Edwin Toonen
Edwin is a specialist in strategic content. Before joining Yoast, he spent years honing his skills at the leading web design magazine in the Netherlands.
Every business owner with a website looks for opportunities to get noticed in search results. During the pandemic, it is important to offer customers an up-to-date Google profile for your company. There are a ton of tactics out there for standing out as a local business, but there is no silver bullet. As with most SEO problems, this is a combined effort. One of those pieces of the local SEO puzzle is Google My Business. But what exactly is it and why is it so important to local search engine optimization?
What is Google My Business?
My Business is Google’s one-stop shop for managing how your business will look and function in the search engine. It’s an important tool for customizing the way your website is presented in maps, knowledge graph, and organic search results. According to the 2020 edition of Whitespark’s Local Search Ranking Factors Survey, Google My Business continues to be the top driver of local SEO success, with ratings coming in second.
You can manage your business listing by adding NAP details, hours of operation, photos, etc. There are even unique options for managing your business listing during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, you get many other options, such as: B. Managing the reviews your customers leave. As you know, ratings should be a critical factor in your local SEO efforts.
Would you like to learn more about local SEO and how to get higher rankings in local search results? Our local SEO training will help you improve your online presence and attract more online and offline visitors.
How does it work?
Getting started with My Business is easy. You need to create an account and claim your business. After you have entered your details, you will receive a real postcard from Google at the address you provided. This card is proof that you are the owner of the company indicated at the address. Some types of businesses can be verified by phone call or email. Google has a special page where you can check your verification status.
Once verified, you can fill in all the required details and review how your listing behaves. You can even get regular insights to see how many impressions, clicks, and subscribers your listing has received over a period of time. This will give you a sense of how your business is perceived by Google and customers alike.
Remember, My Business is not the panacea for your local search engine optimization. It has to work with your on- and off-site SEO efforts. You won’t climb the charts if your profile is inaccurate, but you won’t reach the top without a well-optimized website and localized content. These things go hand in hand.
Ranking factors
Google My Business uses many factors to determine the ranking for businesses. We will highlight the three main ones:
- relevance
- distance
- importance
relevance
Relevance determines how well your company fits the customer’s search intent. Is your focus the same as what the customer needs, or are you a little opaque about what your company is doing? Indeterminacy does not rank or sell. Be as clear as you can Keep your focus.
Proximity
Proximity is a well-known factor in ranking local businesses. You can’t rank in a local search for (Dentist New Jersey) once you find your Manhattan business. The exact way Google determines which companies to show up in a local search is unknown and it can be quite difficult to rank any given area. The other factors also play an important role. It’s helpful to say you are in a certain area and to show it by creating locally-targeted content for your business on your website. Google uses what is known about the searcher’s location to come up with the most relevant local businesses.
importance
With celebrities, everything revolves around the activity surrounding your entry. This can be the number of reviews, events, local content, etc. It also helps if you can get lots of high quality links on your website. It is a little difficult to determine what exactly prominence means, but one thing is certain: Nobody likes dead profiles. You need to keep it updated with new photos and manage your reviews. As mentioned earlier, this works in tandem with your website. So make sure that both entries match and that you are posting local content.
For more information on local search engine optimization, check out our ultimate guide to search engine optimization for small businesses.
It is important that you keep your business listing accurate and up to date
Optimize your Google My Business listing
To get started you need to claim your listing. After that, you can use the tips below to make your My Business account a success. Note that everything you add must match the information you provide on your website. Inaccurate information kills your entries and can destroy your rankings:
- Request your entry with your actual company name
- Choose a category as precisely as possible
- Provide as much information as possible – your profile must be 100%
- Check your phone number
- Check your opening times – think about holidays!
- Review your photos – are they accurate and good, or can you improve them?
- Get quotes on other websites too – select reputable business listings or check websites and directories and stay away from spammers
- Keep your My Business listing up to date on your website – and use structured Schema.org data
- Most importantly, keep your data up to date
It is important to remember that this is not a set and to forget about it. Things change; Your business is changing. Keep everything active, monitor reviews and stay on top of things. It’s frustrating when your listing isn’t working as well as you’d like but still planning in hours and it will work.
Managing your Google My Business listing during COVID-19
Many companies will have to close – temporarily – during the coronavirus / COVID-19 pandemic that is currently taking place. It is a good idea to let customers know how this is affecting your business by properly managing Google My Business. Always keep your profile up to date. Let people know of changes in opening times or if you are a little slower in shipping products. Use Google Posts to notify customers of updates. You can also mark your company as temporarily closed. If you manage these through Google My Business, update your company profile in Google and Google Maps. For more information, see Google’s documentation on how to deal with COVID-19 updates.
In March 2021, Google added a new feature to the Google My Business dashboard. A feature that allows you to report reviews for removal and check the status of reviews that have already been reported. However, this tool only works for accounts with a smaller number of entries. So, if you are a business owner with just one or a few listings on your Google My Business account, this new tool will help you manage your reviews in one place. If you already have a My Business account, check out this new tool to manage your reviews now.
Structured data and yoast local SEO
Google is increasingly relying on structured data to determine what your website is about and which elements represent what. This certainly applies to your business information, including the information used by My Business. Make sure you are adding the correct structured data to your site. Enhance your NAP details, hours of operation, reviews, product information, etc. with Schema.org data. This makes it much easier for Google to determine the validity of your entry. Various tools can help you with this, including our Yoast Local SEO plugin.
Your local search engine optimization is also vital on Google My Business
So you should activate and maintain your My Business account and do it awesome. But to get the most out of your listings and get great rankings, you need to have your website up and running as well. Optimize every part of it. Create local content for the keyword and business location you selected and get high quality local backlinks to build a solid link profile. Ask customers to review your company on-site or in My Business. Make sure your listing is active and attractive. Inaccurate profiles are not good.
Read more: The Ultimate Guide to SEO for Small Businesses »
