Google MY Business MANAGEMENT

Google My Business is a tool created by Google to help businesses gain more visibility, manage and advertise their business online via the search engine. 

Having a Google My Business profile helps potential customers discover your business and all of the key information they need to get in contact with you regarding your product/services. 

A Google My Business profile listing is home to your business identity (name and logo), location (Google My Business is linked to your location on Google Maps), website address, phone number, email, opening hours, photos, announcements and most importantly a place for customers to leave a review of your business. 

You will likely show alongside your competitors on Google if a user uses a search term such as ‘plumbers in Derby’ as opposed to your exact business name.

However, these listings can be optimised to enhance the appearance of your business when users are searching for your product/service in your home location to ensure you display ahead of your competitors. 

Yes! 

You will be pleasantly surprised to learn that there is absolutely no cost in creating your Google My Business profile listing. 

This means you can tap into a stream of users on the Google Search Engine and Google Maps completely free just by setting up your business profile.

It doesn’t matter how big or small your business is, Google My Business profiles are available to everyone.

The only requirement is for the account to be verified by receiving a postcard with a verification code to your business location, this verification ensures you’re the rightful owner of the business and have permission to manage the profile. 

As Google My Business listings are free to set up, most businesses already have one, however, Google only shows a maximum of 3 listings in the maps when users search.  This means although most companies already have one, not many are seeing the benefits that they can bring.

The only costs that are likely to occur, are if you wish to take your profile to the next level with Google My Business management and optimisation services.

With the rewards of being at the top of Google so high in value, the competition is also high and with limited spaces (3 slots), it is key that should you want to see the huge benefits Google My Business can bring you it is important to work with an agency who have a track record of achieving results.

A Free Tool (Don't be fooled because it's free):

There is absolutely no cost in creating your Google My Business profile listing.

This means you can tap into a stream of users on the Google Search Engine and Google Maps completely free just by setting up your business profile.

It doesn’t matter how big or small your business is, Google My Business profiles are available to everyone. 

Just because Google My Business is a free-of-charge service, don't underestimate the huge impact this can have on your business.

Increase The Visibility Of Your Business:

A Google My Business profile will enable your business to show on Google Search and Google Maps when a user searches for your product/service. 

This will enable you to be visible in places where you weren’t previously displayed and this is most often on the first page of Google.

Making it particularly important if you are struggling to get your website search engine optimisation to perform and rank on page 1 of Google.

Opportunity To Collect Reviews:

"Online Word Of Mouth" is one of the most powerful things your business can do!

You can collect valuable client/customer reviews on your business profile which will be shown on Google searches.

Increasing the number of reviews on your Google My Business profile helps to tell Google that you’re a creditable business and therefore it is more likely to show your business ahead of a competitor who has fewer reviews. 

View Profile Insights:

Google has always been a powerful tool for marketing and with your Google My Business profile, you can view your profile insights to determine the effectiveness of your profile listing and develop strategies to optimise your performance. 

You can use the insights to easily determine where your audience is coming from e.g. what they were searching for, their profile summary and the number of website clicks, map clicks or direct clicks to call.

Yell.com vs Checkatrade vs Google My Business? - Which one is best for your business?

Directories like Yell.com, Checkatrade, My Builder & Bark all work by ranking their own pages in the organic section within Google.

They then charge businesses to be on their own page that they have ranked (usually along with a bunch of your direct competitors meaning you're all paying a premium to quote the same jobs).

Businesses can expect to pay anywhere from £20 per month to £1000 per month (usually on 12-month contracts) for a page on Yell.com or Checkatrade, again, where you are joined by many of your competitors, each on the same page.

The higher up you want your listing to be on a directory website, the more that you have to pay each month.

Some directories rank based on who has the most reviews and give higher rankings to those businesses which means they are seen by more people and pick up more work.

Therefore it's very difficult for you to collect more reviews to rank higher when they are being found more and picking up more customers than you because of this.

When you get your Google My Business listing ranked your listing shows up AHEAD of the directories.

This means instead of relying on someone who is interested in your services to have to click on directories and then scroll down past all of your competitors to find you, you are found pretty much instantly by everyone who is searching ahead of the directories and ahead of your competitors.

Most businesses are not aware of this and the ones that find this information out first and act on it are the ones that are going to pick up more business and will be spending less money to do this (working smart).

Absolutely! 

It is highly recommended that you collect customer/client reviews on your Google My Business profile. 

The purpose of collecting reviews is to provide future customers with an accurate reflection of your products/services.

Good reviews indicate that your business is trustworthy and therefore potential customers are more likely to reach out to you if they have heard about the great experiences other customers have had previously. 

Increasing the number of reviews on your Google My Business profile helps to tell Google that you’re a creditable business and therefore it is more likely to show your business ahead of a competitor who has fewer reviews.

Getting reviews from clients should be part of your general strategy as they are extremely valuable for increasing your online business reputation and rankings and likewise, the click-through rate to your website and potentially generating an increase in leads.