Google My Business Masterclass - The Ultimate SEO & Lead Generation Tool

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Mark from the success Bureau. I've been an online entrepreneur for over 25 years and I've worked with clients such as MTV, Cambridge University, the British Home Office, and many more. One of the biggest factors in building and expanding my businesses has been lead generation through Google. Google my business has been around for quite some time now. And it's an amazing tool for boosting your exposure and reputation without spending any money on ads. Having an optimized GMB profile will give you some amazing benefits and can give you a huge boost in leads and sales. And it's free for our class project, you'll be creating your own Google My Business listing using the knowledge you have learned in this class. In this class, I will teach you exactly how to set up and optimize your GMV listing so that your business will stand out from the crowd and attract those all important customers. Let's get started and I'll see you in the first video. 2. What is GMB?: Let's take a look at what Google my business actually is. It's a free, multi featured Business listing that local businesses can use to manage their presence on Google Search and Google Maps or Google My Business listing is not unlike the listings found on business directories such as Yelp, but it's found directly in Google and Google Maps. And therefore, it doesn't require a visit to a third-party site. It doesn't even require your customers to visit your website. Google, My Business has gone far beyond the simple business listing, and thanks to a wealth of features and functions, is now considered a core part of local SEO. Where does your Google My Business listing show up online? Google Knowledge Panel information from your Google My Business listing will appear in Google's Knowledge Panel when a brand searches performed, Google presents this information in a concise snippet form to provide searches with a quick and easy means to get the information they need fast. It also provides your business with more visibility. In this example, we've searched for Little Italy, pace up a search for the restaurant's name rather than a generic pizza near me search generates the businesses knowledge panel with all visible information being pulled from its Google My Business listing, google local pack, local finder. Google My Business can also show up in the Google local pack or Google Local finder. The local pack is the block of business listings that appear below the map in search results. This is shown after a user performs a Google search with local intent, initially, three profiles are shown, but you can expand to see more. For example, if you search for pizza, New York, something like this will show up. Each business listed here shows up only because it has a Google My Business listing, and like the knowledge graph, all the information seen here is pulled from the businesses GMB list. Hey, you don't even need a website to rank in the local pack. It's possible to show up here with only a Google My Business listing. Google Maps. Google Maps is an app and browser-based service on desktop or mobile use for getting directions and discovering businesses and locations. Most consumers will be familiar with Google Maps, likely having used it to locate a residence or local landmark at least once. However, it's also a key place for local businesses to gain visibility. Here's what Google My Business listings looked like when searching on Google Maps on desktop, also known as the map pack. And here's how the Google My Business listing looks once selected. If I click on the top result here, you can see what that looks like. How to consumers use Google My Business. Consumers use Google My Business for a whole host of reasons, such as to find a businesses opening times, to get directions to a local business or find it's addressed to call a local business without needing to visit their website or to write and read reviews about a local business that can see photos of the local business and its products or services. And they can visit the businesses website that can make bookings online and they can view the available products and services they can ask and answer questions about are local business who qualifies for a Google My Business listing. To qualify, you need to have a member of staff that is available to interact with your customers during the business hours. You include in your listing the Google My Business Guidelines for representing your business on Google state that listings on Google My Business can only be created for businesses that either have a physical location that customers can visit or that travel to visit customers where they are. There is one case where a physical location isn't required. This is the case of service area businesses, SIB, such as polymers, pest control companies, cleaners, or any other service provider that visits and works at its customers locations, service area businesses can specify the area in which they serve customers. For example, a plumber might offer services within a five-mile radius, online only businesses and e-commerce ventures without a physical location that greets customers are not eligible for Google My Business listings as they do not meet Google's guidelines, up-to-date, accurate Google My Business listings help consumers in a multitude of ways. Having a GMB profile makes it far easier for consumers to locate information such as a businesses phone number, address, or health and safety policies. With all this information easily locatable on a businesses GMB listing searches can get on with the important stuff while working out if a business is suitable for their needs, finding and switching between multiple businesses websites can be a real headache for searches. With Google, My Business is easy to compare businesses offerings by flicking between their listings. This makes the searches journey far easier. It means they are able to decide much more quickly. So if you have high local rankings, offer relevant services, and give the searcher enough information, you could quickly, when a new customer, through photos and posts, businesses can showcase their offerings, that brand, and even their personality with so much information available, these are the features that searches will likely be paying attention to. Knowing what a business looks like can be really helpful. For instance, if you're looking for a cocktail bar, you might want to find out if it has heaters and it's outdoor seating area, or how spacious the bar area is, or is there room to dance? And you can find this from the photos. Having the option to read relevant reviews will also help the search understand if your business offers what they need. Most people think that Google Plus is dead. Well, Google isn't done playing in the social and community space. Even Google Maps has a social function. Users can follow businesses they like and create a list of their favorites. This makes it easier for searches to keep up with their favorite local stores and support them. When a maps user opts to follow a business, there'll be notified of offers, events, posts, and changes to opening hours. Again, this saves time and makes the user journey much easier. Google, My Business has simplified the search for relevant nearby businesses thanks to the ever-evolving local algorithm, google generally does a great job of surfacing the right businesses for users search queries. As a result, finding the right business is easy. If we search for a restaurant that's family-friendly, Google will return results where that phrase has been mentioned in reviews or even on the businesses website. This function is called justifications. Google, My Business allows Google Maps users to provide their own feedback on businesses through the app and validate the opinions of others, ensuring a more accurate picture of the business through user-focused features like suggest and edit or provide feedback. Google ensures any information found on GMV profiles is as up-to-date as possible. Crowdsourced features like Q and a reviews and even photos also helped to provide a fair picture of a business on jam Bay. This contributes to simplify in the process of searching for and pinpointing the relevant local business for a user search. 3. GMB For Local Marketing: So we've established that Google, My Business, is not your business profile, but rather a tool by which you enhance your business profile to boost its visibility and effectiveness. Let's cover the four core ways that you can use your Google My Business listing as a local marketing tool. Engage with customers. There are lots of ways that customers can interact with your business profile. And you can use your Google My Business account to engage back with them. You can respond to reviews, answer questions, enable direct messaging and setup associated alerts. You can even use Google, My Business to publish posts to your business profile, much like you would with Facebook or any other social media platform, highlight your business. A business profile alone contains limited information about your business, but through your Google My Business account dashboard, you can provide hours, link to your website, products and pricing attributes and other details to make your business unique. You will also use your Google My Business to make edits and updates as needed. A complete business profile offers a complete snapshot of your business, including its best features right in the search engine results page, gain insights. You can use the Google My Business Dashboard to gain key insights on your audience and local search performance. In the Analytics tab of the platform, you can see the query is customers are using to find your business profile, whether they're found on Google Maps or Google search. A breakdown of actions taken on your listing and how your photos are performing compared to other profiles in your category. There are also ways to attract clicks from a business profile by UTM parameters and Google Analytics perform local SEO. Just as Google has algorithms for ranking is ads and websites, it also has one for ranking business profiles. Through your Google My Business Dashboard, you can incorporate keywords into your business profile and perform all the optimization to help it rank in local results. Google My Business can help you optimize your business profile to show up in the coveted three pack, Google Business profiles are dynamic. The only do they change form based on the platform, but Google will also prioritize sections of your profile according to the term that was searched for, as well as the type of information most