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Trying to rank on the top spots of Google’s SERP can be a tricky and extremely difficult goal to accomplish. Several factors decide your page’s ranking, and Google My Business ranks high on that list of factors. Simply put, Google My Business is a local listing that allows you to provide useful information about your business that Google displays to its users. And while it may seem like an easy tool that gives your business instant visibility in the local searches, it isn’t.
The main focus of Google My Business is to have control over the information you provide about your businesses on Google and increase the local search traffic. However, before we delve deeper into how to make it work to your benefit, we must first understand what exactly Google My Business is.
What is GMB (Google My Business)?
GMB is a local business listing on Google that provides the local businesses with the tool to manage the company information to be provided by Google. Unlike the other business directories, GMB allows you to add detailed information about your business and produce it at places with high online visibility like:
1. Google Knowledge Panel
The rectangular box including all the relevant information about a business including its opening hours, location, contact, reviews and rating that appears on the top in a mobile, and top right corner on the desktop when a local search about a particular company is performed (also called branded search). Its focus is to provide the user with direct information easily and quickly without even clicking onto the website link.
2. Google Local Pack
Say you have searched for “gift stores near me”. The top three results of this search presented by Google in the form of a list below the map is what is called the Google Local Pack. This feature gives only those businesses as results that are in or around the given location.
3. Google Maps
A web mapping service developed by Google to get the route and directions to a particular location. This also helps in discovering businesses, and again is a very crucial tool that is a part of the GMB.
GMB provides you with all the possible tools for your business to thrive online. If used strategically, it can drive a large number of customers towards your business and also helps in dominating the local search. It gives you the upper hand if your competitors are not well aware of its benefits. The listing of the company on top will help the consumers build more trust.
In simple words, having no GMB account leaves you incompetent in this fast-growing online world. To increase your company’s visibility, this is the first place you should begin with.
What are the benefits of Google My Business?
The benefits of GMB listings are manifold. It provides businesses with a vast amount of organic traffic. When users perform a local search about a product or service, they receive all possible information about your business in the form of a neat card like address, working hours, contact, ratings, and reviews. Images and directions of the business are also displayed. Consumers prefer simplicity and without moving on to further pages or clicking on a website, they are provided with all they need. This, in turn, makes it easy for them to visit you and is a win-win situation for both.
Reviews help the user to build trust in the services and products of a particular company. GMB listings clearly show the reviews of the consumers as well as a five-star ranking system. Strong and positive reviews help the brand in increasing its GMB rankings and make it through to the Google Local Pack.
Additional features of GMB include its insights. This gives detailed information about how and from where the company’s services and products are being searched by the consumers. It provides a great insight into the consumer’s behavior. Analyzing this data can help in devising new strategies to increase sales and enhancing the consumers’ experiences.
GMB Profiles are getting more and more sophisticated
The businesses’ profiles are no more just dependent on the data provided by the owners but also adds the information it receives from a third-party site like the photos taken by the users of the business premises.
The features of GMB have a large share of interactivity embedded in them which helps in building good profiles. These are as following:
Google Reviews
As mentioned earlier, reviews by the consumers help in knowing the ground status of the business and gain the users’ trust. Positive reviews enhance the rankings and negative reviews help in devising solutions to solve the issues. Reply to the reviews encourages interaction and show the company in the light of trust and co-operative behavior.
Google Question and Answer
This feature allows the consumers to ask queries to each other about your company on the GMB profile. The benefit of this is that when consumers answer each other, they can trust more than when the business owners solve the queries as there’s no biased-ness involved.
Google Posts
It allows you to directly reach out to consumers and others and promote your business offers and services through Google Knowledge Graph, Maps, and Local Pack.
Suggest an Edit
It gives the users the ability to suggest edits regarding your business like edits of some of your company’s details, opening times, names, or addresses.
As GMB has improved and added new features till now, it seems to be working on making it more user interaction based similarly. Google is adding more and more features to it from time to time. In the future, it will have more impact and influence over the consumers. So, if you haven’t started yet, it’s the perfect time to do so.
How can I qualify for a Google Local Listing?
To do that, you need to have interactions with your customers personally in the first place, especially during the listed working hours included in the listing.
Even Service Area Businesses (SABs) like house painters, plumbers, masons, etc. for whom their physical location isn’t significant can have Google My Business listing mentioning the area that they serve in.
Though most businesses that involve direct interaction with customers are eligible to have a GMB listing, there are quite a few exceptions.
Do I need a website for my local business?
It sure does. While the initial view of any search focuses on Google My Business and when all sorts of commodities exchange take place without even accessing the website, it still symbolizes and acts as the face of the brand and through its interface provides the customer with a tincture of the service that they do get in real-time showcasing their satisfaction skills in customer handling.
Depending on the type of business, the needs of a website, and what it should provide also vary where some become essential to the smooth operation of the venture. A basic example is that which needs to attract customers based on appearances and reviews rather than a set of commodities they provide. Hotels and travel agencies make use of such services and thus promote their business.
Another advantage of owning a site and its proper maintenance is its support it provides to the GMB. The data, if it is it well maintained, is used by Google to feed the latest features in SERPs, business listings, and more. An example of this is the business reviews which do appear from time to time on SERPs. This adds on to the promotion of the business and always opens new possibilities.
Long story short, the website, as well as Google My Business work in sync with each other and both need to be managed cohesively. The site needs to be updated with the latest info and it has to be cross-checked with Google services such as Google Reviews and Google Q&A to ensure the outcome we so desire. But then again, you still get to reach out to people with Google listing and no website but not the other way around.
As we mentioned earlier, Google keeps on adding new features to GMB and other SEO algorithms which can affect your business and website in a lot of ways. So, if you haven’t claimed your GMB profile yet, it’s high time now that you do so now. All you need to do is fill in all the information and get it verified from Google and get on track to gain more visitors to your business.
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