How to set up a Google My Business profile

Google is the website that receives the most visitors each day. The website currently holds more than 92 percent of the market share for search engines. Establishing a Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business is essential to bring in new clients for your company through the use of Google Search and Google Maps.

What exactly does “Google My Business” or “Google Business Profile” mean?

A Google Business Profile is a free listing that your company can have on Google’s website. It enables you to provide information and images about your company, such as its location, products, and services, among other things.

Making use of Google’s free profile creator is a fantastic method to boost your visibility across all of Google’s services. Your company’s information may be displayed in Google Search, Google Maps, and Google Shopping if you have a Google Business Profile.

Google Business Profile is only accessible to companies interacting directly with clients and prospects. This includes businesses with a physical presence, such as a restaurant or store, and enterprises that provide services by meeting customers in other locations, such as consultants or plumbers.

If your company is only conducted online, you must use other Google technologies, such as Google Ads and Google Analytics.

What exactly does “Google My Business” or “Google Business Profile” mean?

A Google Business Profile is a free listing that your company can have on Google’s website. It enables you to provide information and images about your company, such as its location, products, and services, among other things.

Making use of Google’s free profile creator is a fantastic method to boost your visibility across all of Google’s services. Your company’s information may be displayed in Google Search, Google Maps, and Google Shopping if you have a Google Business Profile.

Google Business Profile is only accessible to companies interacting directly with clients and prospects. This includes businesses with a physical presence, such as a restaurant or store, and enterprises that provide services by meeting customers in other locations, such as consultants or plumbers.

If your company is only conducted online, you must use other Google technologies, such as Google Ads and Google Analytics.

Who should create a profile for their company on Google My Business?

Google My Business profiles are tailored to meet the needs of companies operating brick-and-mortar stores or other retail locations. This free internet listing makes it easy for local customers to find and visit your shopfront, regardless of whether you provide hospitality services, run a chemist’s shop, or sell retail goods.

However, internet firms can also establish a GMB profile if they have a physical office space to refer consumers and clients.

Customers in your service region will have an easier time becoming familiar with your brand if you take advantage of this Google listing, which may serve as an excellent and free tool to complement your other social media and digital marketing activities.

The reasons why you should sign up for a Google My Business account.

Find your way to the top of Google search results and Google Maps.

Google is the best search referrer out there, and you should use it whether you’re searching for foot traffic or web traffic. A Google Business Profile makes it more likely that people will find your company when they seek goods and services similar to those you offer in their immediate area.

Searchers can find directions to your place of business using the information provided in their Google My Business listing. Having a Google Business Profile will also boost your local search engine optimization. When customers use Google Maps to look for a local business, it is more likely that a listing for a local business will come up in the results.

Establish credibility through the use of ratings.

Reviews are essential to social proof and a significant means of constructing credibility and confidence in a brand or business.

Customers can submit as much or as little information as they choose regarding their experience with your company using Google’s combined star rating and room for detailed evaluations. All of this information assists prospective customers in making decisions about which businesses to visit and which things to purchase.

When you consider that reviews will be posted on such a prominent platform, it can be nerve-wracking, especially considering that you won’t be able to pick and choose which Google My Business reviews to make public. (However, you can respond to all reviews, as we will explain briefly.)

However, you shouldn’t get too worked up about it because Google has found that a mix of positive and negative reviews is more trustworthy than page after page of glowing suggestions.

Create a Google Business Profile.

Step 1: Sign into Google Business Profile Manager.

You will be logged into Google Business Profile Manager if you already have a Google account. Otherwise, use your existing Google account login information or establish a new Google account.

Step 2: Add your company.

Enter the name of your company. Click Add your business to Google if it does not display in the drop-down option. Then, choose the right category for your company and click Next.

Step 3: Enter your address.

Select Yes if you have a physical location that clients can visit. Then enter your company’s address. You may also be requested to place a marker on a map to indicate the location. You can include your service areas if your company has no physical site but provides in-person services or delivery. Then press the Next button.

If you do not input a physical address, Google will ask you to specify your location. Select an option from the drop-down menu and then click Next.

Step 4: Fill in your contact details.

