Did you know that Google My Business for online business is like advertising with an unlimited budget.
Yet few business owners use it correctly or have even used it at all! If you have an online business then its likely you have already heard about Google My Business. If you haven’t head over to https://youtu.be/eEo2IbhCtMo
You are likely to be among the majority who haven’t had time to boost their online business yet by managing and optimising the GMB settings. So today I’m going to reveal 5 things you need to know For A SUCCESSFUL Online Business using Google My Business and other successful tips I’ve used to improve my customer’s websites.
These methods are handpicked amongst the many I currently used as if you follow them accurately, you will definitely see great improvements in traffic to your site. Often learning from those ranked ahead of you is the best place to start.
To jump to the relevant tip click below:
- Overview of Google My Business
- Video: Google My Business For Online Business
- Reverse engineering other online businesses
- Update Your Google My Business hours boost
- Extra photos for Traffic
- Get Quote Button for Business enquiries
- Actively Post on GMB
Overview of Google My Business
So my first tip is to understand the importance of reverse engineering. Using several methods, not only can you learn from your competitor, but you can find ways to improve on his methods and even improve to leap from them in the next results update. If you make the top 3 you will see a large influx of genuine enquiries.
“Focus on post consistency and update regularly events and photos and you won’t go far wrong.”
Zanet Design
Next Look as some ways to give boosts with a brand new trick released this week. Additionally, I show how photos can make a huge difference in being shown in the results. Next, the great use of the GMB app and how to use it for accepting quotes from prospective clients. All online businesses will want to learn the power of Publer for using bold as a heading in Google My business post.
Video: Google My Business For Online Business
Timestamps for my 5 SEO Tips You Haven’t Done Yet
- 0:00 Introduction to Online Business with GMB
- 1:34 Reverse engineering
- 10:12 Update hours
- 13:50 Photos for traffic
- 17:16 Get Quote Button
- 18:59 Actively Post
The timestamps enable you to go specifically to the part of the video that you want to look at. So just click on the time link and it will open up the relevant section.
Reverse engineering other online businesses
So what is reverse engineering? In business terms? It’s looking at your competitors online business and learning from them. Then doing it even better than they are. Ask yourself the following:
- What have they done well?
- What is bringing in the traffic?
- How have they been given such a boost in rankings?
- Who links to them?
- How fast is there site?
- Ask yourself why is the Google My Business listing ahead of mine?
- Could the online business benefit from a stronger page rank or domain authority on the website?
- Are there backlinks giving it the credibility?
- Is there Google My Business listing showing something different to mine?
You get the idea. This is where the tool from Ubersuggest will really be helpful.
In the video, I will show you how the ranking and analysis of your competitors work.
In the video, I took a look at a couple of random businesses in the Google Map results. The idea is to illustrate to you the Importance of reverse engineering. It’s easy to do and in this video, I do a live one to show you how I go about it. The point is it’s often what you can’t see that Google is getting its ranking from.
Update Your Google My Business hours boost
After COVID highlighted the need for having a reliable online business, Google My Business became an important factor for checking when shops were opening up. Additionally its often used as a way to check the opening times. Google wants customers to find a reliable way of locating business times. So recently it appears opening hours have become an important ranking factor.
Updating hours is a new metric to consider. Maybe an experiment from Google Businesses is currently receiving emails to update hours. When was the last time you updated your business hours?
Extra photos for Traffic
One place most business owners dont consider as a serious way to gain trffic is through good quality images. When did you last take a look at your Google My Business insights? Take a look at where your traffic is coming from and most of my clients see its not from the website or maps. It’s from images or photos.
A report in insights soon gives you the evidence needed. Research shows a strong link between Google My Business and customer visits. Don’t underestimate what insights are telling you and make sure you re leading your sector in images, photos and other useful details.
These images are even showing the standard search within the Google mobile results see this article for a full explanation of Google my business images showing in SERPs. Not only is Google showing them more often these days. But photos and videos bring in the most traffic by far because visitors like a visual appreciation of a product or service.
So what best practices do I recommend for adding images, photos and videos? All images can be Geo-tagged and use text on images where it makes sense. Finally always upload the mandatory images like logo, staff and the free 360-degree video.
Get Quote Button for Business enquiries
You may of received an email message asking for a quote. If not make sure you have this feature as it’s essential for online businesses. Make sure you download the app.
Then make sure you respond quickly to a quote. Google will have a trigger in a positive way if you respond. Adversely if you don’t reply promptly that will provide a negative ranking, so its good to benefit from this if you receive one.
Actively Post on GMB
The final tip for today is to post regularly and at least once a week. But additionally, post with some smart little tricks we have found.
The Publer mentioned in the video is here in a video about Social media traffic:
Google Social Media Tool – Discover One Tool For Tons More Traffic
Post with Keywords in mind
Make sure you go to insights again and analyse keywords. Then blog about products and services that customers would be looking for. Insights will help with this as will Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Then use these found keywords for more traffic in this video.
Keywords for Google My Business is one of the biggest areas of confusion
A recent Moz study suggested these stats
17.5% of businesses had an active post in the last 7 days
42.1% of businesses had previously made at least one post
40.4% have never created a post
Conclusion and What Next
In summary, you can boost local search results by implementing these 7 GMB suggestions on a regular basis. What you are trying to achieve is this:
So I hope these videos and suggestions have been really helpful. please let me know below if you have any questions.
What Next?
Do you need an experienced professional to manage your website and help your small business grow on the web?
If you want a pro to look after your Google My Business then send a message on my contact page and we can take a look at some great solutions together.