What Is Google My Business And How Can It Help My Business?

Nowadays, businesses rely on setting up their Google Business Listings (typically known as Business Profile) to increase Google visibility.

However, if you are a business owner, you might not realize that creating a Business Profile does not necessarily provide complete control.

You must have editing and management skills if you want your Google Business Profile to work for you as a lead generation and local SEO tool.

So how can you manage your Google Business Profile? The answer is quite simple; when you create your Business Profile, create a free Google My Business Account too.

What Is A Google My Business Account?

Simply put, the Google My Business account is your virtual phonebook. Not only will it increase your business's visibility on Google, but your online directory on Google My Business will help you reach out to prospects who otherwise would not have been able to find you.

It is a free tool that displays all your business listings alongside related local businesses whenever anyone searches your company's name or any related term.

Furthermore, it displays business information on a single screen for your prospects. This includes your:

• Website
• Phone number
• Review ratings
• Business hours
• Address

How Google My Business Can Help You

Owing to today's technology, promoting your services or products is now much easier and faster. According to a survey, 50% of mobile phone users who use it for local searches visit that store.

With the fact that almost everybody uses a smartphone these days, can you picture the potential sales you can reach just via Google My Business and organic search?

Creating your Google My Business account is the first step; to utilize it completely, you must verify and optimize it properly.

But what else can setting up your GMB give your business? Here are some ways GMB will help your business:

1. Local Pack Listings And Maps Appearance
2. High Visibility
3. Information At A Glance
4. Allows For Business Reviews
5. Improves Local SEO
6. Increase Sales
7. Provides Insights

Local Pack Listings And Maps Appearance

Have you ever noticed the list of businesses names that appear on the top of the page when you search Google?

This is known as the Local Pack, and here are the two critical reasons why you should pay the utmost attention to it:

High Visibility

Local Pack houses a significant portion on the first page of Google search results, and it is the first thing that will pop up when anyone types their query.

Information At A Glance

Local Pack is essentially a SERP (Search Engine Results Page) that shows places related to your search. Furthermore, it also has some relevant information that your prospective customer might want to access, such as:

• The location of your business
• Its contact number in case someone has further questions, or they want to book an appointment/reservation
• Your store hours
• Your business' star rating. It is a handy feature for both your customers and the business

According to a survey, Google My Business continues to be the greatest driver of local search engine optimization success.

Allows For Business Reviews

As a business owner, you must never take the power of your customers' reviews lightly, especially when it comes to on-page SEO rankings.

Additionally, a study by a renowned search engine marketing expert says that online reviews make up around 10% of how various search engines rank results.

Therefore, if you want to increase the visibility of your business in Google search results, using Google My Business, you must make it easy for the customers to leave your business positive feedback.

Here are some other reasons why you would want your customers to leave reviews:

Improves Local SEO

Most of us are dependent on reviews while making a purchase decision. These small portions of text prove customers who were not paid to promote the service or product.

That is why people feel that reviews are more credible, and most of us tend to believe what they say.

Nowadays, more and more customers are going through customer reviews before selecting a local business.

Since people are naturally inclined to read reviews, the search engines use them to rank results for your business.

So, if you are an SEO expert, you can use this Google My Business feature to your benefit. However, if you need help, you can also hire local SEO marketing services to improve your business' visibility.

Increase Sales

Positive reviews matter a lot. Not only do they improve your local SEO ranking, but they also promote your products or services for free.

If a product has multiple positive reviews, it is more likely that customers will try out that product. The more positive reviews you have, the higher your chances of increasing sales by generating leads will be.

Reviews also provide you a glimpse of how your customers view your brand. It provides insight on how you can improve your products or services, what you should keep, and what you must change.

Whether it is a good or bad review, it will help you know what your clients think.

Provides Insights

Google My Business is an excellent tool for your business. It promotes your service or product and also helps you understand your market. But, you might be thinking, how is this possible?

Well, GMB is equipped with exceptional features which provide insights on specific areas to help you create strategies and make effective decisions.

It also helps you access insights and statistics, which help you understand where your target audience is coming from.

Views

It shows the number of views your business profile, posts, and photos is getting. This is very important to understand your campaign's effectiveness, whether it is going well and getting the proper attention or it is not working for your business.

Search Query

Google My Business generates a report to understand and learn how your customers reached your business.

It shows the search trends by using keywords input. Therefore, knowing the relevant keywords for your online presence will boost traffic considerably.

In addition, you can search through local SEO packages from various services to generate leads.

Engagement

This shows how the audience is interacting with the posts on your business page. It offers you the posts they share and the comments they leave, giving you an idea of the material that will work for your business.

Audience

GMB also carries a section in which you can find profile summaries of people following you. It helps you check gender, age groups, and even the countries they reside. All these features are helpful when you are building your campaign.

Website Link Clicks

Google My Business also shows the number of clicks you have on your website. Knowing these stats and quantifying that information will help you make practical strategies.

So take some time to study the numbers to:

• Improve your website traffic
• Boost sales
• Increase audience engagement

Conclusion

Google My Business has made it easy to employ local search engine optimization techniques for various businesses and startups.

It helps them promote their services and products online by improving search engine results and increasing visibility.

So help your business today by reaching out to Epitome Digital Marketing, LLC. They have all the solutions to help you scale and find convertible leads; go through our list of services and see how we can help you!