Enter your company phone number and website URL so customers can contact you. You do not need to add a phone number if you do not want to be reached by phone.

When you’ve finished entering your information, click Next.

Step 5: Confirm your company.

Enter your actual physical address, not a PO Box. This information is solely needed to validate your business and is not posted or shared with the public on your Google Business Profile.

Enter your address and then press the Next button. You will be given the appropriate options for verifying your account. To authenticate their location, physical establishments must receive a postcard in the mail. An email address can be used to verify service-area firms.

Enter your five-digit code on the following screen (or go to https://business.google.com/) and select Verify or Verify business.

You’ll get a confirmation screen indicating that you’ve been authenticated. On that screen, press the Next button.

Step 6: Personalize your profile.

Enter your company hours, preferred messaging, business description, and photographs. (We’ll review how to optimize your profile material in the following section of this piece.)

When you’re finished, click Continue. You’ll be taken to the Business Profile Manager dashboard.

You may manage your business profile, examine insights, manage reviews and messages, and create Google advertisements from this page.

How to Improve Your Google Ranking My Professional Profile

Google bases its local search ranking on three factors:

• Relevance: The degree to which your Google My Business listing matches a search query.
• Distance: The distance between your location and the search or searcher.
• Prominence: The degree to which your company is well-known (based on characteristics such as links, number of reviews, review score, and SEO).

Here are some strategies for improving your overall score across all three areas.

Finish off your profile with all of its components.

Customers who see your comprehensive Google Business Profile are 2.7 times more likely to think your company is trustworthy. In addition, they have a 70% increased likelihood of visiting your place.

According to Google’s own words, “Businesses that have complete and accurate information are easier to match with the right searches.” Your relevance score will increase as a result of this. The most important thing that you can do for visitors from Google is to explain “what you do, where you are, and when they can visit.”

Be sure to keep your business hours up to date, especially if they change due to holidays or the changing seasons.

Confirm your location (or locations).

Verified business locations are more likely to be displayed in local search results across various Google products, including Search and Maps. You can also increase your score for the distance ranking factor by including a verifiable location in your submission.

Request a verification postcard through https://business.google.com/ if you skipped verifying your location during the account creation stages described before.

Include authentic photographs and videos of your company.

A logo and a cover photo can be uploaded to your Google Business Profile. It will be much simpler for consumers to recognize your brand if the photographs you use across all your social media platforms are consistent.

But don’t leave it at that. Include photographs and videos to illustrate your establishment, the atmosphere of your workplace, and your staff members.

If you own a salon, you should upload photos of your equipment and lounge area on your website. Ensure they have a polished and expert appearance and their resolution is high enough. Google claims that businesses that include photographs receive more hits to their websites and more requests for driving directions.

How to add images to your Google profile or update the ones you already have:

1. To access your photos, select “Photos” from the left-hand menu on the dashboard.
2. To get started, add your company upload an image, select uploading an image, select one from the album associate Business Profile, or select a photo in which your company has been tagged.
3. To upload additional pictures, go to the top menu of the photographs page and select either At Work or Team.
4. To upload videos, the selected tab labeled “Video” at the top of the pictures page.

Make sure your profile contains relevant keywords.

Increase your relevancy by making use of the appropriate keywords. Do you not know where to begin? You might also use Google’s Keyword Planner or Trends.

Discovering the terms people use while searching for your company can also be aided by using tools such as Google Analytics and social monitoring software. Include them in a way consistent with your business description’s flow. It’s not a good idea to overuse keywords or use ones that aren’t relevant; doing either of these things can affect your search ranking.

Encourage reviews and questions, and make sure to respond to them.

People place a higher level of trust in one another than they do in businesses. A positive review can be the tipping point that tips the balance for your business among potential clients. Your Google ranking can also increase with positive reviews.

After delivering an outstanding experience, you should request a review. Google makes it easy by providing a direct connection for businesses to send requests to customers asking for reviews.

To share the link to your review request:

1. From the main dashboard, scroll down until you see a Share Review form button.

2. Make a copy of the URL and put it into an email that you send to consumers, as well as into your autoresponder and any online receipts.