important to the consumers in your category. Even better, Google will embolden key words in the content of your profile that it thinks are relevant, but there needs to be information to prioritize the key words to embolden in your profile in the first place, just as you would use a content management system like WordPress to optimize your website for search engines, Google, My Business is used to optimize your profile and expand your reach. While since optimizing for Google is essentially optimizing for searches, it all comes down to the same three things. Targeting, quality of information and trust. Targeting your information. To use Google, My Business for SEO, make sure to incorporate relevant keywords into your business profile so you can tell Google what you're trying to rank for. Use them in your from the business description, your responses to reviews, your answers to questions, and in the posts you publish. Make sure to incorporate them naturally, just as you would do with any other SEO strategy. Use keywords in your description, which is editable through the Google My Business Dashboard, maintain quality of information. The completeness and accuracy of your business profile impacts its rank. So make sure to provide the requested information in every section of your Google. My Business Dashboard, especially important here is your contact information, special hours, and attributes, build trust. The final approach to using Google, My Business for SEO appeals to the trust components of Google's algorithm. Keep your information updated and accurate as your business evolves. Keep a steady stream of reviews coming in and respond to them. Also signal to Google that you are active by regularly uploading photos and publishing posts to your business profile through Google, My Business reviews and responses appear on your business profile. Be sure to manage them through your Google. My Business Dashboard, SEO is important for any business, but particularly for small businesses that can use local targeting to compete against large competitors on the search engine results page. Google is making local SEO even easier with its robust business profiles. Google, my business account is essential for any business trying to maximize visibility in their local market. 4. Set Up Your GMB Listing: First you have to claim your business if you haven't done that already. If your business has been on the market for some time, the chances are the listing already exists or if you're not sure, just try googling yourself. Even if you haven't created it yourself, it might be on that, but you can't optimize it until you have officially claimed it. If you don't have a Google my business account, you can create it here after logging in with your Google account. Once logged in, Google will ask, what's the name of your business? You can search for listing by typing the business name and address in the search box. Results will appear in a list as well as on the map. To claim your business on Google. Click on Add location on the Manage Locations page. Google will ask you for the name of your business, type its name on the search bar, and click on the correct name if it appears on the drop-down list. If none of the results match your business, click the top of the list where it says create a business with this name. You will then choose the business type, storefront for restaurants, hotels, etc. Service area for something like taxi services, deliveries, etc, or brand products, brands, causes, etc. During the sign-up process, google will ask if your business has an office or store. Choosing the no option will allow you to choose your service area before moving on to selecting your brands category. Businesses with both storefront and service area locations will also be able to edit information for each location separately, which should make it easier for customers to find the right location. Google My Business categories. If you are creating or adding your business to Google, using Google, My Business, you can choose from a list of categories to provide more accurate information about your business. For example, if you wrote and Taco Bell is marketing, you can perhaps optimistically put your business in the Mexican restaurant. Cats are great. Categories are very specific. You can drill down into sub genres like tax max or be as broad as possible by simply listening, fast food restaurant. If you manage a brand, google recommends that all your categories be consistent across all your locations. So every Taco Bell is categorized as a Mexican restaurant, and every McDonald's is a fast food restaurant. Once you've created your listings, you can always go back and edit your GMV categories. Click into that location or location group, then click on info on the left menu. When she's see the details for that listing, click the pencil to edit, delete, or add Google My Business categories. Business locations with multiple categories and departments. For organizations with multiple locations, Google only allows you to have one primary category for each location. However, there are some slight exceptions. For example, if you manage marketing for a chain of grocery stores, you can list your grocery stores and the pharmacy inside them as two separate listings, each with its own primary category. Here's an example from Costco. Costco takes this approach to the extreme, listing its gas station, bakery, food court, Tire Center, and several of the departments or separately for businesses like this that have one main location, but two distinct operations that are different enough to warrant multiple categories. You may be able to add them as separate locations while qualifies for a multi department listing. Think about banks inside grocery stores or restaurants in sod gas stations. Google's guidelines say that if your departments have separate entrances and or separate customer care, you may qualify for multiple listings. If your businesses have two or more distinct operations running at one location, look to see if you can list both under separate categories. This will allow you to show up in more relevant search results. Verify business on Google. The next step is using the Google verify my business feature. You will have to verify to Google that you own all represent the business listing. Typically, the verification code will be sent to you in the mail. This takes wanted two weeks. Once you've entered the code into your account, you'll finally be able to start managing your local business information on Google, there are other ways to verify your business on GMB, like email, phone, and Google Search Console. But these are usually not available. If you do see a phone icon and an option to verify by phone, google recommends you choose that over a postcard because it's so much faster. Verify my business by mail. The most common way to get to business verified is through the mail. Google will send you a postcard with a verification code attached to it in your GMV account, click on the verify now option after clicking on the business listing, then at the postcard request screen, check and make sure that the listed address is correct. You can also request a postcard through the GMB AP by tapping the send postcard button. The postcard takes about two to three weeks to arrive, and it's important not to change any information during this time. During that will delay the verification process, which you have the code. You can go into the GMB account, click on the business location you want to verify and hit the verify Location button in the menu or the verify now option to the five digit code and hit Submit to finish the process. Verify my business by email. Sign into GMB and choose a specific location. Click on the verify button and select e-mail as the verification method. You should see a message in your inbox that contains a code. You can enter that code in the GMV dashboard. Click the Verify button in the e-mail message. Verify my business by phone. Verifying by phone can be available. If you click on your phone number after hitting the verify button, a coal will come through to your phone and you'll need to listen for the automated voice system. The system will then give you a code which you will have to enter in the code field on the app. You must tap the core me now option and enter the code from the automated voice system. Verify my business instantly. Those already using Google Search Console for a business might qualify for instant verification. Just make sure that the email used on the GMB accounts is the same as the one used to verify the listing on the Search Console. But please note that all businesses on Search Console might not be eligible for instant verification. In this case, the best option is to get a code by mail. Bulk locations on Google, my business. If you are managing several business locations, ten or more, you don't have to add them one by one on GNB. Instead, you can use the Google My Business Bulk location management tool. Just visit the Google My Business locations page, upload locations from a spreadsheet and edit the information associated with each location. You need to make sure all locations meet the following quality standards. The business must make in-person contact with customers during its stated hours. The business must be open to the public. You may not enter locations that are under construction or not yet opened. You must be the owner of the business or an authorized marketing representative. Your listing name must match your real name as represented by your offline marketing material, such as signage, etc. All locations must have the same name unless the businesses real-world representation consistently varies from location to location. All locations must also have the same category if they provide the same service while you can use your regular Gmail account to get this process started, I highly recommend that you create a new account using an email that reflects the domain of the businesses to be uploaded. Using the business domain will reduce the time and steps required to complete the Google verification process. At descriptions to Google business your Google My Business description is a summary, 02750 characters that appears when a user searches for your local business or checks out your listing on Google via a desktop computer or mobile device is usually displayed alongside or underneath your online reviews and ratings on Google, as well as your businesses review snippets. Review snippets are algorithmically selected quotes from Google users and local guides that provide information on keywords most mentioned by your reviewers. Here's how business descriptions might appear on desktop computers and mobile