What is Google My Business?
Google My Business is a veritable goldmine for local businesses and websites. Even better, this amazing tool is free. With Google My Business you get:
- Commanding advantages through quality real estate on Google Search locally – minus the expense for SEO and other activity.
- Inclusion in Google Maps enlarging your visibility to your target audience, and making it easier for them to locate you.
- Raise your online presence on Search.
- Raises your credibility. Statistics show that when your business information is verified at Google My Business, your credibility before your target audience doubles.
- Allow you to inform your target audience on what your business is all about, in exactly the way that you want it to be told.
- Updates on pending holidays is one of the features of this tool that will enable you to update your information accordingly, for your convenience and that of your target audience.
- It’s easy to use, and bridges you to your consumers, both old and new.
This tool is perfect if you have a business, a brand, or if you belong to an organization or are an artist. Statistics have shown that when your
business is featured on Google My Business, you gain credibility with your target audience, get more clicks to your website, and more requests for directions to your location.
What gets you on top in Google Search?
Knowing how Google works in terms of how it crawls through websites and the information that it catches will help you understand why this tool is valuable. You will also be empowered on how to use its many features to your best advantage.
When Google crawls through a website it looks for the following:
- Your key words and your city in your website address. For example,
an address such as https://www.entrepreneur.com uses the keyword, which is the name of the publication. Another
example is www.nbcbayarea.com, which uses the location in its URL. When Google crawls, these are the key things it looks for, lending you a boost on search rankings. - Buy a keyword rich domain site. If you have a branded domain that isn’t keyword rich, and doesn’t names the location of your
business, don’t fret. You can buy a keyword-rich domain site, and attach it to your Google My Business listing. - Create a page on your site using your keywords. For example, perhaps you have already branded RosettaSmith.com. You can boost your search list by creating the page, Dance School in Kansas City and add it to your Google My Business Page, making it
RosettaSmith.com/Dance-School-in-Kansas-City. This same page should be used in all of your directory listings. This will speed up the
process of getting higher on the Search list, because it has both your keywords and your location. It will also save you the trouble
of having to create a new website. - Website structure. You should consider having the following pages on your website:
- Location page. When Google crawls your website, it will look for local signals on your website that will raise credibility in your
listing. For example, Rosetta Smith placed Kansas City as its location. This allows Google to confirm that your business really
exists in Kansas City. - About our business. On the heading of this page, place your category, city and state, for example, “Dance School, Kansas City,
KS”. Then, use keywords such as “Ballet, Jazz, Modern Dance”, and “Hip Hop”. Each keyword should link to a page on your website that talks exclusively about the specific dance form. - Headings on pages per dance form (in this example). Each page about the dance form should also have a heading of the dance form, city and state abbreviation. For example, “Ballet, Kansas City, KS”. Again, this is because the Google crawler will see it more often in your website, which will give you an additional boost in the search engine.
- Include a YouTube video. This is important because Google owns YouTube. In your video, include keywords in all slides.
- Services. Include all your keywords when you briefly describe all your services, so that you can rank higher in Search.
- Location page. When Google crawls your website, it will look for local signals on your website that will raise credibility in your
In sum, your website should say:
- Exactly who you are.
- Where you are located.
- What categories your business falls under.
It sounds very simple, but it makes a huge difference on your ranking in Google Maps and Search. Definitely, it won’t do everything you hope it could do, because this is a highly competitive market. But it lessens resistance to Google’s Search engine when it is trying to classify your business website, and rank it in comparison to your competitors.
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