You cannot disable the review functionality on your Google My Business page. Because reviews demonstrate to clients that your company is legitimate, it would not be in your best advantage to manipulate review sites in any way.

On the other hand, you can flag and report inappropriate reviews.

You also have the ability (and, indeed, the responsibility!) to respond to both favorable and bad reviews. According to a Google and Ipsos Connect survey, businesses that respond to customer evaluations are considered 1.7 times more trustworthy than those that don’t answer.

Respond in a manner befitting your brand’s professionalism. When replying to a critical evaluation, it is important to be truthful and to apologize when one is due.

Simply navigate to the left-hand menu of your Business Profile Manager and click on the Reviews item to read and respond to reviews.

Maintain an up-to-date record of your company’s details.

If you modify your business’s hours of operation, contact information, or anything else, update your profile on this site. Nothing irritates customers more than turning up during business hours only to discover that the business is closed. Ensure that your Google Business Profile is updated to reflect any unique operating hours you have, whether seasonal, one-time only, or otherwise.

You may also write posts on Google My Business to share updates, news about your products, special offers, and upcoming events.

To make changes to the information about your company:

At any point, you can navigate back to the dashboard on business.google.com to make changes. Additionally, you can modify your company information straight from within Google Search or Google Maps. Simply search the name of your company using any one of these methods to gain access to the editing panel.

To write postings for Google My Business and share them with others:

• To access the posts, click the Posts link in the left menu of the dashboard.
• Select the Create Post option.
• You can create an offer, information on what’s new, an event, or a product, but first, you must decide what kind of post you want to make. There is a variety of information to fill out for each post category.

Add unique characteristics and features.

You may have access to various additional capabilities depending on the category you select for your Google business account.

You can also add factual attributes to your profile, allowing you to provide additional information your clients might be interested in. If you own a store or restaurant, you might wish to publicize that it is accessible by wheelchair, has free Wi-Fi, or has outdoor seating. You might even mention that women own your business and welcome people who identify as LGBTQ+.

How to Add or Change Attributes:

• Click Info from the dashboard.
• Click Add Qualities under From the Business. Alternatively, if you’ve already entered some qualities and want to add more, click the pencil next to From the business.
• Scroll through all of the available options for your company, tick the relevant attributes, and then click Apply.

Include your products.

If you sell products, be sure that your Business Profile has an accurate inventory that is kept up to date. Your products have the potential to show up in Google Shopping in addition to being displayed on your profile itself.

You can manually add products to your Business Profile by doing the following:

• To add your first product, go to the dashboard, select Products from the left menu, then select Get Started from the drop-down menu that appears.

Run a retail shop in the United States of America, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, or Australia and use a barcode scanner to sell products with manufacturer barcodes. You can use Pointy to automatically upload your products to your shop Profile. Pointy is available to retailers in these countries.

What advantages does having a Google My Business Listing give a company?

Suppose you’re considering making a Google My Business page for your company. In that case, you may be curious about how it would fit into your larger marketing strategy and whether or not it would be worth your effort.

Creating a Google My Business account, in a nutshell, carries with it a plethora of potent and cost-saving benefits. Allow me to walk you through the six most important reasons your company must include this online profile in its marketing strategy.

Discovered at no cost within the Google search results.

Although content marketing initiatives (such as SEO blogging and improving the copy on your website pages) can help enhance your search visibility, claiming your business on Google My Business (GMB) is an even more effective strategy.

A Google business profile is a guaranteed approach to bring your company in front of high-value local clients, whether you’re trying to improve bookings, sales, or brand awareness. It doesn’t matter what your goal is; a Google business profile will get you there.

You may get your business listing in front of high-value web visitors if you put up your profile with the appropriate address, keywords, and business category. This listing has the potential to assist in enhancing your presence in local search results, thereby increasing the likelihood that prospective clients will become aware of your company.

A Google My Business listing, in contrast to paid social advertising or Google ads, is entirely free to use and provides your company’s name top placement in search engine results, which can boost attention, inquiries, and even sales.

Integrating Google Maps into your website is a great way to improve your local SEO.

Suppose you sell a product or service in a particular geographic region. In that case, you will want to make sure that information about your company is prominently displayed where potential buyers can see it.

