How to create your Google Business Profile
First and foremost, it's important to check whether your business already has a business profile on Google. The easiest way to do this is to search for your business name in the search results.
The next steps depend on whether or not your business already has a business profile. If you already have a business profile on Google, any new one will be registered as a “duplicate”. You really want to avoid that, otherwise you can look forward to a very long conversation with Google support. Trust me, you'd rather be forced to watch an entire season of Paradise Hotel in one sitting than go through that.
You don't already have a Google My Business
If no profile shows up when you search for your business name, you can go ahead and create a new one straight away.
Example
Search for “Amplify” on Google. You'll immediately see a business profile on the right-hand side of the screen if you're using a computer. If you search on your phone, the profile will appear first on the page.
You already have a Google My Business
If your business profile already exists on Google, you should try to gain access to it instead of creating a new one. You do this by clicking “Own this business?” You'll then be redirected to a new page with a little information that may indicate who the current owner of your business profile is.
Now click Request access. If it's your own e-mail address, you'll immediately receive an e-mail you can use to gain access. If you don't recognise the e-mail address, you'll be able to claim the business after 3-7 days, when you'll need to verify again by postcard, phone or e-mail. I'll go into more detail about the verification methods shortly.
Get your business profile verified on Google
Your new business profile isn't worth much if you don't get it verified. In fact, it won't show up in Google's search results at all.
There are several ways to verify your Google Business Profile, but you don't always get to choose which method you can use. In fact, it's rare to be given several options.
You can verify a GMB in the following ways
1. Postcard
In some cases, you'll need to verify your ownership of the business profile with a postcard sent to the address you've provided. The postcard will arrive within 14 days. Verification by postcard is a good method, although you may have to wait a while before the postcard reaches your address. This is often the method you have to use when creating a new business profile, even if it seems rather slow and analogue, considering we're dealing with online marketing.
2. E-mail
In other cases, you can verify the profile via an e-mail sent to the e-mail address you've provided. This is definitely the easiest method, and it works flawlessly most of the time. You're not often lucky enough to get this option, but if you do, choose this verification method.
3. Phone call
You may also find that you can verify your business profile through a phone call. Past experience shows, however, that this isn't the best method, as it's often hard to hear the first few digits read out. You can certainly give it a try, and choose another option afterwards if it fails.
4. SMS
SMS verification is the last option for getting your business profile verified. It's a good solution if the phone number you've provided can receive text messages.
Problems verifying Google My Business
Having created and verified quite a few business profiles over the years, I've collected a fair amount of good advice, which I'll pass on to you here.
Entering a phone number that shouldn't be displayed
Some people choose to add a personal phone number that can receive text messages if the number that's meant to appear on the business profile can't. It can be quite tempting, as it's a quick verification method, but for heaven's sake, don't. Remember what I said about Paradise Hotel earlier?
Once you've verified with that phone number, you can't just change it afterwards. Your GMB is as attached to that number as Patrick Swayze is to ‘Baby’ in Dirty Dancing.
If that happens, after a lengthy e-mail exchange with Google's support line, you'll be asked to verify again by postcard, and the number will remain visible until you receive the postcard. In other words, you risk your private number ringing off the hook until the mistake is fixed.
Submitting a change many times
Google takes security very seriously and doesn't like it when you don't follow its guidelines. If you submit the same changes again and again in the hope that Google will accept them, you're sorely mistaken.
In most cases, it'll only result in your business profile being suspended. You'll then have to contact Google support again and prove that your business profile complies with all the guidelines.
Enter the correct business name
Every business wants to appear in the lovely “local 3-pack”, and if you work with SEO, you know that the most relevant ones show up first. Some therefore try to create a business profile named after the service they want to rank for.
Say you run a carpentry business, so you create a GMB and call it “roofing”, “extensions” or “turnkey contracting”.
It's not a good idea. Google is constantly updating its algorithms, and they keep getting smarter. If you're caught doing that kind of “cheating”, you risk being blacklisted.
