Higher rankings and more customers for local business (updated February 2022)

Your Google Business Profile is your secret and FREE TO USE weapon to drive more traffic to your site, increase your rankings and improve your conversions.

Looking at the most recent local search ranking factor surveys, your Google Business Profile is by far the most influential in getting your business to show in the Google Map Pack for Local Searches.

There are a number of features that determine your inclusion in this 3-pack but by far the most influential is your Google Business Profile.

A well optimised, regularly maintained GBP is by far one of the most powerful tools in your belt for driving traffic to your website, increasing conversions (sales & enquiries) and getting more business.

That said, just creating the profile and then forgetting about it, is not going to help much. There are many moving parts in a GBP listing and keeping it all ticking over and updated can be a headache, especially if you are strapped for time and busy keeping your business afloat.

That is why in this article, I am going to give you 7 Google My Business Maintenance Tasks to help you convert visitors into customers and to give you the best chance of having your business featured in the Google Map Pack.

• Invite reviews
  Ask for reviews from your customers the same day you do business with them or deliver a project or product. This is the best time to do that, while it is still fresh in their minds.
  One of way of doing this is to send them a text message with a default link to your Google Business Profile review page. Unlike emails, 98% of people open their text messages so this increases your chances tremendously. The link will allow your customer to leave a review with only a few clicks. Click here to find out how to find your Google Business Profile review link.
  
  
• Respond to all reviews
  Answer all reviews, positive AND negative. This helps to build trust and is also recommended by Google who state: “it shows you value your customers and their feedback”.
  
  
• Keywords in reviews
  Encourage customers to leave a review that includes the keywords you want to be found for. Doing this via a text message may be difficult, so consider sending this by email. You can add some suggestions for your customers on what to write and thereby guide them to use some of your keywords.
  Click here to sign up and download my FREE Review Email Template today!

The Question & Answer feature of your Google Business Profile is one of its more undervalued elements. The FAQs will not directly help your ranking, but as anyone can add a question and anyone can provide an answer, it is important that you keep an eye on it daily. Sometimes, visitors feel this is the best way to get in touch with the business and the fact you haven’t answered their question, could be there for everyone to see.

There is also a little-known benefit of this feature. Any FAQ can be ‘liked’ by clicking the 'thumbs-up' beside it. The first FAQ that gets 3 likes will show up in your Google Business Profile listing panel. If you have more than 1 FAQ with 3 likes, the one with the most likes will show up. The good news is, you can ‘like’ FAQs yourself and ask friends and family to do the same!

Even better is that you can seed the Q&A feature with your own FAQs, thereby giving visitors the opportunity to learn more about your business and encouraging them to click through to your website.

Fun fact: Google Posts first appeared in January 2016 and were initially only for use by US presidential candidates! 

Now, however, they are available to all business owners and while they do not have any direct bearing on rankings, your posts encourage interaction from your visitors (for example by linking the post to a page on your site or a product in your e-shop), which sends engagement signals to Google and that, in turn, may help your listing rank better overall.

Your posts will appear at the bottom of your panel on a desktop and in the ‘Update’ section of your profile on mobile.

The life span of a post is 7 days so you should consider publishing a new post every week.

Just like Google posts, photos and videos encourage interaction from visitors, resulting in sending engagement signals to Google. So, you should consider adding photos and videos on a regular basis.

According to Google, “Businesses that add photos to their business profiles receive 42% more requests for directions on Google maps, and 35% more clicks through to their website than business that don’t”.

Get into the habit of taking images that best represent your business or product and add these regularly. Do NOT use stock photos from free sites as these will be removed. 

If you keep up the daily and weekly routines, over time, your business will become more visible to potential clients and drive more traffic to your site. But how do you know that your efforts are working? Well, this should be the third of your weekly routines: track your progress.

Log into your Google Business Profile Manager and from the menu click on ‘Insights’. Here you have access to some amazing data that will show you how your listing is doing over time.

February 2022: Please note that Google is planning to move 'Insights' to a new look report.

Unfortunately, there are many unscrupulous people and business owners out there who will use a number of spamming techniques to try and rank above genuine business owners in the Google map pack for certain keywords or locations. These techniques can include:

• Creating a fake listing. A business can do this to try and increase their range to areas where they do not have a legitimate location.
• Business title keyword spamming. This is the adding of keywords to the business title to try and rank for those keywords. This is against Google guidelines.
• Fake reviews. This one is pretty self-explanatory and in this case, we’re thinking about fake 4 and 5-star reviews designed to increase a business’ ranking.
  It can be hard to spot these and although it's not clear cut, reviewers who leave feedback that could have been written by anyone are more likely to be fake than those that go into details.
  Companies that pay for fake reviews usually use some kind of template and that can be relatively easy to spot. The reviews usually contain lots of keywords, repeating the company name multiple times, and often end with a sign off such as 'thanks!'. If the review is quite obviously a copy and paste, and really doesn't seem authentic, it probably isn't.

So, what can you do? Once a month or so, do a Google search from your location using the keywords you want to rank for and add ‘near me’. Have a look at the results and if you think any of the businesses that rank above you are doing so because of spamming techniques, such as title keyword spamming, you can try and update the offending listing yourself. If the owner of the listing does not respond to the suggested edit, chances are the listing will automatically be updated by Google. Alternatively, report the business using the Google Redressal Form. 

The categories associated with your business listing is one of the most influential ranking factors in Google maps. Google adds new categories from time to time so it is a good habit to get into to check if any new categories have become available that can be used for your business.