How to Improve Your Google My Business Ranking in 2022
Contents
To make the most of your Google My Business ranking, let’s look at how (and why) to optimize and improve it.
Why maintain a Google My Business listing that is optimized?
As a company, you’re undoubtedly already investing money in Google AdWords and website SEO to make it more accessible and popular.
However, you might overlook your Google My Business profile, just like many other companies do. This also means that you will miss out on all the advantages that local SEO may offer you; we’ll look at those in a moment. This is also absolutely FREE to use.
And you’re not the only one if that’s the case. In reality, a study found that only a small portion of the billions of views that Google search generates each month come from business profiles. Not because Google My Business is unsuccessful per se, though.
Instead, it’s because companies don’t utilize all of its benefits to raise their GMB ranking.
And there are many advantages:
more favorable local SEO rankings
When it comes to bringing in customers to your store, an optimized Google My Business listing is your greatest friend. Google will give you a ranking when someone searches for nearby businesses similar to yours based on your geographic proximity and relevancy.
However, it will also take into account the activity on your Google My Business profile and the caliber of the data you offer, all of which are ranking considerations for local search results on Google.
If you kept your Google My Business profile active and packed with useful information for your potential clients, it would rank higher than it otherwise could
Heightened interest
Google search results are now better than ever at reflecting user intent. The information they require is frequently available on the search result page, which eliminates the need for potential buyers to visit actual websites.
You guessed it, you need to have an optimized Google My Business page to compete in the so-called “zero-click searches.” This will encourage more interactions with your profile (often even more than with your website) and, eventually, more conversions.
more clients
Your potential consumers will essentially see your location on Google Maps and possibly read your customer reviews (we’ll speak about reviews in a moment because that’s a major one) if you don’t have an optimized Google My Business profile.
But when you actively and consistently manage your listing, it can develop into a lot more powerful instrument for customer acquisition.
They may take advantage of your special deals, schedule appointments, investigate your offerings, and more with an optimized Google My Business profile—often without ever having to visit your website. As a result, in many circumstances, the road to conversion becomes substantially shorter. Who would not desire that?
You will therefore inquire “how to boost Google My Business ranking” (maybe that was your Google search? ;)).
Here are a few useful hints.
How to raise your rating on Google My Business
Let’s examine the most crucial GMB ranking elements in more detail, along with suggestions for how to enhance them so that your company ranks higher in search results.
First, if you haven’t already, claim it for your company.
If your company has been on the market for some time, there is a good probability that the listing already exists (to check, simply conduct a Google search). Even if you didn’t make it yourself, that is. But until you’ve formally claimed it, you can’t optimize it. This is how to go about it.
After signing in using your Google account, you can create a Google My Business Account if you don’t already have one.
Complete every field on your Google Business profile carefully. (Google Business will now serve as the official replacement name for Google My Business moving forward. Complex, I realize. Here are some additional details to help)
Give your prospective customers all the necessary information, such as:
Your company name Industry classification (in my case, “Marketing consultant”). If you want to appear in relevant discovery searches, which are searches for a particular good or service in the area rather than your company name, then this is highly crucial. And from there, the majority of views of Google Business profiles also originate.
You can have more than one category, as a hint.
pick a category to help your business’s rating on Google
Physical address Office hours (if applicable, particularly if you have a physical site people can visit and aren’t just using that address for your online business, like I do. Google will also inquire about that).
Hint: To ensure that the hours are always applicable, include both weekday and holiday hours.
your scope of services (if you provide your services outside of your physical location).
Contact information should include a phone number and the URL of your website. Remember that while Google My Business is useful, it is not a replacement for your actual website.
Links to appointments
To make your profile even more pertinent, add Products, Services, and Attributes. I might choose “Identifies as women-owned,” for instance, and add “Online appointments” to the service options.
pick attributes to raise your business’s ranking on Google
Your company’s summary
Photos. Make sure they’re of the highest caliber and represent you favorably. Photos have been shown to increase customer traffic. According to Google, people are 42% more likely to ask for driving directions to a business if it has photos, and 35% more likely to visit its website.
It will undoubtedly be a good idea to include interior and food (and drink) photos if you run a cafe or restaurant, for instance.
Opening date (if relevant).
Remember that Google verifies all the info and updates, claiming to take up to 3 business days for the verification.
Keep your Google My Business profile active
This means regularly posting new information – updates, special offers, discount codes, new service launches, etc. Think of it as another social media profile for your business – one people easily find in search results (as opposed to all the other social networks, which actually makes it all the more important).
Things you can post:
Special offers
Product or service showcase
COVID-19 updates
Company news etc.
You can add call-to-action buttons to your posts, letting customers perform instant actions like:
Buy a product
Book a service
Order online
Sign up
Or call you, and more.
Here are some great examples of the different types of Google My Business posts from actual businesses taking that opportunity.
Keeping your profile active with engaging, relevant, and regular posts will help you get your customers more engaged before they decide to buy or book from you.
And since they’re already qualified leads when they reach your profile (because they’re most likely looking for you or a business like yours in the area, meaning they’re already interested in what you have to sell), it’s your unique opportunity to capitalize on this with additional engagement ultimately leading to an easier sale.
Automate your Google My Business posts
I get it: adding another social media profile to your daily schedule doesn’t sound like great news. More content to create, more work to do, I can relate.
Here’s more info about the platform’s Google My Business management tools.
Create all the different types of Google My Business posts, with photos and call-to-action buttons
Schedule them for later to post automatically
Share them with your team, have internal discussions and organize the approval process
Google My Business Management
Manage and respond to Google reviews from one view
This is a key feature of Google My Business – and a powerful tool in your brand-building arsenal if you use it right.
People check Google reviews – that’s a fact (you probably do that, too.) Whether you run a hotel, a restaurant chain, a tiny specialty café, or an international clothing brand with stores in multiple countries, people will leave positive and negative reviews: about your customer service, your products, your amenities, and in general, about their experience with your brand.
And though you probably dread it (I mean, reviews can be both good AND bad), being able to manage them puts you in control (well, at least partially. ;))
And according to a study by BrightLocal, up to 82% of consumers read online reviews when they’re looking for businesses in the area. What’s more, even 97% of them read your responses to those reviews. And at that point already, they have a pretty clear picture of whether they want to buy from you or not.
The problem with reviews is that managing them and responding to them takes time (duh!). And it takes more time the more locations and customers you have.
But – again – there are tools you can use to make that process easier. Much easier.
This means you (as a business owner or social media manager) or your customer service team have an easy way of tracking all your reviews and promptly responding to them.
Without getting lost, having to constantly switch accounts, or spending days doing all of it (which they probably don’t have anyway, so the reviews go unanswered.)
You can also respond to reviews written in foreign languages as the Social Inbox has a built-in translator.
Google reviews moderation from one view
You can read the entire case study here.
Plug Google My Business reviews into your customer service workflows
You can also consult other team members (or your client, if you’re an agency managing Google My Business profiles for other companies) about things you don’t have sufficient knowledge of. And doing all that within a single dashboard really makes a difference.
Sending a customer service ticket for consultation
Your turn to improve GMB ranking
If you’ve been toying with the idea of finally getting started with your Google My Business profile in 2022, I hope this article inspired you to go ahead and do it.
And if you’ve been slightly anxious about going all in, fearing you have no time to do it, I hope you now get what you don’t have time (and money) for is missing out on improving your local search rankings and getting more customers for your business. And that there are tools to help you spend much less time on it.
Good luck!
