Tips:
After you’ve made your Google profile and GMB you’ll need to know a few tips to help you rank better, and faster.

Tip 1: The first step in optimizing your GMB is making sure that the business name and address match your other listings across directories. This may seem obvious, but it’s very common to overlook this crucial part. Another important thing is consistency, If you’re spelling Apartment on your listings, don’t use abbreviations like apt. on your Google listing, this will make the algorithm think your listing is messed up.

Tip 2: Your target customers may not always live in close proximity to your business. More than likely, they will look up your business category and enter a city name in addition to that in order to find you. It’s important to show on your listing that you have all the potential service areas that make sense for your business, this will help you show up where it counts.

Tip 3: Adding images to your GMB will make it more appealing in search results. This will be a great way to increase conversions on your site. Instead of people scrolling through the results, they’ll stop on your listing because they see not only images but attractive images. When adding photos of your business, make sure you’re using high-quality pictures of the interior and exterior. The reason being is that potential customers have an idea of what they’ll see when walking into your place of business.

Tip 4: Whatever you are, make sure you mention your product and/or services in your description. An important thing to remember is that keywords are king for search, so make sure you scatter your keywords throughout your listing. Also, it’s a good idea to mention your primary service city or location in your description. This will help your listing pop up for those terms.

Tip 5: GMB allows you to post updates on your listing much like to a social media account. Google search values the most recent, and relevant news. Make it a priority to have someone at your company in charge of posting on your listing several times a week, this will make your listing relevant to searches by potential customers.

Tip 6:
In 2019 Google added a searchable short name feature to GMB. It’s basically a simple URL (@BestPlumbing) that will allow potential clients to go directly to your GMB page. You can put this on promotional materials to get faster traffic going to your business listing and use these short URLs to ask for customer reviews. One of the main challenges with short names is that they’re very competitive. You should try to claim your choice immediately. To put things simply, Best Plumbing in Texas will compete with Best Plumbing in Lousiana for the same short name. The maximum amount of characters for short names is 32. So instead of using @BestPlumbing, you can now put @BestPlumbinginAustinTx or @BestPlumbinginAustinTexas. this will help with local searches.

Tip 7:
Another thing your business should do is embed your Google map on your company’s website, this is usually added to the footer area. Instead of using a generic map or a screenshot of Google maps, you can create a direct widget of your location. This links your GMB listing to your company’s website. To do this pull up your Google maps listing, after this right-click on the link that says “share map.” You’ll get the code you can use to embed your map on the footer or contact page of your website.

Tip 8: In the past customer were given the ability to follow businesses in the past, but there wasn’t much motivation to do so. However, you can now reward those customers that hit the “Follow” button for your business listing with a welcome offer. Welcome offers were launched by Google in 2019. Once a person follows your business your profile can show them an offer from your saved folder. You can also send out additional offers to this group and track their conversations.

Tip 9: Google has this test called the “Google Guarantee Program” for certain industries. Such as locksmiths, roofers, plumbers, handymen, HVAC, and lawyers. If you qualify, you’ll get a green checkmark next to your name. Not only this, but Google will also guarantee your work. Once your business passes Google’s screening process, which has a background check, you’ll be eligible to participate in the local services program. This is one of Google's ways of connecting searchers with high-quality local service providers.

Tip 10: The last tip is to put your website on other business websites. Websites like Yelp/Yellowpages may bring little traffic to your website, but Google highly values them as an authority website pointing to your business. There are hundreds of these websites that can take many weeks to submit. It can take Google two-three months to find your business on these websites, it’s important to submit them as soon as possible so that your website starts seeing the effect as soon as possible. We provide such a service to help businesses focus on servicing customers to learn more about our Google maps service click here.