The short answer? Yes!
Google Business Profile (GBP) listings are powerful tools for businesses looking to improve their impact on local search.
This blog will cover the benefits of using Google Business Profile and how businesses can use their GBP profile as a secret weapon to extend their online reach.
The benefits of GBP
What are the benefits of a well-optimised Google Business Profile?
Your business may already show up in search engine results, but with GBP, you can achieve so much more. A 2021 Think With Google experiment and study into the ‘Messy Middle’ revealed that 33% of consumers opted for an unfamiliar brand over their established favourite when presented with two choices.
The deciding factor? Brand visibility.
A verified listing on GBP helps businesses establish themselves in search results, as they are often prioritised on the first page of local search results, improving visibility. As GBP makes up part of the Google suite, (which includes Google Maps, Google Ads, YouTube, and more) businesses can use it to position themselves more visibly, allowing potential audiences to find and interact with them directly from searching relevant keywords and phrases.
The more Google products we take advantage of and optimise well, the more the Google system will know about our business and match it to people it knows will be interested.
It’s also free!
With GBP we can take advantage of a powerful and free, constantly evolving tool to provide a great first impression to those discovering a business through search. GBP is also a method used to improve search engine optimisation (SEO) ranking.
Its analytics allow us to gain insight into our customers, for example how they may have found our listing and actions they have taken. These insights can be used to inform other marketing activities and strategies going forward.
With all these benefits, GBP is 100% worth the commitment. So how do we start?
Tip 1: Build a strong profile
If you don’t already have GBP, the first step will be to claim a listing. We recommend using this guide from Google to do this.
Once claimed or created, when building or updating a GBP listing, we should look at populating the following areas as a minimum:
- Contact information and business address
- Keyword-friendly business description
- Service category
- Website link
- Social media profile links
- Well-optimised images
- Products (a great feature for e-commerce businesses, find out how to add products here)
- Reviews (We recommend frequently checking for new reviews and responding to all of them).
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Much like any other online platform, it’s important to establish clear branding on our GBP listing, as this helps audiences quickly identify us in search engine results and recognise who they’re purchasing from. It also avoids confusion for customers between brands, maintaining brand consistency across platforms.
Tip 2: Use your website efficiently
Websites are at the centre of a marketing strategy, as the one place we have full control over how we present ourselves. This includes representing branding, communicating our message and promoting our products and services. Linking a website to our Google Business Profile listing creates a seamless transition for the customer from the awareness stage into the consideration stage, where they can learn more about us and how we can help them.
Awareness and consideration are important stages in the customer life cycle, and navigating each of these is essential for businesses to nurture customers from the very moment they discover us, to the point of making a purchase or advocating for us in the future.
Because of this, we highly recommend using your website content to support any optimisation work on GBP.
Creating connections, or backlinks, between the business’s website and its GBP listing can help Google verify information and details about us. This helps to establish ourselves as an authority in search engine results, as Google will more likely rank us higher if they can validate and trust the content we’re providing them with through our website and Google Business Profile.
That said, our bonus tip here would be to ensure that information matches exactly! It makes it difficult for Google to rank us in search engines when our contact information, business descriptions and branding don’t reflect one another. Use up-to-date, relevant information for your business on both the website and GBP listing to ensure that you get the most out of both platforms and it’s optimised effectively for Google.
Tip 3: Update your listing details regularly
Once a profile has been created, and optimised for search engines, don’t be tempted to let it sit and gather dust!
Maintaining and regularly updating GBP content helps keep the listing active and up to date, ensuring that the correct information is always easily available to audiences searching for our business online.
It also informs Google that the business is active online, and as a result, we are more likely to provide useful and valuable products or services to search engine users. This is another good reason fro them to show us higher up in search results.
Tip 4: Create posts and updates
As well as optimising the profile, and checking information remains accurate as a business grows and develops over time, it’s also important to add posts, or updates directly to the profile.
These posts, like social media posts, give search engine audiences on-the-go insight into the business and what’s happening. It’s a great way to share new products and services, celebrate milestones and announce new content such as blogs and more!
You can create a post/update on the GBP listing by scrolling down and clicking Add update. From there, add some keyword-friendly text and an image relating to the content (we recommend using a size of 1021x 543 pixels for any graphics or images). You can also add a link for readers to use with a range of options including Call, Sign Up and Learn More.
Posts are a great way of keeping GBP listings active and providing the audience with more information on the business to help them in deciding to choose us. There is some more information available on this feature in a past blog post we created, which you can find here. Though GBP has changed since then, posting even 3 years ago had great benefits.
Tip 5: Keep an eye on Google!
Like any major organisation, Google is constantly updating and adjusting its services to business owners and search engine users alike. For example, in 2022, they changed the Google Business Profile from its formerly named Google My Business, a topic we covered in this blog post. Keeping an eye out for updates and changes to Google’s products helps businesses stay on top of the search engine mountain and continue to grow their online reach.
You can do this by following Google’s official support pages and social media accounts or by asking digital experts. If you would like to find out more about our services in Google Business Profile, get in touch here.
In Summary...
If you know how to use it for your business, Google Business Profile can be a powerful tool to improve search engine visibility and get ahead of competitors in your industry. We hope this guide helped you understand it further and how businesses can use it to their advantage.
If you need guidance for your profile, it’s always worth talking to an expert. As specialists in websites and integrated digital marketing, we’re a go-to source for new information about these tools. Keep an eye on this blog, where we provide insights on various digital marketing topics, or sign up to our newsletter to receive regular monthly updates straight into your inbox.
We also offer a range of plans in GBP optimisation, and bring our expertise and knowledge to help businesses get themselves seen online.
