Want to improve your local SEO? It’s time to take a look at Google My Business!
We will see in this article the procedure to optimize the referencing of your GMB profile.

To optimize your Google My Business, the 7 key steps are:

1. The creation and validation of your account,
2. Registration of your name,
3. Adding as much information as possible about your business,
4. Attention to customer reviews,
5. The use of the right keywords,
6. The work of your online reputation,
7. Use all GMB features to get the most out of it!

Google My Business: What is it?

Google My Business is a free tool offered by Google for professionals. It allows you to create an information sheet to highlight a local establishment. This Google My Business listing provides its owner with a lot of information about the company: address, contact details, services, etc. The Google My Business listing is included in the Google results pages as well as in Google Maps.

Why own a Google My Business?

Owning a Google My Business will give you the best possible odds if your business targets Internet users who are close to you. In short, having a My Business listing improves your local SEO.

GMB’s main objective is to promote local businesses, which corresponds to a geographic request.
This can include words such as the name of a region, a city, a district, or direct keywords implying proximity such as “near me”.
Google also knows that some searches necessarily include a notion of proximity. This is the case for searches that are a priori very generic such as “tapas restaurant”, “gym”, or even “hairdressing salon” for example. The search engine will understand that the user is looking for a place and will use geolocation to offer him, via Google Maps and via the Google My Business page, places close to him that may be of interest to him.

Google My Business, however, is not suitable for all businesses! As we specify, the primary function of this tool is to provide information on a local scale. If you offer an online-only service, Google My Business will be of little use to you.

Referencing criteria

The positioning of a Google My Business listing depends on several criteria:

• The relevance of the profile.
  It depends on the query typed by the Internet user. Google will look for words used or synonyms in the information you provide (title, description, reviews, etc.).
• The geographical proximity between the position of the Internet user and the address on the card.
• The importance of the business.
  It is about the notoriety of an online establishment. The authority of the indicated website is essential. The more other sites talk about you, the more important Google will think you are. The number of reviews and the score assigned are also part of the referencing criteria.

Optimize the referencing of your Google My Business page

If you want to improve your local SEO by having a well-positioned My Business listing, you need to optimize it as much as possible.
Here are the SEO agency tips to properly reference your listing.

First step: create your GMB profile

To optimize the referencing of your Google My Business listing, you must, of course, have a Google My Business listing!
For that, nothing very complicated. 2 cases may exist.

1. The My Business profile for your company exists, but you do not have access to it. It may happen that a card has already been created to represent your company. This happens, for example, if Internet users have directly provided information about your company or if you have taken over an already existing company.
   If you do not know who created the form, you will need to claim ownership of the business profile on Google.
   If you know the owner, contact them and ask them to give you access.
2. No GMB record exists for your business, and you must create one.
   To access Google My Business, go to the official website.
   You can then log into the platform using your Gmail account and start creating and managing the Google account for your business.
   The tool will allow you to give a lot of information about your business.
   Pay attention to the address you provide. Google wants to ensure that you are there where you indicate it (otherwise, it would be too easy!) and generally sends a verification code via post to this address. To validate the creation of your My Business form, you will need to enter this code on GMB.

Other validation methods may be offered to you by Google, but sending a code by mail remains the most frequent.

All detailed steps are available here.

Add the correct business name.

The title of your My Business listing is the name of your business. Don’t try to be extravagant here: enter your company name.
It is under this name that you are known, it is under this name that you communicate, and it is this name that Google will find on the web.
You will often read that it is not recommended to add other words in the title of your GMB profile… We do not entirely agree.
Your company’s name must be the first thing that appears, but you can add a keyword describing your activity and your locality after the name.
For example, ufound is an SEO agency in Dubai, UAE.
We specify it in the title:

 

As we said above, Google will look for the keywords typed by the Internet user in your listing. You will be more likely to appear if you specify your core business and the city or district you are in here.

Provide as much information as possible

Don’t settle for the minimum, and give as much information as possible about your business. This makes life easier for Internet users and our friend Google to find out more about you. Keep in mind a straightforward thing: Google wants to deliver the best results to its users.
If you offer a very comprehensive listing that allows Internet users to find what they are looking for in less than a minute, you’ve won.

In the management area of ​​your Google My Business, you will see that you can add a lot of information. Don’t skimp on the details.

Items to fill in

Provide a detailed description of what you are offering while making sure to keep sentences short and precise.

Add your address, of course!

Give the possibility to contact you with your phone number and your email address.

Fill in your schedules, and make sure to update them if they change.

