Want Local Customers FAST? 4 Key Steps to Google My Business Listing!
The very first step to getting on the Local Pack is to set up a Google My Business local listing account. To say that this is important would be an understatement. How you set up your account is EXTREMELY important! Find out how this connects with your social media Google+ page and your overall content marketing strategy to very quick blast to the top of the local pack.
Go for Google Local Listing Results
Several years ago, when I was starting in this industry, I wrote a series of articles on how to be found in Google local listings, and I thought it would be almost impossible to get the pages to rank because I was competing against other content creators in my own industry, experts in the very subject I was writing about.
If you’re new to digital marketing, you may think that creating content (pages, videos, articles) that show up in Google search is somehow this impossible and enormously expensive process, the purview of big corporations, news media conglomerates, and magicians. But the truth is that it’s not impossible, and in some cases relatively easy.
A few weeks after I published the articles, we got a call from a potential client who had read one of my articles. So, I did a Google search for the topic and was shocked to see it showing up number 1 in the search results. I felt like a rock star.
Since then, I’ve seen that it’s not impossible to get your business into Google search? In fact, if you’re executing key steps, those that have been proven to work, you should expect it. One of the most effective ways to do that is through Google local listings.
Does it Make Sense to be Found Locally?
Google knows, based on the location of your search, and the type of phrase that you’ve entered into the search box, whether you are looking for local, or more global results. Often it’s smart, even for companies with global aspirations, to rank for the local phrases first, and begin to draw traffic to their sites as they start the long process of trying to rank nationally.
What is a Google Business Local Listing?
When you search for a phrase in Google that suggests you may be looking for a local business, at the top of the page, under the ads, you will see three businesses show up under the local map. In the industry, we call this the local pack, map pack, or three-pack. There used to be seven results that often showed up, which is why it used to be called the Google 7 pack.
Now that there are only three businesses featured in the local map pack, it’s that much more competitive to show up on the first page. But again, if you follow some important steps, it’s not impossible. This is why working with a local listing specialist like myself is so important if your goal is to be found online.
Google Local Listings Get More Exposure to Customers than a Website
It’s likely that your Google Local Listing is getting far more visibility than your website. A local company that gets a few hundred visits a month to their website could have many thousands of potential customers seeing their information on Google.
Here’s an example of a chart you can see in the “Insights” section of your Google My Business Dashboard. This shows that this company had almost 20,000 people come into contact with their profile and contact info in a given time period.
Understand–most people don’t click on the website featured in a local listing. Most simply call the business directly. Approximately 25% of phone calls to businesses come directly from people finding the local Google listing and calling the phone number they see, rather than first accessing the website.
See this example of a company and the number of interactions they get through Google My Business. In this example about half simply call the company directly rather than viewing the website.
Get a 1st Page Rank for Your Target Market Right Away
I don’t know of any faster method to get a page 1 ranking than to set up your Google My Business account. Because showing in the top 3 local pack results means that you’re automatically at the top of the first search page. It may take months of hard-earned content marketing to get your website to show up on the first page, while Google local listing puts you there fairly quickly.
Google Gives Local Small Businesses a Huge Advantage
Google literally makes it easier for local businesses to jump to the front of the line, over bigger and perhaps more renowned competitors. It does take specialized knowledge to make this occur. I’ll cover some basics here. But if you’re really trying to get some local traffic to your website it would be very wise to consider working with a content marketing company to help you get the most out of your local listing campaign.
4 Things to Consider When Using Google My Business
I would point to four very important considerations if you want to maximize your efforts with Google My Business:
- Optimize your Google My Business profile
- Have a smart content marketing strategy for your website
- Add your company profile to the other important local listing sites, like Yelp.
- Get consistent, positive online reviews from your customers month after month.
1. Optimize Your Google My Business Profile?
What exactly do I mean by optimize? There are several key features to an optimized Google My Business profile.
Name, Address, Phone Number (NAP)
Your company information, like the name of your business, address, phone number, (NAP) as well as other key important contact information like your contact email, hours of operation, needs to be correct. This might seem like a no-brainer. In the old days, digital marketers really harped on this though, insisting that it be spelled correctly and exactly across all of your listings.
This is not as important anymore. The Google algorithm is pretty smart these days. If you spell your address with a South West on your website and then SW on the Google account, it’s probably not the end of the world. But I’m not about to tempt fate. As a best practice, we try to keep it consistent across the board.
Choose the Right Google My Business Categories
It’s vital that you set up your business in Google, choosing the right categories that fit your company the most perfectly. They often will give multiple category options, and you’ll want to choose as many as apply. You’ll want to choose the most relevant category as your primary category as this will show in your Google profile.
You then want to optimize your site for these keywords. Make sure that the primary keyword is set as a primary keyword phrase on the homepage of your website. Make sure it’s listed in the metadata, a set of the information entered into the backend of your page that doesn’t show directly on the page but provides important context to Google about the primary topic discussed on the page.