devices. To get started with adding your Google My Business descriptions sign into your account on your homepage. Look for an option to add description. Alternatively, you can click on your info tab on the right and look for the section where you can add your business description. Add your business description, then click Apply. Here are some more guidelines set by Google for when you're writing out your business description. Don't use Spam. Use it to pitch your business. Focus primarily on details about your business instead of details about promotions, prices, or sales. You should be upfront and honest about the information provided, focusing on content that is relevant and useful to your customers so that they can understand your business. Do not include URL links or HTML code or exceed the 750 characters in the description field. Avoid misspellings, gimmicky character use gibberish, et cetera. Google business photos and videos. Your Google My Business photos and videos are deciding factors when it comes to attracting customers. These images of the first impression of your business. They can attract customers or drive them away. Add photos and videos to Google My Business. Business is verified. You can start adding photos through your accounts on your desktop or GMV mobile app. In both cases, you'll go to the menu and select the photo section. From there, you can upload any photo or video as long as it meets the following size and format restrictions. Click on the blue plus button to start adding your media. Google My Business photo size and format. Images can either be a JPEG or PNG file, and they need to be at least 720 by 720 pixels. The overall image file size cannot be over five megabytes and it needs to be at least ten kilobytes. Your images have to be focused and show a well-lit area. You're not allowed to use image filters or perform significant alterations to the photo. In addition to general photos of the business, you can also designate two images as the cover and profile photos. Profile photos are a distinctive way for customers to recognize the business on Google, while a cover photo shows off your pages personality. Add video to Google business, you cannot videos so long as they are less than 100 megabytes and they must be no longer than 30 seconds. You have to use a minimum resolution of 720 pay. To do this, you'll stay in the photo section on the listing above your current photos, you'll see an option for video. You'll use the same process to add video as you did to add photos. Click the blue plus button, and then upload, remove or delete photos from Google. My business owners and managers aren't the only ones who can add photos to their locations. Customers can do it as well. However, there might be some images that don't meet google's format specific criteria. In this case, you can flag them so Google can review and possibly delete the images within your GMV account. Go to the photo section and select the offending image to bring them to Google's attention. Click on the flag icon on the top right corner of the page. Mobile users can also select images in the GMB apps photo section. But they will need to go to the menu and click on the Report photo button. You can also flag images via Google Maps. We should find the business and the photo you want to flag. Click on the three dot menu icon on the top left corner of your screen and click the report a problem button. You might also see a flag icon on the top right corner of the screen, which you can use to report the image. Having services are menus on Google, My Business. Using Google My Business, restaurants and service-based businesses can submit additional information and links to help consumers learn more about their locations. The process is a little different for restaurants and service businesses. So let's start with restaurant menus. There's a menu editor available on GMV for businesses in the restaurant industry. To access it, click info. You'll see two places that mentioned a menu. You can either add a menu URL that links back to a menu listing, or you can add menu items to your listing one-by-one. Restaurants can use the editor to add menu items or dishes, including title, description, and price, as well as create multiple sections of the menu like appetizers, entrees, deserves. This feature is only available if the listing is not currently connected to a third-party provider. If you run a service company, your experience will be similar. Click the info section on the GMB listing for that location. Scroll down and you'll see a place to add services to your listing and potentially an appointment URL. If you have online bookings, if you click add services to your listing, you will be prompted to add a service item, description and price. How come the menu and services information and links appear automatically. Links to certain booking and ordering services can appear automatically with your business listings in Google Search and Google Maps. These links are updated automatically via third-party providers. There's no way to add, edit, or remove these links in Google, My Business, Google worked with select third-party providers that provide booking and ordering services for local businesses. Links for third-party providers display because of a relationship your business previously established with them. These links lead to the website of the third party provider. From the third-party website, a user can take an action such as place an order or make an appointment or reservation if you want to remove or fix a link in your own listing, contact the third party providers supporting and request that they remove your data from the information that they sent to Google, ad or change your hours on Google My Business. Using Google My Business, you can let customers know when your business location is open to add or change your business hours on Google, you want to sign in to your Gmail accounts and click the info tab from the menu on the info page. Look for the ad hours option or the section showing your current operating hours. Click on the hours icon, which resembles a clog. Click on the days that your location is open to customers. For each day that you are open, select the opening and closing hours. Finalize the hours by clicking Apply. At holiday hours on Google, My Business. You can also indicate holiday hours for each location. To do this, sign into your Google My Business. If you have multiple locations, open the location you'd like to manage. On the Info tab, click the special hours section. You'll only see this section if you already provided regular hours. Click Confirm hours next to an upcoming holiday, or click Add new date to choose a different date. Enter the opening and closing times for that day. Select closed to indicate that the location is closed all day. If you are open 24 hours, click open at and select 24 hours from the drop-down menu that appears. If you enter closing hours past midnight, make sure you set them properly. When you've finished entering all your special hours, click Apply. Your special hours will appear to customers on Google only for the designated days. It's a good idea to confirm your hours for official holidays. Even if those hours are the same as your regular hours. This way, you'll make it clear to customers that you are holiday hours are accurate. Keep in mind that special hours can only be entered if you've already provided regular hours. 5. Extra Features: Google, My Business posts. Your Google business listing also acts as a Content feed through which you can create and post up to the minute content for your audience. The content can be in the form of text, video, or photo, which customers will see when they find your business listing on Google. To create and publish Google My Business posts, sign into your Google My Business accounts. If you have multiple locations, open the location you'd like to manage. Click posts from the menu. The create post screen appears. Choose which type of post you'd like to create from the following options. Update, event, offer or product at photos, videos, text events, or offers to your post. Click Preview to see a preview of your post, if you're happy with the preview, click publish. If you'd like to change your post, click back on the top left of the screen to continue editing your draft until it's ready to publish. At the Google My Business booking feature. In Google, My Business also has a booking feature called reserve with Google that allows businesses to use a supported scheduling partner to see insights and other information on bookings received from Google. The bookings feature is available in the US for restaurants and businesses in the fitness or beauty vertical that use a supported scheduling partner. If it is available, go to the home menu for listing and look for the bookings card. Here's a list of Google's booking or scheduling partners. To add this feature to your Google My Business account, sign into Google My Business. For brands with multiple locations, click on the specific location to activate bookings for it. Click on the bookings option within that location and sign up with the booking provider of your choice. Within one week, you're scheduling account is automatically linked to your Google, My Business account. After linking, you can receive bookings through Google. If you already use a scheduling provider, you're automatically eligible to receive bookings, you will see your booking history with that provider for bookings made in reserve with Google in your Google My Business account on the Bookings tab, you're scheduling provider may apply fees for booking through Google. Check with your provider for more details. 