Google My Business For Local SEO
To build a successful company doesn’t necessarily mean you have a great building, friendly staff and amazing coffee. You can have all of this and still be unsuccessful. What you need is customers and you need to ensure your customers can find you. Now the traditional forms of marketing are slowly falling by the wayside as more marketing is required online. Making sure your digital marketing is on the cutting edge is a giant step forward to ensuring you have a steady stream of customers requiring your products or services. There are various strategies on how to market online, all of them are great, some are for paid traffic and other strategies use organic means to gain traffic on your website. One of the best ways to get noticed is to ensure you have a Google My Business account set up – and an absolute bonus, is that this is free.
Let’s start delving into exactly what Google My Business is and how you can register for it.
Firstly, What Exactly is Google My Business?
When you are searching for a business online, you’ll type it’s name into the search bar, and then a whole lot of search results pop up. If the company you are searching for has a Google My Business account, it’ll appear on the right hand side of your screen in a block with all the details of the company. These details include:
- Business Name
- Business Address
- Business Telephone Number
- Business Logo
- Photos of your business
- One-click buttons for directions, call and website
- Popular times
- Hours of Operation
- Reviews
Secondly, What is Required to Create a Google My Business Account?
To create a Google My Business account, you need a specific location, preferably something made out of brick, so you need a specific physical location. However, this isn’t always the case for some businesses, so there are other options. You could find a local post office that does not us “P.O. Box” in it’s address, as Google don’t recognise addresses that have “P.O. Box” in them. Another alternative is to find a local office building that has a virtual tenant program, you will probably need to pay for this though, and the amount will vary from one program to the next.
Thirdly, How to Register for Google My Business
Now this article will walk you through the steps you need to take to register for Google My Business.
- Get onto the Google My Business page
You can type Google My Business into the search engine on Google, when the results come up, select the one that will take you to the page. Once you are on the Google My Business page, click on the green button in the top right hand corner of your screen that says “Start Now”.
- Fill in your details
You will be taken to a page that has a map on it. In the top left hand corner is a block where you can fill in all your business information. Once you have filled in all your business information, you can click the blue “Continue” button at the bottom of the block. Here you will verify your business information. Make sure that it is all 100% correct. Also remember to tick the box that says you agree to the Terms of Service, and then click “Continue”.
- Verify your business address
Google will now create your Google My Business account and profile. You will now be asked to verify your business address so that Google can send you a verification postcard. Once you have received your postcard, and your address has been verified, you can access your Google My Business dashboard.
Once you have access to your dashboard, you will be able to add your company photos and logo, as well as be able to edit your company info. It’ll also be a good idea to start asking clients for reviews as this will help with organic SEO. View the Kaomi Marketing Google My Business page as an example of a completed business page.
Setting up a Google My Business account may be a bit of a schlep, but the work you put in to setting it up is worth it. You’ll start seeing that more and more clients are able to find you and this can only benefit your business.