Fortunately, if you take some of my advice, you can easily reach the top honestly.
How do you fill in your Google My Business?
If you want to make sure your Google My Business is completely up-to-date, there are quite a few points to pay attention to. On top of that, you actually need to work on the profile regularly if it's going to perform.
You need to go through the following areas:
- Business category
- Description
- Website
- Service areas
- Opening hours
- Extended opening hours
- Labels
- Services
- Products
- Photos
- Posts.
If you already focus on SEO on your website, it can add value to be really precise when you fill in the points above. We've covered most of the points in more detail in our previous blog post about GMB, and the ones not mentioned there are covered later in this guide.
The purpose of a Google My Business
Why should you have a business profile? There are several reasons, and here are some of them.
Appearing in Google's “local 3-pack”
The ultimate purpose of a Google My Business is to appear in the famous “local 3-pack”. Google selects and shows the 3 most relevant business profiles when you search.
Does your business profile appear for one or more keyword combinations? Well, then potential customers have a good chance of discovering your business.
Visibility, visibility and more visibility
If you want to be visible in your local area, it's essential to have a Google My Business. Business profiles are among the first things to appear when you search, and of course your business should be shown there.
A 2019 survey showed that 81% of respondents needed to trust a brand in order to make a purchase, and that happens through visibility and brand awareness.
It creates good customer experiences
Is there anything more important than a good customer experience? Good results matter, of course, but you're tripping yourself up if you don't give customer satisfaction the same weight.
With a business profile on Google, your customers can quickly find all the relevant information about your business. If you've ever spent ages trying to find a company's opening hours or address, you'll know how frustrating it is.
Google Business Profile: Gain more visibility through posts
If you want to get the most out of your Google Business Profile, it's important to remember to give it some love. It's not enough to just update the opening hours every now and then. As mentioned earlier, Google rewards active business profiles, and one of the best ways to keep a GMB active and relevant is through posts.
Google has stated that posts help customers make better purchasing decisions by giving them access to more business information and updates.
Other benefits of creating posts are that you can:
- Communicate directly with your local customers.
- Give customers a better experience with timely information.
- Promote sales, special offers, events, news and other offers.
- Engage your customers with videos and photos.
Read more in Google's article on posts for local businesses.
The different posts on Google My Business
What types of posts can you create on your Google My Business? Well, you have 3 different options. Your posts will be shown at the bottom of your business profile.
You can create the following posts:
- General updates and news (updates)
- Offers (offers)
- Events (add event)
The biggest difference between general status updates and offers and events is that for offers and events, you have to enter the dates the offer/event starts and ends. The great thing about this feature is that the posts are automatically removed from your profile once they've expired. General updates aren't removed.
Add photos and videos to your posts
Most people are drawn in by images and videos, and that's also the case with posts on Google My Business. Posts with images and videos of great-looking products or friendly people simply get more views and clicks.
You can read much more about Google's guidelines for image and video uploads here.
Google recommends the following when you create a post:
- “An eye-catching image that supports your message”.
- “Text that speaks to customers: This is your chance to speak directly to your customers”.
- “A call-to-action button that asks users to take action straight away”.
8 tips for a good Google Business Profile
Struggling to fill in your business profile? Here are 8 tips for a good Google My Business profile that adds value for you and your current and future customers.
- Make sure everything that can be filled in is filled in. That goes for everything from web address and opening hours to products and services.
- Remember to update your opening hours for closing days, otherwise you can quickly end up with unhappy customers and bad reviews.
- Create products for your most important services/products, and link to the relevant landing page on your website!
- Use different categories when you create your products, if there are several, so they're shown on your GMB.
- Catch potential customers' attention with posts, such as offers, events or status updates, and remember to add photos or videos to the posts so they perform better.
- Use good photos of friendly people or relevant products. Make sure to add new photos regularly, not just when you set up the profile.
- Reply to your reviews, good and bad.