6. Generate Leads: Generate leads using Google, My Business. There's lots of ways to generate leads through Google, My Business. But here awesome starting steps. Connect Google My Business with Google Analytics. If you have multiple locations, make sure each locations website link sends users to the page for that specific location and not your brand's homepage. Add a UTM parameter to track the traffic coming to your website through your GMV listing. Optimize a listing for lead capture by including if possible, integrations for making reservations, placing an order, scheduling an appointment. Make sure the website you link on your listings is optimized to convert GMB traffic by including multiple calls to action, including setting reservations, contact you, visit the business, track the lead through GMB insights with specific metrics such as number of web visitors, getting directions to your business, number of phone calls, turn on messaging and chat with customers. Google My Business allows you to chat directly with customers who find your business listing on Google Search. Responding to customers can help you answer their questions till your businesses story and attract more people to your location. Messaging is a fairly new feature on Google, My Business that's currently available in selected countries. Turn on messaging via SMS. To turn on messaging with customers, sign into Google My Business and look for the messages called in the home screen. For new GMB users, just click the turn on messaging option. Questions and answers. As the listings manager, you have the most reliable answers to your customers questions. So it makes sense that you will want to be the warm to receive and respond to those questions every time someone sees your business information on Google. With Google, my business questions and answers, you can ask or answer questions from any device, from Google Maps on Android devices, unfortunately, listing managers don't get any notification, letting them know when there are new questions being asked about your location. That means you'll have to stay vigilant and check your listings as they appear on Google or look inside your GMV info for each location to see if there are any new Q and A's, to check for new Q and A's and to answer any outstanding questions. In the info card for the place on the right under questions and answers, click See All questions. Next to the questions. Click answer to edit or delete your answer. Click More and then click edit or delete. The person who asked will get a notification after you've answered. 7. Fix Listing Issues: Fix incorrect business information on Google. Sometimes you will find that the information in your Google listing is out-of-date, inaccurate, or incomplete. It could be that you're listing was created originally by a Google user, but haven't been verified. All the business might have moved locations and ensuring that your business information on Google is accurate and up-to-date should be part of your online marketing and local search strategy. A simple search can help you quickly identify any inaccuracies or incorrect information about your business online. If you're listing has been verified, editing is just a simple case of clicking on the pencil icon in the info section for each listing. If you've been gone the verification process and need to fix incorrect business information while waiting feel verification postcard to arrive. You can also report a problem in Google Maps. 8. Google Maps: Add your business on Google Maps. If a business you own or manage isn't appearing in Google Maps, you can add and claim your business listing using Google, My Business. Once you've verified your business, you can edit business information like address, MapLocation, contact information category and photos. As a Google user, you can also fix someone else's local business. You can suggest an edit, report an error, or add a missing place in Google Maps. If someone else's business is missing from Google Maps, you can add a missing place. Local three pack. One of the most prominent and sought after positions in Google's local search results is the Google Maps pack, also commonly known as the local pack or the three pack. Google Maps pack is a set of three highlighted Google Maps space resource. It used to be seven, featuring the most highly ranked businesses based on the factors that determine local ranking, which is reviews, local citations, et cetera. But it's a three businesses are featured in Google Maps pack results, but sometimes you'll say a sponsored result displayed alongside or above the three organic ones. As you can see, Google provides crucial information about each of the businesses organically featured in the Google Maps pack. Overall writings, a show business summary, location, address, business hours, price range, etc. The local pack or three pack is also displayed above traditional text-only all links by search results, making it one of the most valuable pieces of online real estate across any platform. In fact, the Google Pack grams as much as 44% of the total clicks on search engine results pages. How to get your locations in the local three back. The first step to making your business appear as part of the local pack is to claim your business listing on Google and manage your information using Google, My Business, the next step is to optimize your reviews. Locations that don't have at least four stars won't show up in the local three pack. But it's not enough to have high aggregate writings. You'll also want to have a steady influx of reviews. Recency is also a significant factor. You also need to have positive sentiment in the text of the review itself. The more reviews the better. In addition to the trust factor, this allows your business to rank the long-tail keywords based on what your reviews are talking about in the text of the review. If you're still struggling to appear in the local three pack. Here's a quick checklist to help you determine if your GMV listing is on point. Use your actual business name, but don't stop it with keywords or your city name, correct inaccuracies or errors in your data, and get rid of any duplicate listings. Be as detailed as possible when entering your business information. Include your business name accurately, the category, the MapLocation and service area, phone number, website, URL, hours of operation, etc. Rots original and compelling copy for your Google My Business description. Avoid address variations. Meaning if your location is at 72 Southwest road, then stick to use it that way. Spell it the same way each time. Instead of saying things like 72 SW RD, use a local phone number if possible, instead of a toll-free number, manage and respond to all your Google reviews, upload high-quality photos to enhance the visual appeal of your listing. These may appear in search results to that old times. Make sure your information on GMB is correct, complete and up-to-date. Remember business listings that have been claimed and are regularly updated on Google, My Business, and which also boasts strong reviews and ratings. They're the ones most likely to rank at the top of local searches and be featured in the Google Maps pack. 9. Keywords: The first step for how to add keywords to your Google, My Business is inside your business description. This is the easiest way to improve relevance for your business profile, which is a top ranking factor in Google's algorithm for GMB listings, put keywords in your Google business profile posts. The next step for how to set keywords in Google My Business, is to add them to your business posts on your business profile. Google explains that you can connect with existing and potential customers through your business profile on Google Search and Maps through posts. And posts can include text, photos, or videos to promote business profiles. Each time you create a new post, make sure you add your keywords to the content. That way you can keep your business profile optimized for the phrases and terms that matter most for attracting the right customers for your business. This is also a freeway to gain more organic traffic to your website without having to spend any money on Google AdWords. What's also great about these posts is that you can change the keywords on the Google business posts whenever you see fit. This can improve your results. Also, keep in mind that Google's content policy requires you to only publish content that creates a positive experience for your customers. Therefore, you shouldn't post off-topic or irrelevant content just for the sake of adding keywords to your Google My Business page, business profile posts should be relevant to your business and help your customers better understand your type of business. Posts that are more than six months old will get archived unless a date range is specified during the publishing process. So make sure to keep your posts updated and fresh. Get customers to put keywords in your reviews. Powerful yet highly underused method for how to add keywords in Google, My Business is to ask your customers to use them in their Google reviews. This is a great way to increase the keyword density in a natural way to. You can also add keywords in your replies to GMB listing reviews. Just don't go overboard by including the same keywords in every review response. Otherwise you could over-optimized the review section and trigger a closer look at your business profile by Google at keywords in your business Q&A section. Another tactic for adding keywords, your business profile listing, is to use them in your business Q and a section. When a customer asks the question on your page, you can insert keywords into your answers. Don't add keywords to your Google business name. The final step you need to consider when optimizing your Google My Business listing for keywords is never set keywords in a GMB business name. Local search marketing experts caution against the practice of keywords stuffing in your business name because it can get your listening penalized or suspended keywords stuffing refers to adding descriptors to your business name on Google, My Business that are not part of the legal name for the business. The digital marketing experts at Sterling sky reported that keyword stuffing the business profile name can increase keyword rankings for a specific search phrase like keyword plus City plus state. Which is why this SEO tactic is attractive to internet marketers. However, Sterling sky also showed a few examples of what can happen to the rankings of a business when it was reported for breaking the guidelines by including extra keywords in the business name, Google. And they don't removing the keywords from the name of one of the business profile listings and the rankings drops from position number one to position number seven. Another business lost the top number one and number two positions and lowered the positions to 1415 for certain local keywords. But you won't always get away with just a penalty. In some cases, your listing may be suspended and timely. Google, My Business guidelines clearly state including unnecessary information in your business name is not permitted and could result in your listing being suspended. Therefore, your Google business name must remain consistent with the real-world branding. Only include keywords in the business title when that part of the real name for the business don't take the risk by stuffing keywords into the business name when it's not authentic to the legal entity name. How to change keywords on Google business. With any search engine optimization strategy, you'll want to track, measure, and monitor your results with the keywords you're using on your Google My Business page. Over time, you may be