Google My Business or GMB for short, is a free tool available to businesses of all sizes to manage their presence across different Google services. For that reason, your business’s GMB listing is an essential part of showing up in Google Maps and Google Search results pages as well as being leveraged as part of your Google Ads local campaign. In addition, Google My Business has some added features that can enhance your GMB listing and helps increase your rank in local searches. To take full advantage of this free tool, take a look at these different ways to optimize your business’s GMB listing in 2021.
Creating a business profile with comprehensive, accurate, and updated information will be your first step to optimizing your GMB page. Therefore, you need to make sure to fill out all the necessary fields to complete your Google My Business Listing including:
- Business name
- Phone number
- Address
- Website Category
- Description
- Working hours
- Questions and Answers
- Photos
When you’re done completing all the information that Google asks for, it will be much easier for the potential customers to find and contact your business. Additionally, if you make your listing complete, you’ll have more of a chance to be recognized by Google and rank your business in the search engine results.
The Google Posts Section is one of the features of Google My Business Profile that allows you to engage with prospective patients directly in Google search engine results pages (SERPs) and on Google Maps. Through this section, you can post anything related to your business such as your upcoming events, news announcements, blog articles, promotions, holiday messages, staff announcements and so on. Most people evaluate businesses online based on their recent posts. So that being said, you need to make sure that you’re only posting relevant, high quality, and useful content on your GMB account.
Your category selection is essential and can help Google decide which searches your local listing belongs to. You have to select from the list of available categories since you can’t create your own category. You may also add in secondary categories based on the services that you offer.
Certainly, image optimization is the most inexpensive way to get more mileage from your GMB listing. According to Google, businesses with images tend to get 42% more requests for directions to their offices and 35% more clicks to their websites compared to those businesses without photos. You can use high-quality images to give potential customers a glance of what they can expect from your business. For instance, you can add pictures of your business logo, team, office, and anything that can effectively showcase your business. Creating a 360-view interactive tour of your practice for potential customers is also a plus.