Add the opening days and times of special days such as public holidays, for example. A potential customer will check your Google listing to see if you’re open or not.

Choose the category of your activity carefully. It needs to represent what you do as well as possible.

Link your website by giving the URL address.

Indicate whether it is possible to visit you at your physical location.

List the services you offer. The administrator interface provides the possibility for many categories of activity. Enjoy it!

Add your opening date.

List your strengths. This is the opportunity to give arguments that differentiate you from your competitors. Do not hesitate to enter into your company’s values: eco-responsible, managed by women, short circuit, handmade products. These are all arguments that can work in your favor.

Upload photos and videos that showcase your business. The more the photos make you want to visit you or call on your services, the better!

If you have a Menu, add it.

If you sell products, insert a few, giving all the information that Google allows you to add.

Update your profile and provide information relating to current events, as was the case with Covid-19, for example.

Create posts. They allow you to give additional information about your business and share your news.

Take care of your customer relationship: pay attention to reviews.

Today what will make your strength and set you apart from the competition is your customer focus. It is essential to make sure you listen and always show yourself in an available position for your customers. Google has understood this well.
Google My Business allows Internet users to communicate with you and give an opinion about you. They can leave a comment, put stars from 1 to 5, and ask questions.
Please don’t underestimate the importance of customer reviews and take the time to review and respond to them. It seems that the number of studies and the frequency of them, their diversity, and your response are taken into account by Google to judge your quality – in addition to the average rating assigned to you, of course.

So do not hesitate to ask your customers to invite them to write what they thought of their experience. More than half of satisfied customers will take the step if you submit the idea to them, while only 1% of them will consider leaving a review for themselves.
Once the opinions have been collected, your role will now be to respond to them reactively. Whether the review is positive or negative, thank your client for taking the time to express his feelings and specify that his opinion is taken into account and helps you improve every day.
Take the opportunity to sprinkle your answers with some of your main keywords… 😉

Local SEO: think about keywords!

I’ve covered this before in this article, but it’s always good to remember the importance of keywords. Create a list of 5 keywords related to your core business and at least 3 related to your location. Local SEO is SEO! Google relies on the words typed or spoken by Internet users during their search to provide a result.
Do not hesitate to specify in your description, in your posts, and the answers to questions and opinions what you do and where you are.
You can even push the process as part of the description of your business by specifying the name of the street in which you are located.
In local referencing, as the name suggests, we insist on localization.
So highlight your location!

Work on your notoriety on the web.

Our final recommendation for optimizing your Google My Business is played outside of Google My Business.
It is your global notoriety on the web that comes into play here. The reviews your customers leave on your My Business listing are essential, but the quotes and reviews Google finds across the web count.
This is more commonly known as the authority of your website, which varies depending on the quality of your link profile.
Have we lost you? Please don’t panic; it’s very simple. The more other websites will discuss your business by linking to your website, the more Google will understand that you are essential. It’s like word of mouth but the Google version!
Be careful; however, the theme of the sites that talk about you must be related to your activity, and the notoriety and authority of these sites also come into account.
So make sure you work on your net linking and your digital communication holistically.
Google has access to a great deal of information, and it will use anything that can be useful to it to judge you and try to offer the best results to its users.

The price

To the question Google My Business, does it pay? The answer is no. This superb tool is offered by Google utterly free of charge.

Other features included

To take full advantage of your professional profile on My Business, explore the tool in depth. You can find important information there to optimize your local SEO presence.

This is, for example, the case with the statistics provided on the tool: how many times your listing appears, thanks to which keywords, who clicks on your website, your phone number, etc.

• GMB also makes it possible to create paid advertisements in a much more intuitive way than is the case with Google Ads, a tool that requires the expertise of SEA specialists.
• You can also activate the direct messages option on your profile. This messaging system will allow you to chat with Internet users live, like on Messenger or Whatsapp.
• You have the option of creating FAQs containing the most frequently asked questions by your customers.
• Finally, an online reservation system can be accessed directly from a dedicated button on your My Business page. Very practical for services requiring an appointment!

As you will have understood, you have every interest in working on the local referencing of your Google My Business listing if you want to have a chance against your competitors! Once you have completed it carefully, this tool will save you time and obtain better visibility locally on the web. You also have every interest in getting down to optimizing your Google My Business now! Watch out for the rise of a trend called “0% click”, which indicates that Internet users want to have access to as much information as possible about you in a minimum of time and clicks!

On your screen: it’s time to optimize your My Business listing!