8 easy way to Optimize Your Google My Business Listing

Google My Business (GMB) - the free tool from Google that helps business people manage the online presence of their brand across the search engine. The growing portfolio of GMB offers the greatest impact for brands expecting local exposure. Moreover, GMB listing can improve your rankings in search results

Here are the 8 steps to optimize your GMB:

1. First things first: Set up your Google Business Listing (If not):

If you haven’t set up the GMB listing, do that right away. While setting up make sure that all the information you’re providing is accurate and complete the profile as possible.

Steps to set up a listing:

• Visit Google My Business Page

• You can see ‘Start Now’ in the upper left corner of the page. Click on it

• Fill in every relevant column there

2. Choose a ‘right’ category.

Google decides when to show your listings when people search for things based on the category you have selected in Google business listings. You can’t create your own and you should select from the available categories. If any of those categories doesn’t describe what your business is, select one that still describes your business accurately.

3. Load high-resolution images with quality:

Photos help your listing to stand out and explains your business more specific to the potential customers. If you are selling physical products, make sure to use high-quality images that give your business a good look. According to Google, listings with a virtual tour and photos will generate twice as much interest as those without them. Consider adding a 360-view tour of your business for customers.

4. Make sure your information matches everywhere else:

Google’s algorithm verifies the legitimacy of a listing with the help of a consistency of your listings across different websites. Your address and any other information should be the same each time you enter it somewhere. You may miss little differences. Say, for example, you wrote the Road part of the street name one time and shortened it to Rd another time. This will degrade your website.

5. Use a local number:

Like maintaining the consistency of your listings across different platform is important, it is equally important to use a phone number with a local area code. That gives an extra hint to Google that you are actually local. Make sure that the number you’re using for GMB should be displayed somewhere on your website’s homepage or whatever landing page you link from Google listings.

6. Avoid penalty-inducing offences:

Optimizing your website or local listing in order to rank higher in search results might incur a penalty, if not doing it right. Google suspends business listings for a range of offences. Getting suspended is confusing, stressful and bad for business, so it’s best to avoid doing anything that brings you a downfall from Google. I always prefer the best digital marketing companies in Bangalore to optimize my website. Those companies have a proven track record of optimizing the site with fair practises which in turn increase the domain authority of websites.

Know Google’s guidelines for Google My Business listings and you will get a full understanding of what not to do. Some of the main things to avoid are:

• Trying to do keyword stuffing into your business name field.

• Having multiple local listings for the same business location.

• Using the address that isn’t a physical storefront or office space where you meet with customers.

7. Encourage reviews:

You might have noticed that the local businesses listed in the map snippet of a local search usually have star ratings. Google provides the most useful information to its users and users want to find the nearby business that seems the best. High star ratings can improve the search appearance of your listings. Ask your happy customer to take time to give you a review on Google.

8. Your website and content should be optimized for Google search:

A website which are having high domain authority (DA) will get a good reward in Google. So optimize your local listings without excluding the optimization of your website. To optimize the content, it is always a better idea to hire a freelancer or any of the best digital marketing companies. With years of experience and the domain expertise, they can frame the best content strategy that works out well in terms of SEO.

Ensure the below said points:

• Add relevant keywords to the meta tags and copy on each page

• Include schema markup to your website.

• Frame a content strategy with a local focus.

• Look for local linking opportunities.

Local SEO takes some time to work, but it can pay off in a big. You want to be easy to find when someone in your city is searching for what you sell, and Google is the best way to get in front of your customers at the moment your potential customer is looking for. Don’t miss the opportunity by because you didn’t take the time to properly optimize your Google Business listing!

Appiness Interactive, as a Digital marketing company offers cutting edge techniques for Social Media, Web designing, Mobile App development and Seo in Bangalore.