A Google search is the first step for many a purchase journey – so you need to make sure your business is in the best position to be seen. A profile on Google My Business is easy to set up and allows you to provide accurate online business information, interact with your customers and attract new ones. It’s suitable for all types of businesses – from cafes to car rentals; hotels to retailers. What’s not to like?
Here’s our complete guide to setting up your Google My Business profile.
1. What is it?
Google My Business is a free tool that lets you manage how your local business appears across Google products, like Maps and Search.
It lets you display all your vital information on Google in a clear and SEO-friendly format. Verified businesses on Google are twice as likely to be considered reputable by users.
2. What can it do for you?
GMB has three main benefits:
a) You can maintain accurate information about your business online
– Tell Google your opening hours, website, phone number and location (a street address, service area or place marker, depending on your business)
– Use the mobile app to stay up to date with your online presence wherever you are
b) You can interact with customers
– Post photos of your business and its products and services
– Collect and respond to reviews from customers
c) You can attract new customers
– Improve your business’ exposure, so that new customers can find you
– Prove your trustworthiness with online reviews
– Point customers to your website
3. Is Google My Business for you?
If you own a business that has a customer facing location (in any of these countries), Google My Business is perfect for you. For larger businesses, Google My Business also offers a tool for managing lots of stores. You can find out more about bulk location management here.
4. How to set up GMB?
Here’s a quick video on how to set it up. It makes setting up (and editing) a Google My Business profile seem very easy:
5. Google reviews: why are they important and how can Reevoo help?
Google reviews are on an ‘open’ platform – which means that anyone can post a review of their experience on Google My Business. This is great in theory, but we’ve spoken before about the problems with open systems.
If you’re a client of Reevoo, we can now push your customer experience reviews from verified customers (i.e. the ones we’ve collected on your behalf) into this space for you. Having a good flow of reviews from a verified source (like Reevoo) will most probably leave you with more reviews, richer reviews and better scores.
Who wouldn’t want feedback about your business appearing on search pages?
We talk about the benefits of reviews all the time – but if you don’t believe us, check for yourself! Given GMB is a Google product, it’s been created to work in tandem with Google Analytics. This means measuring the impact of a GMB profile is much easier.
Why is it important to integrate Reevoo reviews with Google?
a) Reviews are often the first things consumers see when they Google your brand name or your store.
Having good quality reviews in this space leads to increased brand image and trustworthiness (read why here).
b) Protect your business from fake reviews
Google reviews are on an open platform so your business cannot protect itself against fake reviews. However, with Reevoo’s integration you can push reviews from verified purchasers to Google (FYI, here are six reasons you should opt for a closed review system rather than an open platform).
c) You can get reviews from a wider audience.
If you contact every customer for a review you get a more balanced spectrum of opinions from a more balanced spectrum of people (the really angry or really happy ones are the ones who are most likely to leave an unsolicited review). Google’s review system is a passive one, which means people have to log back in off their own bat to write a review.
d) You can stand out from the crowd
As with most Google searches, results with the best reviews will have a competitive advantage. Look at this example of a Google query for a local sweet shop – only three listings show up at first search, so competition for those spots is fierce.
These are called the ‘local pack results’, and are determined by a few factors – one of which is a fresh supply of reviews.
e) Reviews can help increase your local ranking
According to Google, having plenty of reviews, and a fair few good ones, will improve your business’s visibility in local searches and increase the likelihood of a potential customer visiting your business.
Google has also recently added a feature (for most industries) which enables users to filter by reviews in the local searches on desktop and on mobile.
Reviews, ratings or any other type of user-generated content is a great way to increase conversion. To make sure you do just that, get your business set up to have your customers’ content appearing at all stages of the buying journey.
This holds true for the start of their buying journey when potential customers are Googling your business and your Google My Business profile pops up.
