Your Business Can Spike Up In Search With This Fantastic, Free Tool

Google My Business is a fantastic, free tool that can help you make great things happen to your business. It’s the quickest way to land 97% of leads from local consumers who are your target audience, and it can help you get listed on top of Search — provided you know what to highlight in your business information. It goes without saying that the higher you rank in Search, the more likely your business will grow, and your earnings will rise.

How does this tool spike up your rank in Search? First, list your website in Google My Business https://business.google.com . This will give your business a more widely-known public identity, and expand your Google presence. Your information will also be found on Google Search, Maps, and Google+.

Oftentimes, a client may see a business that he or she is interested in. However, the information the client wants to know immediately is scattered and hard to find. Because of this, the client may quit the search and go to another listing. You want to make it easy for your target customer to see your listing on Google My Business on his or her phone, and easily know everything he or she wants and needs to know about your business. To do this, all of the following should be seen on the customer’s phone screen or laptop:

  1. Good photos. Studies show that photos raise requests for directions to businesses by 42%, and raise clicks to websites by 35%. Photos allow you to show the best side of your business. You can also take people on a virtual 360 degree tour of your business using photos, so they will know what to expect when they arrive.
  2. Map. A map will help potential customers to immediately know where you are, and how to find you.
  3. Category. Choose the category in Google My Business that best describes your business, for example, “Restaurant” or “Dance Studio”. If there is no category that matches your business, look up competitor businesses that rank high in Search, and see what category they use in Google My Business. Use the same category.
  4. Business information. Include your address, state and zip code; your phone no., and working hours. Always update your listing to indicate whether or not you will be open on holidays.
  5. Reviews. List down the number of Google reviews that you have, and your overall average rating from these reviews. For example, perhaps you have 25 Google reviews, and the average rating of all 25 reviews is four stars. This should be included.
  6. Testimonials. Include one or two testimonials about your business from satisfied customers.

Oftentimes, potential customers will not bother to look up a business if the information they need to know about the business is hard to find. If all of the above is seen on the screen, potential customers will not switch to another listing. Instead, they will take time to read your Google My Business listing because it is easy for them to know everything they need to know about your business immediately.  

How will your listing look on Search?

One successful startup that is listed on Google My Business is Glamsquad. When you Google Glamsquad on Search, on the left the first listing is a Glamsquad ad, and the second is Glamsquad’s website. But Google My Business also adds Glamsquad’s information on the right side of the Search listing, including the company’s photos, map, category, address, phone no., hours, and reviews. This can also happen to your company when you list it on Google My Business. When your company name is typed on Search, it will also appear on the right column, giving it special importance because it’s the only business listed on that side.

Whether you are a home based business with a website, or you are a major, established business brand with high credibility and a fantastic website with 10 locations, you need Google My Business, because right now, it is the no. 1 search engine in the world. It will complement your website, and establish your Google presence. A home startup can be listed without having to include an address, or a big business can list all its company locations on Maps using the bulk upload tool. Whether your business is large or small, it will have equal opportunity by being featured on Google+ as well.

Other Ways Google My Business can spike your business up

Google My Business has certain features that can help you keep on top of your game, by enabling you to notice trends in terms of how people interact with your website. You will also have customer profiles, among others. This is made possible by the tool’s dashboard, which includes the following information:

  1. Followers interaction. Your will know how many followers you have, how many reviews you have, how they rate you, and unresponded reviews.
  2. Monthly insights. It helps to know how people find your business listing on Search and Maps, and what they do once they have your information. For example:  
  3. How they find you on Search. How many clients simply type the name of your business, or your address? How many discover you by searching for a category, product or service? What search words are used in a discovery search?
  4. Where clients find you on Google. Do they use Search or Maps? How many views does a specific product of yours get? You can also get this information according to a timeframe of your choice, or for a specific day. You will be able to see how discovery through Google Maps changes from one month to the next, or isolate data from a specific timeframe that interests you. All of this information will help you to gain insights on your business and its online presence, and help you to make new decisions based on the data that you have.
  5. Customer actions. What did customers do after they found your listing on Google? Did they:
  6. Go to your website
  7. Ask for directions
  8. Call you
  9. Look at your photos


You can know all of the above, and also isolate the data on specific days that interest you.

  1. Driving directions requests. You can know where on the map people ask for driving directions to your business. In this way you will learn the most popular places from which people are located when they start asking Google Maps for driving directions. Plus, you will know the total number of requests you had, and how many came from which city or cities and neighborhoods.
  2. Phone calls. You will know how often customers called your business by using your Google listing, within the timeframe that interests you the most. You can also see trends in terms of what days and time of day the customers tend to call after seeing your listing. You can choose what timeframe you want to view your data, whether it is for the last 30 days, last 7 days, or last 90 days.
  3. Photos. You can know how many times photos in your listing are viewed, and compare it to the viewership of photos from your competitors. You can also see this data within a timeframe of 7, 30, or 90 days. You can also isolate a single day and see how many times your photos were viewed.

 

In sum, Google My Business can spike up your presence in Search, Maps and Google Plus, and provides tools to help you to regularly analyze your market and how they interact with your website and your business. Based on your analysis, you can make changes to your website and your listing that responds to perceived trends. In light of this, one can conclude that Google My Business is fabulous free tool, and you would be a fool to go without it.

Ash Ganda

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