terming that the key words you're using on your Google, My Business listing or not attracting enough website traffic, the right type of organic visitors or qualified customers. In that case, you might be wondering how to change keywords on Google, My Business on the answer is simple. All you do is update the following areas of your business profile with the new keywords. Business description. Swap out old keywords with new keywords. Profile posts, use the new keywords in new posts and consider deleting old posts. Q&a section answers, edit your answers to include new keywords and use them in new answers. Asked for customer reviews, you'll need to educate your customers on what the new key words are that they should be adding to their testimonials for your business on Google. Finding the right keywords for your Google, My Business listing, if you need help picking the right keywords to use on your business profile. The following tips can help. The most basic method for SEO is to include the following type of keyword strings throughout your listing so that you can show up for more organic searches on Google Maps. Keyword, the city, keyword plus City plus state. You can also optimize for the type of service or business you operate like this type of service plus city type of service plus City plus state. Top of Business Plus city type of business plus City plus state. It's best to rotate through the various keyword strings and types that relate to your business. So you're not using the same phrases repeatedly. This SEO strategy will help you optimize for a wider range of keywords to attract more customers. You can also try to include near me keyword phrases in your profile posts. There's debate in the SEO industry on whether this method continues to work or not. That's because Google can usually figure out your location by analyzing the local geographic coordinates of your computer's IP address or mobile phone with a GPS function. In those cases, the algorithm can determine which business search results will be the best match for your current location. You can experiment with these keywords, search queries, and perform your own testing type of service near me, type of business name, a. 10. GMB Insights: What is Google My Business Insights. Google My Business Insights is a free tool from Google that shows you how searches found your listing and what actions they took on it. It contains information relating to your local search performance, such as the number of reviews your listing has received, how Search users find you, and the types of interactions they have with your listing, such as clicking through to your website, calling you are requesting directions. Here's what Google My Business Insights looked like when you first land on the page Google My Business Insights is useful for two core reasons. It helps you understand how searches fund your business, and it helps you understand what actions searches take on your business. They own. This GMB insights can help you to identify broader trends in how people are finding your business. For example, your cake delivery business might be surprisingly busy at the beginning of May, leading you to investigate providing special offer posts for customers purchasing services around Mother's Day, the more information you have available to you, the more you'll be able to improve your listing and encourage more actions to take place. How to use Google My Business Insights. Now we've established why Google My Business Insights is useful. We can get into how to use the data provided. Here's how to find and use Google My Business Insights. Signing to your Google My Business profile as usual, the Home tab will load and at the right of the screen you'll see performance. This shows the data from the last 28 days on the Search and Maps. Alternatively, you can click on the insights from the left-hand side menu. The insights data is split across several different features, each of which will help you to build a better understanding of your listing. Let's have a look at these. How customers search for your business. Knowing how users search for your business isn't just a point of interest. It can also help you to make better marketing decisions. At the top of the performance box, you'll see three sets of numbers, views, searches, and activity. When you click on searches, a panel will drop down and show you the data related to direct and discovery searches. A direct search is when someone heads to Google and types in either your business name or your business address, you can draw a clear conclusion from this figure. These are the people who already know about your business. And I've inputted there search with the specific intention of finding your listing or finding information related to your business, such as customer reviews. But his co-researchers, when users have taught in something generic, such as plumber near me or convenience store open now, and your business listing has appeared in the local search results. It branded search is when a user searches for a brand related to your business. Google uses the example of someone's searching for McDonald's and being presented with a similar fast food business, the branded search category is only present in GMB insights if your company has appeared at least once for this type of query, search users who found you through discovery may or may not already be familiar with your business, but they haven't set out to find use specifically. These searches are general in nature and typically relate to a specific need and the desire to find a product or service that fulfills that need. What insights can we glean from these figures if the discovery figure is smaller than your direct figure, is a sign that you need to revisit your approach to local SEO. Having a higher Discovery search number means that you're visible to new customers, rather than relying solely on people who already know about you for web traffic and sales. Click on insights in the left-hand menu to access this data in graphical. Query is used to find your business. The information found in this section query is used to fund your business, can become a very useful content optimization resource available from the insights menu. This lists the top search queries, which you can then use to confirm you're using the right keywords across your blogs, web page and Google My Business posts where customers view your business on Google. This section shows you where your impressions on Google have originated in standard Google search or from within Google Maps, desktop or app. You can think of the number of impressions as being how many people you're listing has reached. You'll see two numbers here. Listing on Search and listing on maps with options to view for the week, month, or quarter. While this may not seem helpful at first glance, it will show you how well mobile optimization is going, particularly if you're working with a high footfall business, such as a restaurant or hotel. Customer actions. Next stop is the customer actions section. This data is great for helping you to determine how to manage your listing and what to do next if you're feeling unsure. This part of Google, My Business Insights shows you what type of action a search user commonly takes on your listing, including things like. Visiting your website, requesting directions, and making phone calls to your business. You can use this insight to inform additional work on your GMV profile. A slew of direction requests shows that there is an intent to visit your location. This could lead you to create a post sharing nearby parking facilities or bus stops, for example. You may also want to edit the contact page on your website with directions, parking and public transport access to help those planning to visit. On the GMB listing itself, you could upload additional images of your location showing the approach from different directions. Depending on the action, additional information may also be available. If Search users have requested directions, for example, you'll see a map showing where those direction requests came from. Directions requests when a GMB user has clicked on the directions linked on your profile, you'll see a directions heat map in GMB insights, which outlines the location of those search uses. This heatmap is a great resource for local businesses as it gives a very good indication of where your potential customers are traveling from. This can help you better understand in which neighborhoods to focus your marketing efforts use the zip code and location data presented in the directions heatmap to finally hone your advertising and marketing targeting. You could, for example, the zip codes to focus your Google ads targeting or use this data to geotarget social media campaigns, phone calls. If a search user has clicked on your Google My Business listing to call your business, you'll be able to monitor that data from this section of the insights tab, you can use this data to see what day of the week and time of the day generates the most calls from GMB. This information could again be used to fine tune outperformance or help you decide when to schedule a new post. Photo views. As we discussed earlier, photos are crucial to GMB performance and can play a role in how much traffic filters through to your website from Google, My Business, this part of the insights tab will help you see how your images stack up against your competitors. Not only can you see how many times your own photos have been viewed, but you'll also get a competitor benchmark. Comparing your views to businesses like you. If your images receive more views, you can confidently continue to post. In the same vein, fewer views means you'll need to rethink your approach to images. And you might need to do a little competitor research of your own to see where you may be going wrong. Photo quality. The photo quality Insight enables you to say how many images appear on your business listing compared to your competitors. If you have fewer images, take this as an indication that you need to upload more pictures. Google My Business, post insights. When you write a blog post or update your social media, you'll probably be in the habit of checking post views and likes. In a similar vein, Google My Business Insights will give you some data relating to your posts on GM Bay. Just click on posts in the navigation. You'll be able to say how many new views your posts have received in that week prior. 