The Importance of Google My Business

25th April 23

Nowadays, many potential customers looking to purchase the products or services you offer will first conduct a thorough Google search before making the purchase decision. The primary information local searchers will be looking for is your business location. A Google Business profile helps your business appear at the top of search results for relevant keywords.

For all local businesses, Google My Business listing is a powerful tool that enables businesses to be found in Google searches. The robust tool enhances your online presence.

What is Google My Business?

Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool designed to help businesses rank higher in Google search results for suitable local searches. Business owners can leverage GMB to control and enhance their visibility in Google’s search engine result pages (SERPs).

With Google My Business, you can create a listing that includes your business name, phone number, physical address, a link to your website, hours of operation, and other relevant details. You can also add photos, videos, and descriptions, and even respond to customer reviews.

This way, having a GMB profile will let allow you to:

Increase your web presence and visibility
Improve your search engine rankings, especially for local searches
Gain more traffic, leads, and customers
Provide a better customer experience

GMB is also an important part of your SEO strategy as it gives your customers a way to find information about your business and read or leave reviews. Here is how you can set up your Google My Business profile.

Setting up Your GMB Profile

To set up your GMB profile, you just need to:

Visit the Google My Business Website
Sign in with a Google Account
Enter details about your business, including the name, phone number, address, and website
Verify the listing
Add relevant photos and videos, including the logo, cover photo, team photos, and product photos
Post regular updates about your business to keep your customers engaged.

Once you’ve set up your Google My Business profile, you will start reaping the benefits of the free tool. Google will start displaying your business to consumers searching for the products or services you offer in your local area.

To give you an idea of what you gain by optimising your GMB profile, here are some benefits to consider.

Benefits of Google My Business

Increased visibility

A key benefit of GMB is that it helps you boost the visibility of your business online. Whenever customers search for businesses on Google, your GMB listing will be placed higher in the local search results. This way, your business will be seen by a lot more prospects and may boost your sales.

Higher local search ranking

GMB listings are highly visible in local searches. Google essentially verifies that you are a legitimate business with a physical location, and rank you higher in the local results. Optimising for local SEO allows smaller businesses to compete with substantially larger businesses in the local area. This is crucial for standing out and helping make your products more available to customers near you.

Staying connected with your customers

Through the direct messaging option, potential customers can send messages directly to a custom email address or your business phone number via the GMB interface. This allows for direct communication with leads who searched for your business profile, where you could respond to queries in real time.

Enhances customer service

As mentioned earlier, modern customers’ purchase decisions are mostly dependent on reviews. They assess the product or service and the business quality using the reviews. Having several positive reviews could mean the difference between a customer choosing your business over another. You can enhance this by also making sure you respond to the reviews, including the negative ones, as it shows empathy.

Serves as a marketing tool

You can also use GMB posts within your profile to add products, create offers, give updates or news, and share other information directly on Google search. You can also choose different calls-to-actions that can help increase click-through rates like “sign up”, “learn more”, “call now” and more. All this can be a great addition to your content marketing strategy, to help you reach more customers on these lucrative local searches.

What Can You Do With Your Google My Business Profile?

Monitor Visibility Metrics

With visibility metrics, you can see how many views your profile, posts, and images have garnered over a specific period. Tracking visibility is important because you can track how different marketing campaigns have impacted your visibility and reach in the Google search.

You can then replicate the best-performing campaigns to help attain the highest returns for your campaigns. You can also test new ideas all the time along with the best-performing ones.

Get Keyword insights

You could use the “How your customers search for your business” report to see where in the search engine your profile was shown and where people found your profile online. The report will include the keywords that triggered your profile to show up for your customers.

Understanding this will enable you to appropriate the right keywords in your overall SEO strategy and give you insights into what keywords you should be using in your campaigns.

Leverage engagement metrics

Engagement metrics provided by the GMB dashboard will tell you how many calls, website clicks, and redirection requests you’ve had on your profile. You can track engagement metrics such as:

Clicks to your site
Number of phone calls to your business
Direction requests from Google Maps
Estimates on when your business is at its busiest and the average location visit lengths
Where on the maps direction requests are made

Using these metrics can help improve and optimise your GMB profile and align your business to the needs of your customers appropriately. For instance, the direction requests can inform you where your clients are more likely to come from.

Final Thoughts

For any business looking to grow its online presence and visibility, Google My Business is an indispensable tool. It’s a free, yet simple and comprehensive tool that small businesses can use to enhance their digital marketing strategy, gain more reach, and boost sales significantly.

If you’re not already using GMB, it’s time to set up a profile. It could just be the best thing you do for your business.