to a Twitter or Facebook @URL, this is Google trying to make your business profile more shareable because their native URL strings are extremely ugly. Not sure what future plans they have for this but we will make an update when we are.
PRO TIP: At the moment, we are using brand nick names or keywords in this field.
Website link
One of 2 places you can place a link to your website from your Google Business listing profile.
- Single locations – we recommend placing your main homepage link here.
- Multiple locations – you should have location specific pages on your website which the page for this location should be the link.
Contact link
This is the second place to insert a link for people to contact you, useful for going straight to a contact form.
PRO TIP: In some cases it makes sense to use a link that provides tracking metrics. For example, If you are running a special promotion for first time customers coming from your GMB to a special offer landing page.
Highlights (attributes)
These are additional business amenities that you get to list if they apply to your business. Things like “veteran owned” or “woman lead” and “wheelchair accessible” or with “Free WIFI” and things like that.
The attributes are especially helpful for any business that is a brick & mortar that serves customers at it’s location.
Founded
Allows people to know how long you have been in business. We recommend that you do not exaggerate the truth.
- New businesses – you may want to leave it blank as if you do it will not show on your profile.
GMB REVIEWS
A business with several bad reviews, but a decent average review score will get more calls and new customers than a business that has 0 reviews. Second to asking friends or family for references, people tend to trust online reviews as the next best thing.
- Are you responding to all of your reviews – even the less than positive ones?
- Do you have a protocol for dealing with bad reviews?
- Are you running an active review generation campaign?
How GMB reviews help you rank
Reviews are the strongest signal telling Google about the sentiment customers have for your business. Along with the other insights, listed above, Google uses reviews to as one of the stronger factors as to how high a business will appear.
PRO TIP: When possible, have your customers use keywords in their review, and while they are there have them thumbs up on reviews from other people.
GMB POSTS
Google’s attempt to get businesses more engaged with their audience, but on their platform. A cool feature, but not anything worth it’s own weight in gold. Anything you publish anywhere outside of your own website is not owned by you, and only serves to improve the platform you published on – so make that YOUR OWN.
Publish to your own website, and share it to your GMB as a preview and still get the benefits of Google My Business Posts.
- General post (what’s new)
- Events post
- Offer post
- Product post
Optimizing your GMB posts
Not only does it show activity on your profile, but the words in each post can add value to your Google Business listing overall. We have targeted keywords in GMB posts that have caused the listing to appear more frequently for those terms.
PRO TIP: Create an image just for the GMB post. Lightly sprinkle with keywords, and maybe garnish with a link inside the text body to a previous GMB post. Google says they expire after 7 days, but that just means it is not displayed prominant – but remains on the business profile in archives.
GMB PRODUCTS
- Organizing your products
- Product categories are groups of products in the same category
- Each product has it’s image (each image has KWs in file name)
Optimizing your GMB products section
Use model #s or SKUs and the name of the product but also make it descriptive with a single keyword per product listing. Make sure you put the link of that actual product to your website.
GMB SERVICES
Pre-defined categories
Google will try to guess what services you offer.
Custom service categories
If you can not find suitable service categories you have the option to create a custom one.
Optimizing your GMB service section
We never suggest stuffing any part of your profile with keywords, so write your service descriptions with good sales copy and only a couple of keywords that pertain to each service respectively.
GMB WEBSITE
Why does GMB include a one-page website?
Google wants to make it easy for a brand new business to start getting it’s name out there, even if that means giving them a free one-page website to go with their business listing. It’s like getting the toy in a happy meal.
Since Google is also a domain registrar, it is one of their attempts to get you signed up with them for your new website before anyone else does.
Although it is nothing fancy at all, it can help the SEO of your Google my Business profile. We like to use these as “pumpers” to help push up our GMBs.
Primary Button
This can be a click to call, or a link to the website.
Appointment links
This will be the same as the appointment link you created on the main business info section.
Headline
We suggest using a keyword phrase + local modifier here.
Description
We suggest you reinforce the headline here or use the company slogan.
Summary Body
This is the section you can optimize that little one-page website to do something good for your listing. Write for your customers, but make sure to take advantage of the text editing features included. Bolds, lists, links, etc.
Optimizing your GMB one-page website
As with all of your company online assets, you should be linking them together to help with the semantic relationship to your business. Including links with descriptive anchors back to your website is a great start.
MESSAGING (aka CHAT)
We suggest making sure to have a dedicated mobile phone and a person to respond to the messages before you enable this feature.
Getting the GMB app
The messaging feature is for sending texts to the business, and it requires the Google My Business app for it to work. Google wants to make sure that smartphones are being used for this feature.
GMB Q&A FEATURE
A sneaky little google my business feature many business owners do not realize. Anyone with a Google account can ask a question on your business profile.
What’s more, is that anyone can come along and respond whatever they want to answer that question.
Scary? – Maybe, just make sure you keep an eye on that. If someone uses the Q&A feature you will be notified.
PRO TIPS FOR YOUR GOOGLE MY BUSINESS PERFORMANCE
Aside from the tips we dropped along the way, here are a few additional things to consider when trying to improve the ranks of your Google My Business listing.
CONNECTING YOUR WEBSITE TO GOOGLE MY BUSINESS
Embed your GMB map on your website, for single locations you can place into the footer, for multiple locations you should only embed onto the location page
- Make Schema Markup for the location and add the GMB in the “same as”
SEND GOOGLE TRUST SIGNALS ABOUT YOUR BRAND
Having your business listed in other places with the same information will help Google to trust that your business is who you say it is and your GMB rankings will reflect that.
REVIEW GENERATION FUNNELS
Once you have successfully completed the sale, you should immediately follow up with your customers to get positive feedback while they are still left with a good impression of your business.
- Consider creating an email automation to website to generate customer reviews to get more buzz about your business.
WHAT THE INTERNET HAS TO SAY ABOUT YOUR BRAND
Google crawls info from everywhere online. Part of Google’s job is to consider a company’s reputation elsewhere online and plug that into it’s ranking factors. So make sure you are controlling your brand rep everywhere it appears.
ALTERNATIVES TO GOOGLE MY BUSINESS
Hard to believe that there are, for some niches, other apps and directory services that work better than Google My Business – it’s true.
GOOGLE MY BUSINESS SECRETS WE CAN SHARE IN PRIVATE ONLY
GMB Ranking secrets – contact us to learn more
VIEW OUR GMB CREDENTIALS
FAQ ABOUT GOOGLE MY BUSINESS
Yes, but once you have a certain amount of directory listings they become diminishing gains, so just focus on the most well known.
It certainly can, when you connect your website with Google My Business in the correct way there can be a strong correlation to the ranking of a GMB and the corresponding website.
No, actually, you might be able to use what is provided within GMB alone and get decent results, in small unpopulated and low competition areas.
The total number of reviews is a factor, but not by itself. You will need to have mostly positive reviews, and the more engagement with the reviews the better. So make sure customers are liking other reviews, and that you are responding to them.
You can see more Google My Business FAQ here: https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/business/faq/
Nexxus Designs
How can I get the it to show up in a town that is just 12 miles away from me?
It will be hard to show up beyond 10 miles from the address used to verify your GMB, and that radius could get tighter over time. Start by adding the town in your service areas section by zip code. There are some other ways of forcing geo-bleed into surrounding area but we can not post that publicly, contact us for more details on that.