How To Improve Your Local Business With Google My Business.

In order to improve your sales, there is no one way to rank properly as a local business on Google My Business, instead, there are many ways to it. Just like most SEO-related issues, you require a combination of different tactics to succeed. One of these tactics in solving the local SEO puzzle is Google My Business, a dashboard for managing listings. But what is it exactly and why is it so important for local SEO?

Every business owner with a website is trying to find ways to get noticed within the search results. Now, the Coronavirus pandemic has made it essential to provide your customers with an up-to-date Google profile for your business. The reason is simple; many businesses have been forced to close down temporarily to curtail the spread of the virus. So it is expected that you let your customers know how this affects your business by managing your Google My Business correctly. Always keep your profile updated; let people understand changes in opening hours, or if you are going to be a bit slower in shipping out your products.

Use Google Posts to notify customers of updates. Furthermore, depending on your current operation, you might need to mark your business as ‘temporarily closed’, and as soon as changes are made on your Google My Business profile, they automatically get updated across Google and Google Maps. Getting noticed on search engines is one of the things every business owner with a website is looking to achieve. You already know that improving your site’s Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can help to extend traffic, but where do you have to start?

In this blog post, we’ll elaborate on how Google My Business works, then discuss how you can optimise your site’s profile in three simple steps. Let’s get started!

Google My Business

Google My Business is a free tool that helps business owners manage their online presence across Google search engine. Once you’ve claimed your listing, a Google Maps location will synchronize with the search engine to make your business easier to find.

How It Works

Google My Business uses many alternative factors to rank business listings. Three of the important ones are relevance, distance, and prominence; we will take a glance at each further down the article so that you’ll have a more definite idea of what Google is searching for on your page.

Why Is Local SEO Important?

As mentioned above, implementing local SEO will aid your business to appear in local searches. Moreover, whether or not your company has a website, optimising for local search will offer users valuable information that guarantees your brand’s success on search engines.

Other advantages of local search optimisation include enhanced online visibility, it builds your online reputation and trust, drives targeted traffic, increases sales, grows your business

Google My Business Ranking Factors

 

Google My Business uses many factors to rank businesses. Here’s a highlight of the three most important ones:

Relevance

Relevance determines how well your business fits the search intent of the customer. Is your focus similar to what the customer needs? Are there adequate details about what values your company offers? Don’t be vague or ambiguous, be as clear as you can be about what solutions your company provides.

Distance

Distance could be a well-known factor for ranking local businesses. You can’t rank in a very local search for (Hotels in Victoria Island) after you have located your company in Lagos. The precise way Google determines which businesses to indicate during a local search is unknown, and it is pretty difficult to rank in a broad area. The different factors play a significant role still. It helps not just to mention that you are located in a particular area, but also to point it out by creating locally-oriented content around your business on your site. Google uses what’s known about the location of the searcher to present the most relevant local businesses to him/her.

Prominence

Prominence is all about the activity around your listing; this could be the number of reviews, events, local content, and more. It also helps if you are able to get a lot of quality links to your site. It’s somewhat hard to see what prominence means exactly, but one thing is sure: nobody likes dead profiles. You’ve got to keep it updated with new photos and manage your reviews. As earlier mentioned, this works in tandem with your site so make sure both listings align by also publishing local content.

Finally, Google My Business is an excellent tool for improving your business’ online presence. It is also a handy way to optimise how your company appears on search results, and supply potential customers with all the data they need upfront. To use Google My Business, follow these three simple steps:

• Claim your listing
• Add photos and information to your profile
• Manage your listing over time

Do you still have further questions bordering around Google My Business profile optimisation? Ask right away in the comment section below.