10 Steps To Optimize GMB Listing For Higher Rankings

Google has transformed the way search works. People can easily find what they're looking for without even having to visit the website.

To begin getting your business found better in Google Maps and regular Google Search, a secure place to start is Google My Business. So, create and claim your Google My Business listing ASAP!

But your job does not have to stop here! Do not commit the mistake of claiming a Google My Business listing, adding the bare minimum details, and then abandoning it. You need to optimize it!

Take a few minutes every day for Google My Business optimization and help your business appear in search even more frequently.

Businesses with a complete and accurate (optimized) Google My Business listing get 7x more clicks and are 2.7x more likely to be considered reputable.

Thus, when used correctly, GMB is a powerful tool that can increase your revenue and lead to improved customer loyalty. In this guide, I've listed down several different ways in which you could optimize your Google My Business page without much struggle. And here is the list of top Google review management software, in case you're concerned about reviews.

However, before we start, it’s important to know what are a few more reasons that make Google My Business a valuable tool to use.

Click here to download detailed infographic on optimizing your GMB listings.

What Benefits Do You Get By Using Google My Business?

• Increased visibility: When your GMB listing is optimized, it will appear higher in search results, making it easier for potential customers to find you.
• Improved trust: A well-optimized GMB listing helps potential customers establish trust and credibility with your business.
• Enhanced engagement: By optimizing your GMB listing, you encourage more customers to interact with your business, such as by leaving reviews, asking questions, and posting photos.
• Competitive advantage: A well-optimized GMB listing helps your business stand out from the competition.
• Get valuable customer insights: GMB provides valuable insights about your customers, such as how they discovered your business, what actions they took on your profile, and where they live. This data will help you make informed decisions about your marketing and business strategies.

So, since you know there is considerable upside to utilizing Google My Business, let's dive in to learn how to optimize your Google My Business page completely.

How To Optimize Google My Business Page?

Read on to discover the tips for Googe My Business Optimization:

1. Perfect Your Google My Business Profile

Creating a perfect profile with accurate, comprehensive, and up-to-date information is the first step to optimizing your Google My Business page.

Your profile is the first thing that people come across when they search for your business on Google. There are several parts of your Google My Business profile, so how about we begin with the necessary parts you have to fill out:

• Name:- Your business listing name ought to be above anything else. The safest and smartest bet would be to keep it consistent with what is currently listed on your website.

• Address:- It is the next essential element! Pin your business location accurately on GMB.

• Phone number:- Ideally, you want just enough information to eliminate the barriers among you and your customers. On that note, don’t forget to include your phone number. As mentioned earlier, your customer is just a click away with the clickable phone number and address in your Google My Business profile.

  You can shift your focus on business category once you’ve provided NAP details of your listing.

• Business category:- The category you choose will describe your business and connect you to customers searching for the services you offer. Remember, your business category is one of many factors that can influence your local ranking on Google. Thus, you should consider your keyword strategy when adding a business category.

  Be specific while picking up a category. For instance, if you manage a grocery store that is located in India, you would choose “Indian Grocery store” as your primary category rather than "Grocery store."

• Description:- Google My Business allows 750 characters worth of information to be displayed on your listing. The 'description' section normally comprises eye-catching information that mirrors the purpose of the brand or business. I'd recommend you not to stuff this with keywords, but be sure to incorporate at least one right search term in there to reflect your business accurately while helping to improve search visibility.

  Note:- Google only displays the first 250 characters of the description in the knowledge panel, thus, prioritize the information accordingly.

In addition to the above elements, you can incorporate information like website URL, hours of operation, availability, etc, in your Google My Business profile, depending on your industry.

2. Make Sure The Information You Share Is Consistent Across Web

Whether you manage a single local listing or hundreds, any form of inconsistencies in the information --particularly NAP details (name, address and phone number)-- you share on the web will negatively impact your search ranking and would act as a barrier to customer discovery. Thus, guarantee that every information you share on your Google My Business listing is consistent with what is currently listed on your website, social media or anywhere online.

