Optimizing a Google Business profile is one of the fastest and most effective ways to achieve local SEO bliss. Without a doubt, you still need a solid website, but creating and optimizing a Google Business profile can be one of the fastest ways to capture search demand locally, for the products and services you offer.
Interviewing Ben Lund, founder of Rise Marketing Group, which offers local marketing services,
“Anyone looking to drive more customers locally, this should be a top priority in your digital marketing.”
Adriaan Van Swieten, founder of Stijg Media which offers local SEO for businesses in Massachusetts, agrees.
“This is because Google prioritizes the map listings for local commercial searches. With some optimization, businesses can rise up the ranks to the top of the page, even above traditional search search listings”.
In this blog we’re going to break down 5 tips to optimize your Google Business profile to capture more qualified, local traffic.
Google Reviews
This is the first priority, which is an ongoing effort. Ask reviews from your happy customers. Solid reviews will directly impact your rankings on Google, further it will help your click through rate. When users are searching for a local service company, they’re going to engage with the top rated companies.
Bonus, when you ask for reviews, don’t just ask for a 5 star review. Ask the customers to give specifics on how you supported them. This helps Google, and users, understand which products and services you offer.
Reviews should be an ongoing effort, Google prioritizes businesses that consistently add strong reviews, you don’t want to just earn a batch of good reviews then stop soliciting.
Figure the best way to incorporate ongoing reviews as part of your client deliverable process and you’ll start quickly ranking up on Google.
Complete your Google profile in its entirety
This is big, don’t skimp out on the information you upload to your Google profile. Take time to thoroughly complete every aspect of your profile. Think of this as giving Google a large dataset of everything about your business, so it can match your business to folks searching for your services.
This includes filling out the below:
- Correct category and sub-categories
- The primary category is the most influential piece of information within your Google Business Profile. Review to ensure you select the most relevant primary category that you want to rank for. At Stijg Media we can often increase maps rankings in a few days by choosing the correct primary category.
- Social profiles
- Hours of operation
- Service areas
- Products
- Within the products you can add up to 1,000 characters and include an image. Further, you can link to product pages, to give users the best experience and give Google a direct connection to your landing pages to further understand your products.
- Services
The SEO specialists at Rise Marketing Group often see strong results from creating pages that answer low-volume questions with clear purchase intent. These topics may not drive massive search volume, but they are often worth targeting because they tend to have lower competition, making it easier to rank highly and attract qualified prospects.
Photos and videos
You want to make sure your business looks compelling. Invest in high quality photos or videos. We would even recommend hiring a professional photographer or videographer to make your business stand out from the rest.
Post updates on your Google profile
Within your google profile you can post updates, this could be business events, promotions, or even recent news articles or blogs you’ve created. Loading your google profile with updated information on your business will further help Google understand more of your business and encourage users will engage with your listings.
Track your performance
As you’re making updates and optimizing your Google listings, track your performance. Google has great reporting where you can see monthly updates on website clicks, calls, directions, etc. Review this monthly so you can see first hand how your optimizations are driving real website engagement, calls and leads for your business.
Bonus tip, once you create your business profile, you can sync this with Bing Places, so your business can also be featured within Bing’s search engine. ,
