What is Google My Business?
Introduction
As business owners, or for those that work in online marketing, we all know that we are constantly bombarded with requests for businesses to sign-up and register on a website to help promote the business.
Whether this be a business directory, or a business that promises to sell you leads. Yet, this means that loads of businesses just think its another request that may not help the business.
Yet, there’s one website that’s most definitely worth registering your business on, and that’s Google My Business.
Whether you run a massive business, or you run a small business it doesn’t matter, that’s because Google My Business could help your business.
So, this blog post is dedicated to explaining just that, that’s how Google My Business can help your business.
So why sign-up?
In a nutshell Google My Business is useful, especially if your implementing local SEO.
So, for example, lets say you run a local pet shop, and you sell a large selection of dog food.
Well, there will probably be people looking to find a local pet shop, so when they search “local pet shops near me”- well your business may just show up in the Google My Business results.
Some seo companies call these the map listings, some refer to them as the local business listings.
However, for simplicity lets refer to them as the Google My Business results.
Now, your seo agency may well be working diligently on improving your businesses organic seo, yet normally most businesses want to also rank in the Google My Business listings as well, so that’s right for this your going to need to sign-up for a Google My Business account.
What does NAP mean?
NAP quite simply means the name of your business, its address and the businesses phone number.
Digital marketing agencies use NAP to improve your businesses local SEO. For example, a white hat seo agency may build business citations, optimise your Google My Business account as well as making sure the NAP information is on your website.
Okay, so how can I optimise my Google My Business listing?
Here’s some of the things that our marketing agency would work on in order to optimise a business Google My Business account.
Opening hours
We would add the opening hours for your business.
Local telephone number
Sometimes its unavoidable for a business to use a mobile number, for example a sole trader plumber will often have to use a mobile number.
However, with that said if you can use a local landline number then we would recommend that you do that.
As this then sends another signal to Google that your business is based in the city or town where you say your business is.
Give a sense of what your business is like
Its important to give a sense of what your business is like, for example if you run a marketing agency, well why not add pictures of your team, also where your business is located.
You may also wish to add the company logo as well.
Address
Don’t forget to add your businesses address, also its important to remember that your companies address is part of your businesses NAP information, so make sure the address you mention is the same with what’s on your website.
So in nutshell you should have exactly the same NAP information on your website, as what’s on your Google My Business account, also the information should be the same on your businesses citations.
Why is important to be consistent when citing my businesses NAP information?
If you were to say write your address as “New Road” on your Google My Business account, yet cite your businesses address as “New RD” on your website, well this may be viewed as a conflicting citation.
What this basically means is that this may cause some confusion, not to us humans as would often know that Rd means Road, but to the algorithms, well some may think that the two addresses are not the same.
Now some seo companies now believe that the algorithms are more sophisticated than they once were, which is true, yet why chance it?
That is why digital marketing agencies will often still try and ensure that the businesses NAP details perfectly match.
Any differences in the businesses NAP details may cause confusion, which may mean that a business stands a decreased chance of being displayed in the local business listings.
Are business reviews important?
In a nutshell yes, they are. Imagine for a second you run a pizza take-away shop, and one business has no business reviews what so ever.
Yet across the road is a pizza take-away shop that has 20 positive reviews. All the reviews are genuine, so they are left by real customers.
Yell, most seo businesses would think that the pizza shop that has the 20 positive reviews stands a much better chance of being displayed in the local business listings than the one that doesn’t.
However, you also have to know that this is just one ranking signal, most seo companies will be optimising may ranking signals, so you shouldn’t just think that business reviews are the be and end all.
Here’s another important point, don’t be tempted to write fake business reviews yourself. The reason you shouldn’t write fake business reviews is Google, and the other search engines are super clever, and they can spot fake business reviews.
If your business does have fake business reviews, well it may stand a much lesser chance of being displayed in the local business listings.
Should we be updating our account?
Yes, do not create a Google My Business account and then not update crucial business information, such as your companies phone number if it changes.
Not only can this be annoying for your potential customers, but if you don’t update your account, well this won’t help your SEO.
Okay, so this sounds time consuming, can your SEO agency help?
Yes, why not give us a call to discuss how we can offer local or organic SEO to your business.