That might sound simple; however, little differences can slip in easily. Don't let that happen! Listing accuracy is Google's method for deciding whether or not it can trust a local business search result and if you are not taking it seriously, it is the biggest mistake that you are committing.

Suggested Read: How To Manage Google Reviews For Multiple Locations

3. Load Relevant, High-Resolution Images For Google My Business Optimization

Once you've incorporated the necessary information in your listing, you can move on and personalize the visual aspect of your Google My Business page. Keep in mind no listing is complete without photos!

Businesses with photos on their listings are 2x as likely to be considered reputable and get 35% more clicks.

That being said, make sure to upload a profile photo, logo, cover photo, and general photos to give people an idea of what your business actually looks like and what products and services they can expect from you.

It’s likely that the more the users envision your business online, the more they will be interested in it.

Pro tip - The photos that you add to your GMB listing should follow Google best practices:

• The images should be in JPG or PNG format
• The size of the pictures should lie between 10KB and 5MB
• The minimum resolution of the photos should be 720x720 px
• The photo should be well-focused and well-lit and should have no alterations or excessive use of filters.

4. Collect Reviews For Google My Business Optimization

Google My Business page reviews are crucial to your overall marketing mix!

It’s really straightforward why you need to embrace reviews on Google Business Listing:

• They offer greater visibility in organic and paid search results
• They improve trust and consumer confidence in your brand and products

In short, Good reviews = Improved sales owing to better on-page conversions.

These reviews show up front and center for all to see whenever they perform a Google search to look for a business, service, or product on Google. Those star ratings and online reviews make it easier for consumers to quickly compare competitors and know whether a business can be trusted and if their products or services are good or bad.

But how do you collect more Google reviews?

It’s simple. Start with these steps:

• Ask your happy customers to leave a review on your Google My Business page. Stress the significance of their feedback for your business! Tell them how their reviews help people who need your services to find your business.
• Respond to all the reviews you get on your listing regardless of whether they are good, bad, or neutral.

You can use Statusbrew to manage and reply promptly to thousands of reviews on your Google My Business page. Just head on to www.statusbrew.com and select the plan of your choice to start a 14-day trial.

If you receive a 5-star rating, that's great! Utilize this further to your advantage to transform a customer into a passionate supporter of your business. But if you receive a rating below 3 stars, reach out to those customers to understand what issue they confronted. Customers appreciate it when businesses pay attention to their concerns, and they appreciate it even more when they can see the genuine effort and intention behind it.

5. Do Not Violate Google’s Guidelines

Avoid any sort of penalty-inducing offenses that could lead to permanent suspension of your Google My Business account. Getting your account suspended can be very stressful and bad for business. Therefore, make sure that anything you do to optimize your Google My Business listing follows the strict GMB guidelines.

Read through Google’s guidelines so you have a full understanding of what is and what is not allowed to represent your business on Google My Business.

Some of the principal things to avoid are:

• Excessive use of keywords in your Google My Business listing.
• Having multiple Google My Business listings for the same business location.
• Harassing, abusing, or using untrustworthy tactics with potential or existing customers.
• Review gatekeeping i.e. using a third-party platform to filter out negative reviews.

Use common sense and don’t try to play the system or get additional listings and you’ll probably stay on the right side of Google.

6. Post Content On Your Google My Business Page

It’s likely that people looking for a business online will evaluate it based on its recent posts. Ensure you're posting quality, relevant, and useful content on your Google My Business account. The key is to post valuable content highlighting your product or service, showcasing any business-related upcoming events, and using relevant and high-quality media to update on a recent company advancement.

The Sellingwarnerrobins is a great example of how a brand is using Google Posts to promote its business.

To begin creating posts,

• Sign in to your Google My Business account.
• Click Create Post option and choose the type of post you'd like to create.
  Google My Business enables you to include text, photos, videos, events, offers, and a button to your post.
• Click each field and enter the information you wish to share.
• You can also see the preview of your post to get an idea of how it will look on your Google My Business page.
• Click publish once you are happy with how your post looks.

