Optimizing your Google My Business profile is a big part of local SEO success. Here are four major points to consider in order to boost your GMB presence.
1. Encourage Reviews
Reviews are one of the best ways to grow your Google My Business profile. They cost nothing but do much to raise your business’s profile to organic searchers.
Think about how you might go about weeding through a large selection of local general contractors if you have never employed one before.
You have no idea if the claims made on a contractor’s website are accurate. You don’t have third-party confirmation of areas such as costs and quality of workmanship.
In this case, what you need are GMB reviews to raise you up in local searches.
If people in your area are looking up reviews of local contractors, they will be more likely to trust your business if you have 10 or 15 reviews that are four-to-five stars.
Another option is to take advantage of review-management platforms such as BirdEye, ReviewPush, and Pozative. These programs allow you to:
- Organize your reviews
- Send text messages for requests
- Respond to new Google Reviews
2. Avoid Spammy Tactics
Google is definitely smart enough today to know when someone is trying to cheat the system by, for instance, automating content, creating doorway pages, and keyword stuffing.
The same idea applies to GMB.
GMB is Google’s own tool, but why would the most robust search engine in existence let you get away with spammy tactics such as paying people to leave positive reviews?
Potential customers are going to trust real, honest reviews.
Google and those review sites I mentioned, like Yelp and TripAdvisor, know when you’ve paid some dubious website to provide a fake five-star review for your business.
In fact, review sites can detect spammy reviews and flag your site as being dishonest. The flag will result in a popup that users will see when they arrive on one of your pages, warning them not to trust your site.
In the same way, offering incentives for positive reviews on Google My Business can backfire. Incentives may encourage people to leave fake reviews, and you could end up with a negative reputation online.
3. Respond to Negative Reviews
Reviews are vital for local SEO, but they can also be problematic. Negative reviews of your business on Google My Business can have a large impact on your reputation and traffic. While there are no reliable ways to remove negative reviews, there are some things you can do to minimize their effect.
You should always cater to the customers, and if something goes wrong, be understanding. Address it immediately and make sure people leave happy.
When negative reviews appear online, reach out to those customers to apologize and empathize. Showing that you care about the well-being of your customers will help repair your reputation amongst the general public.
4. Leverage New GMB Tools
My final recommendation for boosting your GMB is to take advantage of the newer features Google has rolled out.
Google allows you to create free stickers, posters, and social media posts for advertising your business’s promotions and events.
It is a feature that can be used on the Google Marketing Kit.
In particular, the social posts will be a big help to your online presence. You can create posters of your positive reviews and share them on social media platforms.
GMB also now lets users follow your business’s local profile just as they would on a social network such as Facebook or Instagram.
Followers would then get access to your business’s:
- New Posts
- Offers
- Blog Posts
- Events
- Product Updates
Google Posts allows you to advertise new coupons, deals, and events in creative ways. Google Posts also use images, videos, and call-to-action buttons to drive up user engagement.
Google Posts is a great local GMB advertising method due to its analytics feature. This feature lets you see how people responded to your posts, which you can use as a guide for future posts. In the not-too-distant future, keep an eye out for GMB’s “local favorites” feature, which will award digital and physical badges to the top 5 percent of local businesses per category.
Final Thoughts
Having a strong Google My Business presence will help local customers find you, and encouraging those customers to leave positive reviews will drive even more clients into your establishment.
Google My Business (GMB) is a vital part of Local SEO and it plays a huge part in your overall SEO Strategy. AI Advertisment is one of its kind SEO Agency that integrates AI into your SEO Strategy to boost your local SEO and your GMB profile.