- If you want social icons linking to your social media to appear on your business profile, you can't just add them. Place the icons with links in the footer of your website, and there's a good chance they'll appear on your GMB.
Data collection: Get insight into views and search trends
Every month, Google sends you a performance report with an overview of the number of phone calls, website clicks from the business profile, messages, profile views, searches and the number of people who asked for directions.
You'll also see your top 3 search terms, i.e. when and for which searches your business profile is typically shown.
The performance report compares the latest month with the month before.
Stay up to date
If you want to keep track of how your business profile is doing during the month, you can also access all the information via “Performance”.
Here you can pull data from several months and see how many people viewed your business profile through Google Search and Google Maps, and not least whether they used a phone or a computer. You can also see all the search terms that were used when your business profile was shown.
If you start creating posts, you'll also get a separate “status e-mail” for each post, so you can see how they're doing.
The synergy between Google My Business and SEO
Can a Google My Business strengthen my SEO? Isn't it more important to focus on on-page SEO than off-page? Surely it only affects local search results?
Those are just a few of the questions you get when you start the conversation about the synergy between Google My Business and SEO. You can read more about the rest below.
- It drives more traffic to the website
If there's one thing we SEO nerds love, it's traffic to the website. That goes for all traffic, from traffic through the organic and paid search results to traffic via social media and external websites. Visitors to your website strengthen its relevance in Google's eyes, which is a ranking factor when it comes to SEO. So if you can drive even more traffic to your website by strengthening your Google My Business, what's holding you back? - Google gets a better understanding of your service areas
If you work with SEO, you hopefully already know how important content is to your optimisation. There's a good reason to have a blog, various guides and comprehensive copy on your website. Google will always show users the most relevant content based on their search, and through information and posts on your Google My Business, you make it clear which areas your business specialises in. The more relevant content about your business, the better. - Google loves it when we use its tools
There's no doubt that Google loves it when we use its tools and programmes, and that's also the case with Google My Business. Have you ever wondered why you can only add e-mail addresses registered to a Google account in Google Analytics? Exactly, they want you to use their tools. As Jakob Kjellberg would say: “Get going!” - Google prioritises local searches
If you work with SEO, you're definitely keeping an eye on Google's many algorithm updates. Google's “Local Search Update” in 2021 sent a clear signal that Google prioritises and gives weight to local search results. If you have a dental clinic, carpentry firm or restaurant, you most likely want to be visible in specific local areas. You'll be missing out if GMB isn't part of your local SEO strategy. Within local SEO, programmatic SEO is also hard to ignore. With pSEO, you can publish several hundred relevant location landing pages at once! - It builds brand awareness – appear in up to 3 places
Imagine a customer seeing your business name in the organic search results, in a paid ad and on top of that in Google's “local 3-pack”. What are the chances you'd click through to that business? In my experience, about as high as Brazil qualifying for the World Cup. - You strengthen your business's credibility
How important is your website's credibility? Ask an SEO specialist and they'll say “very important”. Opinions are divided on whether online reviews affect your rankings on Google, after Google shared its Search Quility Rater guidelines. You can get and showcase reviews through your Google My Business. There's little doubt that positive reviews attract more customers to your website, which can contribute to a higher conversion rate. Wouldn't you be more inclined to buy from or contact a business if good reviews were the first thing you noticed? - Products can drive traffic to your most important pages
It's quite possible that Google hasn't stated that a Google My Business affects rankings in the organic search results. However, we know that relevant internal and external links strengthen SEO. In Google My Business, you can create products where you can describe and link directly to the landing page for the specific product or service. I'll leave it up to you to judge whether that can contribute to positive movement in the rankings.
Get help with Google Business Profile
I hope my guide has given you a better understanding of how Google My Business can add value to your business.
Does it all seem a bit much? Don't worry – at Amplify, I or one of my skilled colleagues are ready to help you. You're more than welcome to call us on 70 60 50 28, send an e-mail to info@amplify.dk or fill in our contact form.