While making your post, you should:

• Consider uploading media with the following size requirements:
  Minimum: 400x300 pixels and 10 KB size limit.
  Maximum: 10000x10000 pixels and 25 MB size limit.

• Keep in mind that Google allows a maximum of 300 words per single post, thus making it eye-catching while keeping it to the point.

• Consider speaking straight to your audience without using hard-to-understand industry jargon.

Since you know all that is important to create a great Google My Business post, start sharing your business information with people and boost your sales.

Consistent posting is an important step for optimizing your GMB profile because it helps you to:

• Keep your profile fresh and relevant: By posting regularly, you are showing Google that your profile is active and that you are providing valuable information to your customers.
• Improve your ranking in search results: Businesses that post more often are more likely to rank higher in search results.
• Increase engagement with your customers: When you post regularly, you are giving your customers a reason to visit your GMB profile and engage with your business.
• Showcase your products and services: This is a great way to let potential customers know what you have to offer and why they should choose your business over the competition.

Use a scheduling tool like Statusbrew to post consistently on multiple GMB profiles without having to handle the manual hassle.

7. Optimize Your Google My Business Listing Based On Insights

Google My Business has amazing inbuilt tools that give you incredible insights for each post that lets you genuinely understand how users interact with your business information on Google.

Using GMB insights, you can discover:

• How do customers look for your business?
• Where do customers view your business listing on Google?
• What activities do clients perform when they visit your business listing, whether they visit your site, click on directions, take a look at the photos, or call you?
• Areas where your customers are living?
• When people using Google are visiting your business listing?

Based on these insights, you must always optimize your listing. For instance, if a lot of people are searching for directions, you can infer that the address on the listing is likely not detailed enough.

8. Beware Of Duplicate Listings

Having multiple listings for your business on Google My Business is bad for you and your customers. It can confuse customers, split your engagement, and lower your search ranking.

If you find that your business has duplicate listings, claim all of them so that you can merge them.

9. Show Off Your Products & Services

Your Google My Business profile has a section where you can list the products and services that your business offers. To find this section, go to the navigation menu on the left side of your GMB profile and look for "Products & Services."

For services, Google has a list of pre-defined services that you can choose from. This list is based on your business's primary and secondary categories.

For products, you can add your own listings. To do this, you will need to provide the following information for each product:

• Pictures
• Name
• Category
• Price (fixed or range)
• Description
• Website URL

Once you have added your products and categories, they will start to show up in your GMB listing in search results.

10. Verify Your Business

After you add your store information, you need to verify it with Google. You can do this in two ways:

1. By mail: Google will send you a postcard with a verification code. Enter the code on your Google My Business profile to verify your account.
2. By phone: Google will call you to verify your location.

Google will decide which option is best for you, but in most cases, you will receive a postcard.

Google wants to verify that your store is a physical location because GMB is used to help people find local businesses. If you don't have a physical store (e.g., you run an e-commerce business), you shouldn't use Google My Business. You also can't set up an account if you only have a PO box.

Make sure you have a physical location to verify before you start the verification process.

Final Thoughts!

Optimizing your Google My Business page is very important to improve your online visibility. These 7 tips for Google My Business optimization would put you ahead of your competitors and would help you rank high on Google search and maps (improve your SEO). Put this advice to use, and you should expect to see some gains in your GMB insights and in your store.

FAQs

Here are some commonly asked questions about how to optimize Google My Business profile:

How do I fully optimize my business on Google?

To fully optimize your business on Google, you need to claim and verify your Google Business profile, complete your Google Business profile, get reviews from customers, & create high-quality content for your website.

How do I rank my business better on Google?

To rank your business better on Google, use relevant keywords throughout your website and GMB profile, optimize your website for mobile devices, use GMB posts to share updates about your busines & respond to customer reviews promptly and professionally.