Honing in on local visibility can be a challenge for small retail and service based business owners. Social media isn’t guaranteed to generate viable local followers, so what are your options?
Outside of networking and joining your local Chamber or business groups, a Google My Business profile is one tool that many local businesses use to market themselves.
The problem? Most business owners run through the initial setup and then never touch it again. Here are 4 Google My Business page features to leverage and optimize if you want to grow your local visibility.
Upload Your Offerings To The Products Section
Yes, even if you’re a service-based business owner, you need to be using the products section. This is not an e-commerce integration – you can essentially personalize this space to fit your needs. Think services, digital downloads, course and membership offerings, 1:1 mentorship, etc. The possibilities here are truly endless.
Pro tip: do keyword research ahead of time and use target keywords in your product heading and description for added search visibility.
Share Relevant Photos On Your Profile
Show, don’t tell, and don’t simply rely on your customers to upload their own photos.
Imagery is a powerful marketing tool and posting your own images can help tell the story of your business. You can upload before and after shots, brand photos that showcase what you offer, images of physical or digital products you sell – anything that will communicate what you do and capture attention.
Post Keyword-Rich Updates
The updates section is highly underused and underrated by most businesses.
Think of this like Google’s own social media platform. You can use it to share news, drive traffic to blog articles, showcase case studies, share promotions and events, etc. This section creates another opportunity to use keyword-rich descriptions to further support search visibility.
You can even tailor the button to reflect the style of content and the goal that you’re aiming to achieve.
Pro tip: create UTMs for any links shared to the updates section. UTMs are trackable links that will show in your Google Analytics and allow you to measure the success of the updates you share.
Ask For Reviews On Your Google My Business Profile
Reviews are essential to your GMB page visibility and ranking. The more reviews you have and the higher your rating score, the more likely you are to show above other businesses and garner top spot in search results, both on Google and in Google Maps.
It’s common for many local businesses to ask for reviews on Facebook or other platforms, however, it’s beneficial to keep one source of truth for maximum impact. You can always share these reviews on your various social media pages as posts to showcase your business while still centralizing where you accept reviews.
Pro tip: Create a process that makes it second nature for you to send your review link to clients so that you always have five-star reviews flooding in. Bonus points if you automate this.
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While you’re updating the sections noted above, double check that your website, phone number, hours, address and company description are accurate – you wouldn’t believe how many businesses have outdated information on their Google My Business pages.