Make sure that there are pages focused around each additional category you’ve set up in Google My Business. Use interpage links, those that link pages within a site, with the important category keyword phrases featured in those links, to optimize your site around those important phrases.
Add links to your Google Local Listing to promote traffic from relevant content on the site to the listing. Invite users to see the reviews contained in your Google profile.
Other Important Information
Recently Google removed the description section of companies with new features, like labels.
Optimize your Website to Match Your Google Local Listing
Setting up your business profile on Google My Business is not just setting it up in their system. It also involves updating your website. I cannot stress this enough. Google looks at your site and verifies the information. If the information is inconsistent this can be a huge problem for you. Having a different address on your site that you enter into Google My Business can really hurt the likelihood of showing up in the map pack.
Your Location Matters
One of the biggest influencers on whether you show up in a Google Local Map Pack for a search phrase depends on your location. If the searcher is looking in Los Angeles, the closer your address is to the center of Los Angeles the better of an advantage you have.
So if your company headquarters is in some surrounding town in the middle of nowhere, you could have a problem. It might make sense to get an address in the center of the biggest city that you’re marketing to.
You have to be very careful how you go about getting an address for your business. Breaking Google’s terms of use can result in penalties that you don’t want, so you need to consult with an expert on this, making sure that you follow the rules, while also having an ideal address location for your target market. Believe it or not, but Google does not allow P.O. Boxes as valid addresses for businesses.
Choose the Right Service Area
When we set up Google listings we make sure that we set up your service area, adding each individual local city, town, and suburb that you want to be discovered. We go into Google Maps and actually analyze your location and then enter every single location manually. This is an example of the value you receive when you pay for a professional Google listing.
Add a lot of Images of Your Team to Google My Business
We’ve found that it’s very important to have well-taken images of your team at work and add them to both your site and to your listings, especially your Google listing. When people come across your profile they do look at the images. This is especially important if you’re in a service industry like contractors. Customers want to see the smiling faces of people that will be coming into their homes.
2. Have a Solid Content Marketing Strategy for Your Website
There is a direct relationship between the quality of the content on your website, and how it shows up in the local pack.
High-Quality Articles, Images, Videos, and Infographic on Your Website
We’ve definitely seen with our clients that the higher-quality sites perform better in the local pack. You must couple your local listing campaign with a content marketing strategy that adds useful, interesting, relevant, and consistent new pages to your site. It means exploring more advanced media options like YouTube videos and Infographics.
No Short-Cut to Providing Users Great Content
There’s no way to short-cut this. Google wants their search engine to link to high-quality content. This is how they provide value to their users. So if you want your company’s site to show up high in Google local search results, consistently over the long-term, whether in organic results or a local Map Pack, you have to play the game of providing users great information. Companies that accomplish this remain in the search results, and those that fail to do this disappear.
3. Add your Company Profile to the other Important Local Listing Sites, like Yelp.
Google doesn’t just look at your company information in Google My Business. They verify that information on many other sites, like Yelp, Facebook, Superpages, YP.com, and thousands of others.
Where should you start? It depends on the local area that you’re trying to rank in, and the industry. We have resources that allow us to determine the most important sites that you should be building your online presence on.
We like to focus on the citation sites that are industry-specific, and most relevant in your area. For example. Salt Lake City companies definitely want to have a well-crafted profile with lots of reviews on KSL.com. Contractors in the home construction and interior design world definitely want to have a superior process of building out their presence on Houzz, the most important home remodeling social network.
4. Get Consistent, Positive Online Reviews from your Customers Month-after-Month
What makes a Google Local Listing standout? It’s the reviews. And I’m not just speaking about Google reviews. All relevant reviews on citation sites help your Google listing. The words in these reviews give Google important clues as to which business to feature in the top 3, showing on the first page. If you want to make a Google Local Listing campaign effective, this may be the most important factor.
When I’m asked how many positive reviews that a company needs to get in Yelp, the answer to that is simple–more than your competitors. Some industries, like attorneys, often get a lot of online reviews, making it a highly competitive process. On the other hand, you may see that many of your competitors only have a handful, less than 10, making online review domination easier.
Regardless of the situation, the process of getting online reviews is simple: You must ask for them. You can’t just sit back and wait for your customers to give you feedback. The companies that have an organized method of asking for online reviews, where they ask before they provide the product or service, see the results.
Google My Business—Where To Start
Many small businesses under-use this basic tool that Google has given to them to promote their business. The purpose of Google My Business is not to game the system or manipulate customers into finding you. It’s simply a tool for communicating to your customers what your company does and providing useful information about your business.
If you do this well, and customers believe you to provide high-quality goods and services, and they give you high-quality reviews on Google+ and Yelp and the many other online review portals, then you can be a significant presence on the Google Map Pack.
Discuss with a digital marketing specialist TODAY your Content Marketing and Local Listing strategy and see how we can help you expand your company’s reputation locally.
Wade Mann, the author of this article, is an Internet Marketer at Holistic Web Presence.
