Why Do I Need Google My Business?

A lot of businesses make a business listing to be seen more on Google My Business, (known officially as a Google Business Profile). If you’re one of these business owners, you might not realise that creating a business profile doesn’t give you control over it. You need the ability to maintain and change your Business Profile if you want it to help you with SEO and get you more leads.

So, how do you take control of your Google Business Profile? The solution is that you must make a free account for that profile in addition to making a free business profile.

A Google account is the only way to claim ownership of your Business Profile, get the ability to manage it, and get access to free tools that will help your business show up more on Google.

In this article, I’ll tell you all you need to know about Google My Business.

1. What is Google My Business?

As was already said, Google My Business is a service that lets you manage and improve your Google Business Profile, which is one of many crucial listings. So, to understand what this service is and how it works, let’s first talk about what a business profile is.

Google calls your Google business listing “Your Business Profile.” Business profiles are included on Google Maps and in the local search results.

This is how Google Search’s business profiles look:

Profiles on Google Maps look like this:

Adding a place to Google Maps is the same as making a Business Profile, which means that anyone, including a random stranger or an automated listing generator, can do it. Google only needs to know the name, location, and type of business.

Google will make a Business Profile for that place once they are sure it is not a duplicate. Customers may then leave reviews, add images, ask questions, and even answer questions on the Business Profile. Google may also take information from throughout the web and add it to the Business Profile.

This means that a Business Profile doesn’t need a Google My Business account to exist. And whether or whether you made your own Business Profile, you can’t change the information it shows or the reviews it gathers. Google My Business helps with this. By making a Google My Business account, you may access, edit, manage, and improve your profile, which we’ll talk about next.

2. How to use Google My Business for local marketing

So we’ve established that Google My Business is not just your business profile, but rather a tool for improving the visibility and efficacy of your profile. Let’s go over the four main ways you can use the listing to improve your local marketing.

Interact with customers

Customers can interact with your profile in a variety of ways, and you can respond to them using your Google My Business account. You can respond to reviews, answer questions, activate direct messaging, and configure alerts. You can even use it to publish posts to your Business Profile in the same way that you would on Facebook or other social media sites.

On your Google My Business dashboard, you can respond to reviews, make content, and answer questions asked on your Business Profile.

Promote your company

A business profile by itself only provides basic details about your company. However, you may add hours, a URL to your website, data about your goods and services, prices, distinguishing characteristics, and other information through the dashboard of your Google My Business account. Additionally, you will use Google My Business to make any necessary modifications and updates.

Get Insights

With the Google My Business dashboard, you can learn important things about your audience and how well your business does in local searches. In the statistics section of the platform, you can see the search terms customers are using to reach your Business Profile, whether they found you using Google Maps or Google Search, a breakdown of actions made on your listing, and how your photographs are doing compared to other profiles in your category. Note that UTM parameters and Google Analytics can be used to track clicks from a Business Profile.

Carry out local SEO

Google has algorithms for ranking advertisements and websites, and it also has one for rating Business Profiles. You can add keywords to your Business Profile and conduct other optimisations to help it rank in local results using your Google My Business dashboard, which we’ll go over next.

Google My Business can assist you in optimising your Business Profile so that it appears higher in your categories.

3. How to use Google My Business for SEO

Google Business Profiles are ever-changing. Not only do they vary depending on the platform, but Google will also prioritise areas of your profile based on the term that was searched as well as the type of information that consumers in your category value the most. Even better, Google will highlight keywords in your profile’s content that it believes are relevant.

But, in the first place, there must be information to prioritise and keywords to emphasise in your profile. Google My Business is used to optimise your profile and grow your reach in the same way that you (or your agency) would use a content management system like WordPress to optimise your website for search engines. How do you make the most of Google My Business for local SEO? Because optimising for Google is essentially optimising for searchers, it all boils down to three things: targeting, information quality, and trust.

Target Your Information

To use your profile for SEO, include relevant keywords in your Business Profile so Google knows what you’re attempting to rank for. Use them in your “from the business” description, your reactions to reviews, your answers to enquiries, and in the pieces you produce. As with any other SEO tactic, make sure you incorporate them naturally.

Maintain Information Quality

The fullness and correctness of your Business Profile affect its rank, so make sure to fill out every element of your Google My Business dashboard. Your contact details, special hours, and qualities are especially vital here.

Create Trust

The final method for using Google My Business for SEO appeals to Google’s algorithm’s trust component. As your company grows, keep your information up to date and correct. Maintain a consistent flow of reviews and respond to them. Additionally, show Google that you are active by routinely uploading photographs and making content to your profile.

5. Conclusion

SEO is vital for all businesses, but it is especially important for small firms that may compete on the SERP with huge competitors using local targeting. With its strong Business Profiles, Google is making local SEO even easier, so a Google My Business account is vital for any business looking to maximise visibility in their local market.

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