11. GMB Posts: Do my business posts help SEO? The answer is yes and no. Google My Business posts don't directly help your SEO, but indirectly they count. This is because Google, My Business posts can entice more users to click on your website by providing relevant and interesting information about your business, your offers, and what you do. Increased clicks to your website at a higher click-through rates on your GMV profile does help your SEO. Before you start focusing on effective Google, My Business posts, make sure you have a solid profile. An optimized Google, My Business listing would increase your visibility, getting your posts in front of more relevant searches, the right type of Google My Business posts for you will vary depending on what you're trying to achieve. There are five types of different posts. Offers. Think of this as the promotional type of posts where you can display styles and offers from your business. Products. You can highlight specific products in a special product top where viewers can go to View Pictures, specifications, and other attributes for your selected products. What's new? This provides any general information about your business, about photos, videos, descriptions, or sharing new services, events, share upcoming events your business is hosting or participating in with this post-doc. All events require titles, start and end dates, and timing information. If your business is running a special promotion, the offer post would fit the context of this information best. On the other hand, if your vet clinic is simply looking to increase brand awareness and share general information, the what's new post-hoc can help you get the job done because the content covered in each post will most likely be different. It's a good idea to spend some time studying and testing the different post types. You have a better understanding of how they'll look and which ones can help you reach your goals fastest. You know how to create a Google My Business post. But do you know how to create one that gets results, checkout these top tips for your Google, My Business posts post regularly. Post types without an assigned date range that are more than a week old will be all carved by Google. That's why it's a best practice to post on Google My Business regularly to keep your brand consistent and assure your customers that they're looking at up-to-date information is easy to let this slip through the cracks. So your best bet is to schedule a short Google My Business session once a week or once a month, where you can do a quick post. Plus it doesn't hurt to make sure your GMB profile is looking good. Use high-quality pictures or videos, regardless of the type of information you want to relay on your post, leveraging videos or pictures is a no-brainer because consumers retain 95% of a message when it's in a media format. Now, coming up with high-quality pictures and videos for each post is easier said than done, especially if you're a small to medium-sized business. Keep the text short. The biggest mistakes Google My Business posters make is trying to use all of their allotted characters, which is a staggering 1500 words. Even though it's nice of Google to give so much space to work with, the ideal length for any given post falls between 150 to 300 characters. Not only does this help hold the attention of the viewers, but it also increases the likelihood that all of the vital information will be shown in the post without a user having to click the read more button. Include keywords in your posts. When writing your short post, include keywords that would appeal to searches to increase relevancy. If you're not quite sure what to write, put yourself in the shoes of a consumer and consider what words and phrases would best grab their attention. Ab test your call to action buttons. Depending on the post-talk you select, you will have the option to add a clickable call to action button to your Google, My Business post. Even though you're not able to create custom call to action buttons, yet, Google gives you a fair number of options to work with. Try AB testing call to action buttons to see which one is most effective in getting people to complete your desired action. Keep it professional. Your Google, My Business posts represent your business. And maybe the first real impression a searcher has of you. Keep your posts informational, educational, and professional. Avoid wording that sales, they are subjective to maintain a level of professionalism within your posts and keep users engaged so they act proofread and polish up. Going along with professionalism, Google requires that all your posts be honest and upfront with no intention of trying to mislead or scam information out of users. A common reason businesses posts get taken down on Google. My Business is because of misspellings or poor quality content. Taken the extra time to triple check all of your information is always a good idea. Get familiar with Google's posting rules. Naturally, Google also takes a strong stance against content that is either deemed offensive or in violation of another person or locations privacy. For example, posted include a phone number might be rejected to stop any repetition, since that's already on your listing. Don't wait. Start posting on Google My Business. Google My Business posts only take a few simple steps and minimal time to create. Most importantly, they're free. It's an amazing marketing opportunity for small businesses looking to serve a specific area. 12. Practitioners: A practitioner or professional listing is a listing on Google Maps. That is for a person instead of a place. If you're a doctor, lawyer, dentist, or all the practitioner who worked as a local business, you might be eligible for a practitioner listing comprehensively defined as an individual practitioner is a public facing professional, Typically with his or her own customer base. Doctors, dentists, lawyers, financial planners, insurance or real estate agents are all considered individual practitioners. Listings for practitioners may include a title or degree certification, for example, Dr. Md, etc. An individual practitioner can create their own dedicated listing if they operate in a public facing role, support staff should not create their own listings. They are directly contactable at a verified location during stated hours. They ideally do not have multiple listings to cover all of the specializations. Solo practitioner listing. If you are a practitioner with one business location working for one specific company, for example, a pediatrician that works at a single clinic. You are a solo practitioner. If your clinic has only one pediatrician, it is recommended that the business and practitioner share a single Google My Business listing, that you do not create. A practitioner listing for yourself. Multiple practitioners listening. If the business has multiple practitioners at one location, best practice is that you have one Google My Business listing for the business. Then if there are practitioners who practiced at more than one location, they can create individual practitioner listings. For example, if you're a pediatric clinic has several pediatricians who all practice at other clinics as well. They are eligible to create their own practitioner listings, reviews, full practitioners, Google My Business reviews are populated on a single listing. If someone leaves the review on the Places listing, it stays with that listing. If someone laser review on the practitioner listing, it stays with the practitioner listing regardless of the clinic or location that review is associated with. An individual practitioner listing can provide an opportunity to show a Google Places listing for additional search terms such as your name, practitioner listings are not considered duplicates and Google will not remove them all, merge them. Keep in mind that if a review is left on a practitioner listing, google will not migrate it over to the practice listing. The title of the listing for the practitioner should include only the name of the practitioner. It may also include their credentials title, or degree certification like Dr. Md, etc. The name of the organization should not be included on this listing. Make sure that the practitioner listening links to a specific page and not the generic contact page. The landing page can have information about the individual or the areas of speciality. In addition, the category should be more specific and different from the practices category. To avoid competition with the practice listening, practitioner listings should not be confused with solo practitioner listings or multiple listings. 13. Knowledge Panel: How do you get a Google Knowledge Panel? According to Google knowledge panels are automatically generated and information included in the panel comes from various sources across the web. These panels are also updated automatically when new data emerges online. Because knowledge panels are created automatically, there is no way for anyone to create their own panel. It seems that with enough time and increased branding exposure, you can eventually gain your own Google Knowledge Panel. If you're Brandon, disappear, then you can claim it as your own, but you'll need to be verified as an authorised representative for the entity, how to edit your Google Knowledge Panel. Making changes to your Google Knowledge Panel can be challenging because Google uses an automated system to display updated and accurate information. However, you can suggest changes to your Google Knowledge Panel if you think the current information doesn't accurately represent your brand, to do this, sign into your verified account that it's associated with the Knowledge Panel. Turn on the web and app activity setting on your account. Search for your knowledge panel on Google and click they suggest an edit link. This is called suggest edits or mobile devices. Click on the information that needs editing. You will need to submit suggestions for each individual item. If there are multiple parts of the panel that need urbanites, a text box will appear on the screen. When providing suggestions include the following. You'll suggested change why it should replace the current content. Try to include any public URL. Was that confirm your suggested changes. Hit Send To finalize your changes. If you don't see an option to suggest and edits on the panel is because of one of two things. You are not using the same account used to verify the Knowledge Panel. Google doesn't recognize you as a verified representative of the entity. You will need to get your account verified or ask the main representative to give you the same level of verification. During the review process, google will verify your suggestions by corroborating them against publicly available information on the web. If your changes are accepted, Google will send you an e-mail stating its intentions. How is a business profile different from a knowledge panel? While getting your own Google Knowledge Panel isn't guaranteed, you can take steps in another direction to create in your own business profile through the Google my business account, which is displayed in the same place as the knowledge panel. I aim for the Google Knowledge Panel, taking control of your online presence via the Google My Business profile is the first step to ineffective reputation management. Ensuring that all the information is current and accurate further establishes trust between you and future customers. Over time, you can bolster that confidence by engaging on Google with Q&A submissions, as well as learning how to respond to negative reviews with enough brand recognition online, coupled with a plethora of positive customer feedback, your brand can eventually gain an automatic spot in the Google Knowledge panel. 