It doesn’t matter how awesome your business website is; it is of no use if your target customers cannot find it. As a small business owner, you will want to integrate the right strategies to stand out in the niche and the ocean of internet content.
You will want to use the right SEO tools and strategies to help your customers find your business website when they search for you on Google. And the best way to start is by building your business profile on Google so that Google acknowledges your existence and helps you rank in Google Maps.
You can also immensely benefit from the right tools, including the GMB Audit tool, to track your local ranking factors and perform a health check of your Google Business Profile. Simply put – you will want to ensure that your target clients can find you when they search for relevant products and services on Google.
Read on to learn about GMB and how you, as a small business owner, can benefit from it.
Google My Business – An Overview
Many business owners create a Google Business Profile to gain more visibility. With the right tools, businesses can get editing and management capabilities over their business profile to leverage it in their favor as an efficient lead generation and SEO tool.
The underlying key to effectively managing your Google Business Profile is by creating a separate GMB account for your Google Business Profile. Through the GMB account, you can truly claim ownership of your Business Profile on Google.
The GMB tool enables you to optimize and manage your business profile on Google. Google also happens to be one of the most crucial business directory listings.
What is Google Business Profile about?
Simply put – by creating a Business Profile on Google, you will be adding your business to Google Maps. For this, Google will need the name of your business, the location, and the business category in which your business falls into.
Google will verify that the name of your business is unique and then proceed to create your Business Profile for its relevant location. Subsequently, your Google Business Profile will then open for Google users (your customers) to leave reviews, add pictures, and ask and respond to questions.
At this point, you might be wondering about where GMB comes in.
Here is the thing – a Business Profile on Google can exist on the search engine without you having a GMB account. However, without a Google My Business Account, you cannot manage the information along with the reviews that Google might collect over time.
On the other hand, by creating a Google My Business account, you can manage your business profile effectively. You can access your business profile on Google and customize and manage your profile and boost your overall Business Profile.
How to Use GMB for Local Marketing
As a small business owner, you will want to establish your GMB profile first and then use it as a tool to boost visibility and effectively improve your local marketing. You can leverage GMB in the following ways to make your business profile on Google listing a better tool for local marketing.
Interact with Customers
Of course, your potential customers can interact with your business in different ways, such as social media. However, when it comes to your business profile listing on Google, you can use Google My Business to respond to their queries and interact with them.
You can use GMB to respond to feedback and reviews. We recommend responding to all feedback – including the positive and negative ones. Furthermore, you can set up alerts and respond to questions right away through direct messaging.
You can also use GMB to post promotional pictures to your Business Profile, similarly to how you would have posted pictures on your social media platforms.
Shine the Spotlight on Your Business
Your generic Business Profile on Google has very limited information about your business. You can use your Google My Business account dashboard to provide the much-needed information your business needs to get highlighted in Google.
You can add your work hours to your profile along with a list of products, pricing, and other attributes that make your business unique and stand out from the crowd. Of course, you will use your GMB account to make edits as soon as changes arise.
You will want to focus on one thing – your Google Business Profile should offer a complete snapshot of your business – including the best potential features in the SERP.
Get Important Insight
You can use the GMB dashboard to gain crucial insights into your target audience and local SEO performance. The analytics tab of the GMB dashboard allows you to see the queries that your target customers are using on Google Search and Google Maps to find your Business Profile.
You also get an insight into the different actions that have been taken on your Google listing. You will learn how your pictures perform compared to other business profiles that fall in the same category as yours.
Boost Local SEO
You can use your GMB to perform local SEO and improve your overall visibility. By using a Google My Business profile and following the proper SEO checklist, you have a higher chance of ranking in the top three local results, which will eventually help your business get more business and generate more leads.
You can use the GMB dashboard to incorporate the right keywords in your Business Profile and perform other optimization to help your business rank in local search results. You will want to optimize your Google Business Profile by focusing on using target keywords, quality information, and authentic information.
