Complete Guide to Google My Business for Small Businesses

Complete Guide to Google My Business: GMB or Google My Business listings are an effective and free online marketing tactic for all businesses. With GMB listings, businesses get improved visibility when any individual search for their services online via Google Search or Maps.

Additionally, Google local optimization helps clients discover you and helps you grow your business multifold. But surprisingly, according to the data obtained from the best digital marketing agencies, only 44% of local retailers have claimed their GMB listings. 

Also, the frequent changes in GMB make it challenging for business owners to understand the best practice for local listing optimization.

If you too are among them, you should know that optimizing your listings is essential to boost business visibility. To help you with the same, this blog has shed light on everything that you should do to optimize these listings. Don’t miss reading it!

Step 1 – Verify Your Listings Properly

If you already have some business listings, you need not create them from scratch and claim the business by logging into your account, type the business name, and request ownership. In case your business is new, enter the details of your business to create new listings. Remember, it is essential to enter the physical address of your business if you want it to appear on Google Maps. 

If you deliver some products and services, enter the local area so that Google can exactly match the listings with user searches within that location.

Generally, there are multiple ways to listing verification, but the best is to have Google sent a postcard to your business address. Complete the verification process, and once it’s done, you can add site managers to the GMB account to manage the listings.

Step 2 – Enter Accurate Business Details

As per research, an updated GMB profile is more likely to secure 70% customer purchase, so make sure to fill in the columns accurately. Cross-check that all the information on the business website and GMB listings are consistent. Do not include any outdated information and check inconsistencies with other local business citations. This will enable your potential customers to locate your business on Google Maps. 

Also, make sure to create citations with consistent GMB listings and mention your addresses to influence local rankings. Finally, cross-check all the entries by logging in to your GMB dashboard.

Step 3 – Choose Relevant Business Categories

It is also crucial to choose the relevant business categories along with mentioning the correct business details. Also, define one primary and the rest nine secondary categories for your business. But, as there are approximately 4000 categories, so keep on updating them regularly.

You May Like: 8 Technologies Enhancing Digital Transformation Journey of Business

You can also use online tools, look for targeted keywords, and list the categories displayed for other local businesses. This step is quite hectic; it is wise to maintain a spreadsheet to track the same. 

Step 4 – Insert Attractive Images & Videos

Now, it is time for personalizing the visual view of your GMB profile. None of the listings is complete without a high-resolution and attractive image. Right? So, include some relevant business images as this will increase the trust and reputation of your business and result in more clicks. Ensure the GMB listings photos adhere to Google best practices, such as – 

• Image should be in JPG or PNG format
• Image resolution should be 720×720 px
• Image size can range between 10kb to 5Mb

Along with inserting high-resolution images, include necessary information like details, titles, alt text, geo-tagging, captions, and more. This will increase your business visibility and ranking.

Step 5 – Get As Much Reviews As You Can

Genuine customer reviews reflect more about the brand. So, you can boost your local business rankings by securing more customer reviews. For that, you can develop some review strategies and win customers trust so that they leave some positive reviews for your business.

You May Like: How To Use A Chainsaw Safely!

And yes, never forget to respond to reviews because this is where you can win the hearts of your potential customers and maintain good relations. 

As per reports, more than 80% of the consumers conduct local searches than regular mobile searches. It would be disadvantageous if your business was located nearby, but customers couldn’t find you on Google Maps. This is where having a strong GMB listing can be really effective to boost your business visibility. If you are finding it difficult to implement these aforementioned steps can take help from SEO companies in Jaipur or companies in your preferred cities. Your small business can gain a better online presence and better reach with GMBs done correctly. Good Luck!