If you’re trying to grow your business and attract more customers, local SEO can help. Using it boosts your chances of showing up in local search results, expanding brand trust and reaching new audiences. SEO for Google My Business can help your business stand out from the crowd and is a great way to increase traffic to your website.
How? It’s simple: use tactics that ensure people find you when they look for businesses like yours online. That’s where Google My Business comes in. It makes it easy for people to find you on Google Search and Maps, no matter what device they’re using.
Local SEO can be especially helpful if you run a brick-and-mortar shop or serve clients within a specific region. And with so many people searching online for businesses like yours, failing to optimize for local SEO means leaving money on the table. But if you use it correctly, local SEO can give your business an edge over the competition while helping customers find exactly what they need. The following are a few tips and tricks on how to SEO for Google My Business in 2022.
What is Google My Business?
Google My Business is a free tool that allows you to promote your business profile and business website on Google Search and Maps. You can connect with your customers through your Google My Business account, update your business profile, and see how customers are interacting with your business.
Google My Business is a free tool that lets companies manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps. By verifying and editing your business information, you can help customers find you and tell them more about your business.
How does local SEO boost business?
- Local SEO helps you attract more customers. If a customer finds out about you thanks to local SEO, they are far more likely to become a customer than if they were to find your business through other means.
- Local SEO helps you gain more brand trust. When customers find you through local SEO, they can immediately associate your name with the city or state in which your business is located—and if that city or state is nearby, this can make them feel like they know and can trust your business before having even given it a chance.
- Local SEO helps you gain website traffic from nearby customers. If potential customers search for businesses online and see yours come up first in their results, the chances of them clicking on it are increased. More website visitors equal more sales opportunities for your brand!
- Local SEO helps you beat the competition. If two businesses offer similar products or services and one has better local rankings than another, then it’s safe to assume that consumers will choose that one over its counterpart every time—especially if there’s not much else distinguishing between them aside from their search engine ranking status!
Create your GMB business profile
To get started, create a Google My Business (GMB) profile. Make sure you complete all sections, provide accurate contact information, select relevant business categories and attributes, and write a complete description of the business. These tips will help you get started:
Primary and secondary categories: Choose primary and secondary categories for your business that will be most beneficial to users searching for your products or services. For example, if you’re a digital marketing agency in New York, United States, choose “digital marketing agency” as your primary category, with “New York” as your secondary category.
Select attributes: Attributes can range from products to services offered to special promotions. The options available depend on the type of business selected when creating the listing. Therefore, it is important to select a relevant category, so users can find exactly what they need when searching Google. Use keywords in these descriptions to aid search engine optimization (SEO).
Complete all sections of Google My Business
Before your business shows up in Google search results, it needs to have a presence there. If you haven’t already, make sure to register yourself on Google My Business (GMB). You’ll need to be the owner of the business in order to do this.
Once registered and signed in, you’ll be able to add information about your business. This includes the address, phone number, Google map link, website URL, hours of operation, categories, and more. (You can upload photos, and videos as well.) If you don’t have a website for your business yet and don’t want one right now, no problem! GMB is free and can help with some SEO tasks, even if you are only using it as a public listing of your business’s name and contact info rather than an active blog or website.
Include your products and services
Once you’ve got your business name and categories all set, it’s time to actually add some content. The “products and services” section allows you to highlight the main products and services that your business offers. You can also include a price range if you choose to do so.
This information will appear to users in the Knowledge Graph, which is what appears when people search for your business name on Google. Listing out these details will help make sure that people know what you offer before they ever visit your actual website. Plus, this is another place where you can include those keywords that I mentioned earlier.
- Also read: SEO For Educational Websites & Institutions
Write a complete GMB description of the business
Adding a description to your Google My Business listing is a great way to tell people more about your business and persuade them to visit.
Use this space to describe your business in an engaging way, clearly state what you do, and include the main keywords that describe it. Explain any unique selling points of your company, then use high-quality images of your best work to show potential customers why they should choose you over the competition.
Finally, include a call-to-action in the description that entices visitors to take a specific action, like making a booking or calling you directly. You can also ask customers who are happy with your service or product to review your business on Google My Business—this will help build trust among potential customers and improve your local ranking.
Publish Google posts every week
You should publish a new post at least once a week. They should be under 300 words and include a link to either your website or one of your landing pages. They should also include a call to action, such as “learn more,” “book now,” or “buy tickets.” You can make the post text more noticeable with formatting like bolding and italics, but avoid using periods in all caps (for example, DON’T DO THIS) because it looks spammy.
If you have photos or videos that represent your business well, include them in the posts to help them stand out among other local businesses. Make sure they’re relevant to what your business is about and use them as an opportunity to incorporate any keywords you want customers searching for related businesses or services to find you with.
Respond to customer reviews
Responding to customer reviews is a critical part of maintaining your listings. Responding to every review, especially negative ones, shows potential customers that you care about their feedback and are interested in improving your business. When writing your responses, keep the following in mind:
Don’t just respond to positive reviews—acknowledge negative ones as well. Thank customers for leaving both positive and negative reviews, then use these insights to improve your services. If a former customer had a bad experience, explain what happened and how you plan to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
Use a template response for common negative reviews. For example, if you often receive complaints regarding slow service times at an establishment like a restaurant or bar, use a template response that addresses the issue (i.e., “We’re very sorry that our service times were so slow during this visit.”). This will prevent you from having to write the same response over and over again, but it will still, show customers that their feedback is valuable.
- Also read: SEO For Travel Websites | 10 Travel SEO Tips
Keep your GMB profile up-to-date
You should keep your GMB profile up-to-date at all times. Outdated information can lead to potential customers not trusting you and going with your competitors instead.
Your business information can be updated at any time, this is useful if you change your hours, add a new service, or move locations. Google updates its database once every two months, so there’s a chance that it will take that long for Google to show the current information about your business in search results.
In order to avoid this delay, use the Google My Business app on Android or iOS and make updates on the go!
Bottom line
In a nutshell, SEO is important for the success of local businesses. If you’re not doing well in search results, consumers won’t be able to find your business—and they’ll probably buy from your competitors instead. Luckily, Google My Business is a great tool for optimizing your local SEO and ensuring that more people can find your business online.
When it comes to performing well in search results, Google My Business listings have to be accurate and up-to-date. The best way to ensure that yours are complete is to follow Google’s guidelines on how to create and verify one of these pages—and if you haven’t done so already, now’s a good time to get started!
