Google My Business is an application which helps your business appear on Google Maps. It’s not only a great application to find a business, but also improves your searchability. Having a Google Business listing means you can control what people see about you - it’s easy to make changes to your business listing whether that’s updating your working hours, changing your address or phone number.
For this blog, we’ve put together some of the ways in which you can optimise your Google page and the reasons why every business should be signing up for a free listing.
People Will Find You
Signing up for a local business listing on Google is free. Signing up makes it easier for people to find you and therefore brings in new customers. If someone is looking for a particular business or service, and your company pops up, Google will feature basic information that people can then use for quick reference. Google will not only list your business location, but it will also display your business hours, general information and it may even feature user reviews.
Reviews
It’s essential that you get customers to review you on Google as this will increase your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), drive website traffic and improve your Google rankings. Potential customers find reviews really useful and they can encourage people to actually click through to your website.
Improve Your SEO
Creating a Google Maps page will improve your SEO and therefore your Google rankings. As a result, you will gain more website traffic by allowing a click-through to your website. Once a new listing is created, a Google Maps location synchronises with a traditional Google Search for easy access and searchability. Google My Business compliments your existing website by giving your business a public identity and presence with a listing on Google.
Keywords
Use specific keywords related to your business to help SEO. If you’re an IT company you could use keywords such as software, computing or digital which makes it easier to search when people visit Google’s home page. Like your website, your Google listing is just as important when it comes to featuring key words in the description.
Photos
Businesses with photos on their listings receive 42% more requests for driving directions on Google Maps and 35% more click-throughs to their websites than businesses without photos, according to Google. It’s important to refresh the photos on the page and ensure that it fully represents your brand. Although not necessary to change regularly, you must keep them updated.
You can sign up for your own Google My business page by following this link.