Top tips on how to optimise your Google My Business listing

Top tips on how to optimise your Google My Business listing

Last month we talked about the importance of local SEO as part of your overall website SEO. An essential part of this is your Google My Business (GMB) listing, which increases your visibility in organic rankings, particularly for searches by local customers.

Here, we offer some top tips on optimising your listing to give your site the best possible chance of ranking.

Complete the info

It’s an obvious one, but filling in all of the basic information that Google asks for is a first and important step. This will ensure your listing has all the basic, valuable data that helps customers to find out about your brand and services.

What most business owners don’t realise is that users – including your competitors – can edit the page via the ‘suggest an edit’ link that appears under the contact details. This means anyone can go in and make drastic changes that could potentially be published. With that in mind, it’s crucial to check your dashboard on a regular basis to ensure no random changes have been made.

Create posts

The GMB posts act as a kind of advert for your business that show up on your listing. You can add images and calls to action to these to make them more eye-catching. You can post about upcoming events or open days you’re holding, promote offers or share your latest blog post.

Use the booking button

If you have a service that takes bookings and uses integrated scheduling software, you can give customers the opportunity to book via your GMB listing. They don’t even have to leave the search results page to make an appointment! If you combine that with encouraging reviews on your listing, it could prove really valuable for drawing in new business.

Q&A

Many websites feature an FAQ section to help with SEO optimisation, but you can use your GMB listing to provide answers to questions too. The Questions & Answers feature allows you to answer questions that come directly from customers, as well as transfer some of the content from your website FAQ page onto your listing. Google also now sends out notifications to tell you when a question has been asked, enabling your to answer it immediately.

Upload photos and video content

Not all images and video that you upload to the web needs to be professionally shot. On your GMB listing, you can produce and upload videos or imagery taken on your smartphone and it still provides valuable content. If your establishment is a restaurant, spa or shop, for example, uploading lots of imagery to give people a feel for the physical location can be helpful to improving conversions. Your customers can also post photos to your GMB listing, so it’s worth monitoring these and encouraging customers to upload visual content as well as leaving reviews.

Don’t understand Google My Business? We can help with your SEO optimisation for your listing to increase your web traffic.

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