Simple, Free 1st Step to Include in Your Digital Marketing Plan

When you want to find local businesses, where do you start? If you’re like most people, you start with Google. Net Market Share estimates that Google has almost 75 percent of the market share of searches. Google understands that businesses want to be visible in searches and so they’ve provided one of the best digital marketing tools for local businesses.

What Is Google My Business?

Google My Business is a search engine marketing resource for business owners that gives you the opportunity to take charge of how your business is displayed throughout Google. You can access Google My Business (GMB) through your desktop or get the app on Google Play or the App Store. Using your Gmail account, you confirm your business details, such as hours of operation, contact information and location.

Google My Business guarantees the accuracy of your information across multiple platforms. You can even add parking information, pictures and payment options to give your customers information they are looking for without having to navigate to your website. Many third-party sites rely on information gathered from Google. When your business is listed in GMB, it enhances your organic search engine optimization efforts and your search visibility, particularly for business name searches and in maps listings.

Continue to Utilize Google My Business Tools & Information

After you’ve completed your Google My Business information, make it part of your local SEO efforts. This tool isn’t just a yellow pages listing with your contact information. Google makes it beneficial to use GMB as part of your search engine optimization and digital marking campaigns.

Use the Insights tool to get analytics about when and how people are finding you. Part of a good SEO strategy is to understand how people are searching for your business. You can use that information to improve your visibility and target specific demographics.

Google My Business makes it easy for customers to schedule services with you while they’re in the search engine results page (SERP). One of the best ways to convert potential customers is to make it easy for them to call your business, find your website, or know when you’re open and how to find you if you want traffic to a physical location.

Using Google My Business, you can also dialogue with customers who have left reviews. You can thank customers who have left a stellar review or talk to customers who’ve had a bad experience. This crucial component of your internet marketing campaign is much easier to manage when you have GMB.

While there’s clear benefits to maintaining your Google My Business listing, there’s another reason to make sure you’re keeping tabs on your information. Google allows users to suggest edits to your information, some of which you may not agree with. Consider the problems that might occur if an edit was published that changed your physical location, changed your hours of operation, or even caused your business to appear closed? Ensuring that at the very least you are getting notifications of any changes to your listing is essential to avoid such a potentially major issue.

Google Benefits From Your Information

Google keeps GMB free because it wants to provide accurate information and the best place to get that information is from you, the business owner or representative. Your GMB account is free. There’s no cost to sign up or to maintain your account. It does take time to manage your online presence, but GMB actually takes relatively little effort and the benefits far outweigh the time spent signing up.

The Best Bay Area Digital Marketing Company

SEO Pro and KO-Websites Inc. have been helping businesses get found and win business online for over 20 years. From social media marketing and reputation management to website design and search engine optimization, we have the expertise to boost your company’s online presence. In 2018, it is imperative that your business makes a good impression online, wherever your customers might be searching for you. Call us at 510.276.9904 to discuss a digital marketing plan that fits your budget and your goals.