Supercharge your business listing with Google My Business
With local search and mobile search becoming more and more important, it’s vital that businesses get to grips with the new Google My Business platform.
Rolled out in 2014, the platform helps businesses get recognised online and makes it easy for potential customers to find you and get in touch. Your listing can include your contact details, opening times, photos of your business or products, website details and those all-important reviews – left by your happy customers.
The platform also makes finding your business easy, wherever it might be on the map. By pinpointing your business address on Google Maps, users will be able to walk, cycle or drive to your business with ease – by just using Google Maps.
What’s more, you can update your listing at any time and let Google do all the hard work of reaching your customers for you. They present your business information in an easy to navigate format whatever device your consumer may be using.
So what’s new?
- When carrying out a brand search, your local business listing could now show up on the right side of the search results – should you be located near the potential consumer using Google.
- Your business will now show up in the updated and improved Google Maps
- You can build a more comprehensive Google profile by gaining and managing reviews as well as adding pictures of your business to Google +
- Your listing links to other services such as your website, whilst integrating with webmaster tools and analytics
- Most importantly, the improved Local Search also ensures that you’ll be found on all devices – from mobiles, to tablet and desktop computers.
What consumers will see when they search your business type
When consumers search for your type of business, Google will list a number of businesses local to the user. A map, with the corresponding locations of those businesses will also appear on the search results. This will be displayed on the right hand side of desktop computers and above the listings on mobiles.
Users will also be able to see both the regular results – featuring your business – and the AdWord listings – meaning those who aren’t using AdWords will be at less of a disadvantage.
Get started with Google My Business
To get started with Google My Business, head to the Google business page
You’ll have to login with your Google account and get yourself verified. This process takes around two weeks. Once verified, your business listing will begin to show for local business searches that match your listing.
In order to rank highly amongst local businesses, consider the following:
- Put in your full, correct address
- Mention your location again in the description boxes
- Encourage consumers to leave you good reviews
- Stay active on Google + by sharing regular updates and interaction with others
- Make sure all your other local business listings give the same contact details and address. If there’s a lack of consistency, you may find your Google Business Listing doesn’t show at all!
If you’d like some professional help with your search marketing strategy get in touch with Michael Cain, our Director of Search. He’ll be more than happy to talk you though how 21 Digital can help to make your business more visible online.
