Improving your Google My Business ranking is essential because a high ranking means more visibility. It means your target market can easily find you online when they search for businesses in your industry. Especially for local businesses, a Google My Business (GMB) account is a vital tool to enhance your local search engine optimization (SEO). After creating such an account, here are the things you need to do to rank higher on search engine results pages:
1. Complete Your Google My Business Profile
The first thing you need to do is fill up your account with up-to-date, comprehensive, and accurate information. This data will appear when people come across your business, so a complete profile will help you stand out. And here are the essential parts you need to fill out:
- Description: Prioritize the information you enter here since the knowledge panel can only accommodate the first 250 characters. These characters are what Googly only displays, but your GMB allows you to enter 750 characters on your listing. And what you need to remember here is to highlight eye-catching information that’ll resonate with your business or brand. You must also add at least one keyword to improve search visibility, but don’t stuff it with search terms.
- Business Category: Connect with customers looking for your services by choosing the right category to describe your business. It is also one of the many factors that significantly impact your GMB ranking. That’s why it’s also best to use appropriate keywords when choosing a category. For instance, it may be best to add ‘Chinese Restaurant’ as your primary category instead of ‘Restaurant.’ This means becoming more specific rather than being too general.
- Name, Address, Phone Number (NAP): If you have a website, it’s best to use the name of your business listed on it. Then, you should pin the accurate location of your business on GMB. Lastly, your contact number will help customers to reach you easily. These essentials in your listing enable your potential customers to click your profile.
- Others: The other information you can add to your profile such as availability, hours of operation, and website URL. Take advantage of such to make you more visible and reachable to your customers.
2. Posts on Google My Business may be automated.
GMB profiles are similar to social media profiles in that they demand content or postings. However, you don’t have to do it manually. Hire local SEO services to assist you in managing your postings or use social media automation tools to automate them. When you engage local SEO services, they’ll develop relevant postings to assist your listing rank higher.
Meanwhile, you may manage your material with a social media automation tool. You may, for example, use a shared calendar to plan your postings. For all sorts of GMB posts, it involves adding call-to-action buttons and pictures. Because the posting will be automatic when you schedule them, you may do it once a week.
3. Include photos or videos in your listing
To advertise your firm, you need more than just vital facts. You should also provide virtual tours, videos, and photographs to demonstrate your services or goods. This helps clients get a glimpse inside your company, so choose enticing photographs or videos.
Customers are more likely to visit your website or contact you to take advantage of your goods or services if you pique their interest in your company. It’s also a good idea if past customers post images of your company, and this feature will be accessible after your listing has been confirmed. Consequently, when Google search results pages promote your company, they’ll also show the most popular videos or photographs.
You could also provide your brand’s cover picture or emblem to acquaint people with your company. However, photographs must be in JPG or PNG format between 10KB and 5MB in size.
4. Make Use Of Customer Reviews
Customer reviews are another ranking aspect that you may use to your advantage. Customer reviews encourage customers to trust your brand and boost your reputation. It might inspire more prospective customers to conduct business with you if former clients discuss their experiences with your company online.
Furthermore, react to all reviews to demonstrate that you respect each customer’s input. Thank them if they leave good remarks. If consumers provide bad feedback, you may apologize and rectify the problem. You should also respond to questions since this will help you seem more professional. You may accomplish this by going to your GMB profile, which is a significant feature of GMB that you should use.
5. Include Unique Characteristics and Features
Although specific features may vary depending on your industry, you might want to think about them to assist clients in understanding more about your company. Here are some examples of category-specific characteristics:
- Orders, reservations, and appointment bookings are examples of several sorts of buttons.
- In the United States, health insurance information is included in the list of services presented for service-oriented enterprises.
- Popular meals, dish photographs, and menu submissions are all available for bars and restaurants.
- Hotel amenities, check-in, check-out timings, highlights, sustainable policies, and hotel class ratings are all shown.
The greatest part is that you can select up to ten categories to guarantee that you are qualified for one of the advantages mentioned earlier. You may even add genuine features to your GMB profile for individual clients. Adding outside seats, free Wi-Fi, or wheelchair accessibility, for example, might entice more prospective consumers who need such services.
It’s also simple to change or add characteristics. Go to ‘Info’ and then to ‘Add Attributes’ under the ‘From the business’ area from your dashboard. Click the pencil beneath ‘From the business’ to change the qualities that have already been added. After checking all the qualities that apply to your company, click ‘Apply.’ Voila! You’re done, and prospective prospects can easily see your profile to see the traits you’ve provided.
The higher your Google My Business page ranks in search engine results pages, the more clients will be able to see what your company is all about. And, if you follow all of the above suggestions, you’ll have a better chance of appearing on the top pages of search results. It will take some time to do those things, but it will be worthwhile.