14. Reviews: Google reviews significantly influenced the way customers think about your company. They are also crucial for businesses looking to get discovered in the search results. By managing Google reviews, you can showcase your business in the best possible light and minimize the impacts that negative reviews or low ratings might have on your brand reputation. In this video, we'll break down how you can monitor, respond to, and generate Google reviews, as well as how you can leverage these reviews to acquire and retain more customers. Why are Google reviews important? Google reviews are important for one reason, your customers look for and trust these reviews. According to online reviews statistics, Google is the number one website for online reviews. 63.6% of consumers say they are likely to check reviews on Google through Google Maps and Search before visiting a business location. It's easy to see why almost two-thirds of people turn to Google to find reviews of businesses, apart from Google being the world's top website. 0 clicks searches are also on the rise. 0 clicks searches happen. The top search result provides the answer to a user's query so that the user doesn't even have to click through to a website or leave the search engine results page. The link between Google reviews and search results. Google reviews also have a direct impact on where and how prominent companies and brands appear in the search engine results. And most reports suggests that reviews are one of the top factors influencing organic search results on Google. And a top three factor influencing which businesses are featured in the Google Maps pack. In terms of local SEO, more reviews made more information for Google's algorithm. How to track Google reviews. The simplest way to find and track your company's reviews is to use Google, My Business, to see your Google reviews. Just click the reviews tab on your Google My Business homepage. You'll then be taken to a page that shows you all your reviews, which you can also filter by replied or haven't replied. Even if you're not logged into GMV, you should still be able to see your reviews appearing in multiple places on the web, such as Google search results and Google Maps. Receiving Google review alerts via e-mail to help you track review activity. Google, My Business will also notify you of any new Google reviews via email. The email notification includes reviewing information such as review a name star rating, a portion of the review text, and a link to the review on Google, where I have my Google reviews disappeared. Ensuring that you'll Google reviews or display correctly on your business listings is vital to the success of your online reputation. There's a variety of reasons why you may be experiencing issues with a Google review not showing up. This often has to do with one of two things. Issues with the old Google, My Business listing or problems with the formatting of the Google review. Google My Business listing issues, inaccurate listing information, duplicate listings, inactive listings and Google outages, google review formatting issues, reviews marked as spam reviews with links and URLs, fake reviews, and private or deleted reviews. If the issue is with your GMB listing, you can often make the necessary changes yourself to remedy the situation. For example, if you have been inactive on Google my business for a long time, or you have to do is login to your GMV account and start managing your listing again. Responding to your reviews on Google. Online reviews on sites like Google give people a way to share their customer experiences, Not only with businesses, but with fellow consumers. Consumers rely on these reviews to discover businesses and brands that provide the best customer experience. While I respond to reviews. Learning how to respond to Google reviews is an important part of managing customer feedback and protecting your brand reputation. Customers care about your responses. According to online reviews statistics, 53% of customers expect a review response within seven days. But as much as 63% say they have never heard back from a business after leaving a review. Responding improves your online reputation. Customer reviews research shows that 45% of customers say they're more likely to visit a business if it responds to negative reviews. How to respond to reviews using GMA to respond to Google reviews, login to your Google My Business account, and select the location with the reviews you want to manage. Then click the reviews tab on the listings GMB homepage. When you land on the reviews page, you'll see each individual review that has been posted on your business listing organized by default, by date. From there, you can respond to each individual review by clicking the Reply button. Please note that your reply will be displayed publicly on Google and must comply with Google review policy. You can also edit your review responses to clean up typos or update what was originally written. Each review that has been responded to will appear with an Edit button. The updating your replies. Keep in mind that your customers will get notified by email when you respond to their reviews, your response is published immediately and the e-mail notification is sent to the customer approximately five minutes later. The five-minute delay allows you to edit or make any corrections to your response after initial submission. Why is important to get new reviews? A steady stream of new reviews can dramatically improve your search engine performance, which is essential to driving traffic and attracting more customers. This makes it crucial for companies to learn how to get Google reviews proactively. It's not enough to simply plant your business flag on Google and white for the reviews to come in. According to research, companies that proactively request reviews enjoy higher ratings, 4.34 stars. And those that simply wait for unprompted reviews, 3.89 stars. If you don't proactively request customers for reviews, you'll review data sample is more likely to be biased towards those who are motivated to leave a review, usually people with a customer service issue. How to get more reviews on Google? Here are some effective ways that you can get Google reviews for your company and build up your brands online presence. Use email. Do you collect customers email addresses at the point of sale or care? If so, then you'll quickly realize that email is one of the most effective ways to get reviews on Google My Business. If you're managing over 100 business locations on Google, My Business, using automation instead of manually reaching out to customers should help you save time and money. One option is to integrate your review requests into your Customer Relationship Management CRM, or point-of-sale POS system. If you're sending a message to customers, be sure to add a link to your Google, My Business listing so that it will only take them a few clicks to share their experience. Another option is to utilize review generation tools with your local SEO software. Send SMS campaigns. If you're sinking your point-of-sale system to send email alerts to customers. You can also send SMS requests, SMS open rates are significantly higher than e-mail and can drive better engagement and more reviews. Creating a Google reviews link. Creating a unique Google reviews link and sharing it with your customers encourages them to review your business on Google. Make your customers happy. The easiest, most effective, and most fundamental way to get reviews with five-star ratings is to consistently deliver excellent levels of service and create wow moments with customers. If on the other hand, you have customers who are not satisfied or happy with their experience that make a point to reach out to them and identify and address those issues. What is review gating? Unlike other business review sites, for example, Yelp, google encourages business owners to reach out to their customers and ask for reviews. However, Google doesn't want businesses to discourage or prohibit negative reviews or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers. Practice commonly referred to as review gating. This is normally done by sending customers a survey or feedback form through e-mail, SMS, landing pages, or social media based on their form responses, customers are then asked to either post a positive review on Google if they had a positive experience or share details of their feedback privately. If they had a negative experience, review gating, Let's brands filter out detractors from their online review generation efforts. This however, is against Google review policy. To meet the demand for transparency and authenticity and reviews, your company must make it clear that customers can leave you a negative review. Can I share a Google reviews on my website? Yes, you can. And it's highly recommended. Showcasing your best and highest rated reviews on your website is a great way to provide social proof, boost consumer confidence, and encourage user interaction. Reviews also often serve as the final push people need to convert from being visitors to customers. Simply ports authentic, positive reviews on your website leverages the power of testimonial based marketing. Letting happy customers make statements about the benefits of your product or services makes it clear for potential customers to trust your company. You can display Google reviews on your homepage and show you a company's overall rating. You can also create location pages displaying each business locations reviews. Another option is to create a customer testimonials page, which is a great way to turn website visitors into customers and loyal fans. Can I delete or edit google reviews? Here's the short answer. Companies can't delete any review on their Google business listings. Most of the time, GMB users who succeed in having a review