Google Business Profile

One of the easiest ways to get more visibility for your business is by creating a Google Business Profile, which was formerly known as Google My Business. This is a free service that lets you manage how your company shows up in Google Search and Google Maps.

I’m sure you’ve seen the large profiles on the right-hand side of search results. They show everything a person would want to know about a business, such as the address, phone number, hours, and reviews. These profiles show up for local searches (like “pizza nearby”) or when a person searches for a specific company name. Given how prominently they appear, a Google Business Profile is a great way to get extra visibility for free.

How to Set up Your Google Business Profile

Setting up your profile is free and easy. All you need is a Google account.

Find or Create Your Business

Before you create a new profile, you should first check to see if one already exists for your business. If your company has been around for a few years, there’s a good chance it does. If a profile already exists, you can claim ownership of it. If not, you can create a new listing by following these simple steps:

• Enter the name of your business.
• Select the most relevant category.
• Add your location or delivery options.
• Add contact details like a phone number and website.

Claim Ownership

Once you’ve created your profile, Google needs to verify that you are the owner. The most common way to do this is with a postcard that is sent to your business address. The postcard will have a code on it that you can enter to verify your ownership.

Optimizing Your Google Business Profile

After you have verified your ownership, you have access to a lot of options to make your profile stand out. The more complete your profile is, the more useful it will be to customers.

Complete Your Profile

You should start with the basics. You can add a description of your business. It’s a good idea to include keywords that are relevant to your business. You can also add information that is relevant to your customers, such as payment methods, accessibility, and amenities. A platform Clickrank can help you with this. The platform’s AI Rewording Tool can help you write a unique and compelling description of your business that will get you more customers.

Add Opening Hours

Adding your opening hours is a simple but crucial step. It helps people know when they can visit your store, and it’s also used for voice search. If someone asks a smart speaker what time your business opens, it will use this data to give them an answer.

Add Photos

Photos are a prominent part of a Google Business Profile. It’s important to add high-quality photos of your logo, your store’s interior and exterior, and your products. Don’t be afraid to spend money on professional photos. They will often be the first impression people get of your business.

Get Customer Reviews

Nothing helps build trust like a five-star review. To get more reviews, you can encourage your customers to leave a review. You can’t remove a bad review, but you can flag a review as inappropriate, and you can always reply to a customer who’s left a review.

Monitoring Performance with Google Business Profile Insights

Google provides a lot of valuable information about how your profile performs in GMB Insights. In the profile, click on Insights to get more information. You can see:

• How customers search for your business: This shows you what type of search led to your profile being shown. It can be a direct search for your business name, a discovery search for a product category, or a branded search for a competitor.
• Where did customers find you? This shows you where people found your business, whether it was in Google Search or Google Maps.
• What actions did customers take? This shows you exactly how many times people clicked one of the actions, like “Call you” or “Visit Website.”

Managing multiple locations

If you have a business with multiple locations, you can add many different locations and see the insights for all of them separately or grouped together. You don’t need to manage all the locations manually; you can import a spreadsheet containing all the locations.