Because of this, a Google My Business listing can be one of the most effective ways to communicate with warm leads at the point in time when they are prepared to make a purchase. Consider the following example:

Let’s imagine you need to acquire a new pair of running shoes, but you don’t have the time to wait for the delivery of an internet order. You open up Google and type “sneaker stores near me” or even “sportswear stores near me” as your search term.

Google will present you with a curated set of results from Google Maps if they determine that you are interested in visiting a physical store in your immediate vicinity. This makes it possible to quickly locate a store that satisfies all your requirements, including favorable customer ratings, convenient business hours, and proximity to your home.

If you optimize your Google My Business page, you can increase the likelihood that potential clients in your area will find your company when they search for items or services similar to those you provide. Your company will be at the top of the search results regardless of whether a potential client uses Google itself or another Google product like Google Maps to conduct their research.

Build social proof with evaluations from your customers on Google My Business.

We know that 68% of customers look at other customers’ internet reviews before trusting a company. When purchasing, 93% of customers admit that Internet evaluations influence them.

Because of this, the following advantage of having a GMB profile is your company’s ability to collect and display evaluations on a large scale. You may easily acquire the trust of prospective clients and assist them in moving more easily down the sales funnel if you amass many positive testimonials from your existing clientele and compile them into a stack.

What makes internet reviews so powerful is that they provide satisfied customers the opportunity to vouch for a business’s capabilities, knowledge, and quality of service using the customers’ own words. Even if using your marketing materials to reach new audiences might be helpful, nothing is more persuading than the words of a reputable customer from the outside.

In the end, prospective clients considering doing business with your company want to know whether or not other customers have had a favorable experience with your brand before they choose you. You may simplify the process of purchasing by putting the most prominent emphasis on the Google reviews that appear on your GMB listing.

Your consumers will have an easier time locating your actual shopfront if you provide this option.

As was noted earlier, the connectivity between your GMB listing and Google Maps is very effortless. This integration not only helps to improve the organic visibility of your company on Google but it also makes it less difficult for potential customers to find their way to your storefront.

Users may locate and rate the directions to your physical store with just one swipe using the directions feature on Google Maps. In addition, customers can view your operating hours and vital contact details (such as your website, email address, and phone number), making it much simpler for them to get in touch with you.

To increase the likelihood that new customers will associate with your brand favorably, make it simple for them to communicate with you and visit your physical location. It is essential to provide a seamless transition from physical to online experiences to convert consumers into paying customers.

Complete and total command over your internet presence on Google.

Companies (including yours) must play by the rules established by large technology companies on marketing platforms such as social media. Their algorithms decide who discovers your business and what impression they form of it based on that discovery.

But if your company has a Google My Business profile, you can decide in advance exactly what kind of encounter prospective customers will have with your company. You can provide every potential consumer with the finest experience possible with your company by displaying your contact information and keeping your hours of operation updated for specific special events or public holidays.

In addition, if you take the time to understand how to optimize your profile, you may increase the likelihood that information about your company will appear near the top of search results. This gives you the most potential to influence the purchasing decisions of people searching for products related to your brand and coming across it.

Acquire insightful knowledge regarding the behavior of your customers.

Did you realize that your Google My Business listing can provide you with some really valuable metrics and insights? You can delve into helpful statistics that are stored within your Google account. These statistics can give you a deeper insight into how well your listing performs in the organic search results.

Let’s go through some of the most important statistics and analytical points to keep in mind:

• Find out how many times your profile, images, and posts have been viewed by other users by clicking on the “Views” tab.
• Search Queries: finding out what keywords people are typing into search engines to find your company is a terrific marketing tool that may help boost your SEO approach.
• Check out which posts get the most engagement from website visitors by looking at the data.
• Find out the demographic information such as age, gender, and location of searchers who come across your GMB listing.
• Discover how many users are performing high-value actions, like visiting your website from your Google business listing, by analyzing the number of clicks on your website.

Final Thoughts

That’s all there is to it! There are numerous advantages to establishing a Google My Business listing for your business. Finally, this business’s profile assists you in increasing your organic search exposure, ensuring local searchers locate your business, and making it simple for potential customers to visit or contact your business.