deleted can do so because they're reviewing question violated Google review policy. There is also no straightforward way to edit reviews on Google. Customers are allowed to change or update their own reviews to reflect the most recent experience they had with a business. Brands cannot edit google reviews. If there's a review of your business on Google that you do not agree with. The best practice is to respond to the review or engage with the customer directly. In certain situations. This can even result in the customer updating their review. Unlike Facebook reviews, google reviews cannot be disabled or turned off. Every business listing on Google displays reviews. If you're seeing low ratings and negative reviews appear on your listings, are recommend responding to the review and solving the customer's issue. To minimize the impact of the low rating on your overall skull. You can reach out to customers and generate new Reviews. Google local guides. Google local guides Is a global community of the top reviewers on Google. Think of it as Google's version of Yelp Elite. The more reviews or user rights and posts on Google, the more benefits he or she enjoys. If you get a review from a Google local guide is more likely to show up at the top of your reviews when a user clicks on your GMV listing. That might be because Google gives special preference to Google local guide reviews, or simply because these reviews tend to be longer and include photos. Benefits of the local gods program include special badges and levels. Access to a monthly newsletter, invites to members only contests, the ability to join Hangouts with worldwide tastemakers, connoisseurs and Googlers, and possibly eligibility to test new Google products and services before public release. Maybe invites to exclusive events, parties and meet-ups and annual thank you gifts for high-quality contributions to Google Maps. High-level google local guides also get the chance to be featured on Google, Facebook, and Twitter. If you're a business owner, you can still become a local guide if you do not solicit Google reviews for a particular business and that you don't take advantage of the program for self-promotion. Should you buy reviews when building your company's online reputation, it can be tempting to take shortcuts and try to buy Google reviews. Or you have to do is pick a service provider that sells reviews at their service to the shopping cart and provide information on your GMV listings. While this seems like an easy fix, buying Google business reviews will almost certainly do you more harm than good. Fake reviews violate Google's guidelines and will almost certainly be removed from your listing sooner or later. Regulatory agencies like the FTC also impose hefty fines on companies found to be buying fake reviews. Google reviews play an important role in how today's consumers discover and George businesses. They can also shape a brand's online reputation, as well as reveal valuable insights into a company's operations. Showing areas where an organization can improve customer service and experience by trucking, responding to, and generating reviews on Google, and by applying best practices in reputation management, you can improve your brand search visibility, outperform competitors, and acquire more customers. 15. Case Studies: Result in SBAR business has three golf courses. Their golf page is usually drive a lot of organic traffic to their website in spring, the main challenge was recovering the traffic after the COVID-19 pandemic. There are three golf courses have separate optimized local listings on the platform. While they wrote posts for every property. This Google, My Business case study looks at just want the other two listings didn't exist in 2019 and therefore don't have year-over-year YoY data plan and execution. They started posting weekly GMB updates for the golf courses. That goal in the beginning was simply to inform customers that the courses were closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this case, they knew that keeping the results customers and prospects informed was a priority even if they weren't sharing good news. There are posts also provided encouragement and reminded the audience to follow social distancing rules so everyone could be back on the golf course soon. The messages were an indication of thought, leadership and empathy helping shape the brand's image as responsible and caring. Once their golf courses were open again, GMB posts provided the assurance that customers needed to safety while playing golf. Their messages highlighted sanitation measures and unique rules on the green to help them and their customers comply with local COVID-19 E19 laws and regulations. Did it work to analyze results of their strategy? They used Google My Business Insights to compare a two-month period in 2019 to the same period in 2020. No GMB posts were posted in 2019. They started posting there at the start of 2020 period. They were pleased to see that total search, the number of times customers found their listing in the local pack or maps went up 15% overall. Let's look at the different types of searches to see how the Gulf listening performed year-over-year. Direct searches increased. This is the number of times customers found the listing by searching for the exact golf course business name or address in Google search or maps. Discovery search is increased 50%. This is the number of times customers found the listing by searching for the category, product, or service on Google search or Maps. Example, a customer typing in a general query such as golf course near me, or simply, golf, search views increased 30%. This is the number of times the listing was viewed in the Google search engine results page. Map views increased 2%. This is the number of times the listing was viewed on Google maps. The value of optimizing your business listing and utilizing GMB posts became even clearer when they compared organic traffic from the search engine results page to traffic from the golf courses GMB listings website link from May 2022, June 2020. The GMB website link sent 2900 sessions to the website. Standard organic search results sent 1538, about half as much as GMV. Understanding the metrics, how did they attribute this organic traffic increase to GMB posts and not something else? First, by always tagged the website link in a GMB listing with UTM parameters for the proper source. This listing already had those parameters in place. They also looked at search data, the number of direct searches or branded searches. People looking specifically for this property was about the same in each time frame they compared. They knew that posts didn't help increase branded keywords searches, and it didn't help the property get more impressions from those searches. The increased Discovery Search exposure, however, told them the GMB listing was performing much better for short tail non-branded search terms, the GMB posts sent the necessary ranking signals to Google to help their GMV property rank better than it did the year before for category, product or service keywords relating to golfing. This is exactly what they wanted. Branded search terms make a user's intent of very clear. They already know what they want and if they want you, you, when the real challenge is ranking better for keywords with general or wide user intent. If someone doesn't know where they want to play golf, then they type in a short tail search query like golf. If I have a much better chance of winning that person's business, if the listing outranks the competitors for the query in the local search engine results page. The time and effort they spent creating GMB posts was an easy win for them. And a version of this strategy still exists on their marketing agenda today. When Claire Chapman first opened the glamorous owl, a gift shop, she knew she didn't want to sell online. Her marketing strategy needed to drive traffic to her bricks and mortar business. While a website and social media presence made her some headway. How quirky gift shop wasn't turning up in search engine results. This meant that unless a customer already knew her business existed, they'd be likely to stumble across it during an online search, registering with Google, my business was the first step by listing her shop on Google Maps and adding key details such as opening times, Claire boosted her businesses online visibility. She then use the Google My Business Insights reporting tool to show which search terms lead customers to find her shop. This helped her identify popular phrases like handmade jewelry in New Castle to add to her web copy, which in turn helped to increase the ranking of its website in the organic results. With a much higher Google search ranking, the glamorous owl now attracts locals and tourists alike. Google reviews allow previous customers to share their experiences of the shop. While a rotation of photos makes that all important first impression before customers have even set foot in the store. What's more as Claire response to every review, she brings customer interaction into the shops online presence, giving measurable results. 16. Final Words: With a clear understanding of exactly what Google My Business is, how it works, and how to use it. You can now say that using this free tool isn't just a good idea for local marketing, but a must get your Google My Business account open running now. So your business profile can outshine your competitors and attract more customers on the world's most popular search engine, Google, My Business is quietly positioning as the best tool for local businesses to improve online presence, reach potential customers, get discovered, and continue the communication with new customers is the most effective digital marketing tool that optimizes the great adoption of Google Maps by customers when deciding to use local services or products. Google, My Business is like managing a social media profile aimed specifically for local businesses to improve search rankings with local SEO and customer reviews, Google, My Business is a great tool for driving traffic and conversions with relatively low effort, and I highly recommend it as part of your larger digital marketing strategy. If you want your business to have a strong digital footprint than you want to make sure that you are making the most out of your Google, My Business listing, you now have all of the information you need to create a successful GMB listing. Well, that brings us to the end of this course. Don't forget to post a link to your Google, My Business listing in the project section of the class down below. I wish you the very best for the future, and I hope to see you on another course soon.