Reviews and reputation management are a critical component in today’s marketing landscape. On the Google platform, these tasks can be handled effectively by the Google Business (formerly Google My Business) profile management platform. An analogy that helps to illustrate the importance of an accurate and favorable Google Business profile is when you may travel to a new city and are looking for a restaurant to eat at.
When you Google an example of the type of food you would like to eat (“pizza near me”) Google will provide local services ads, pay per click ads and then google map results (known as the “3 pack” in the marketing world). In the “3 pack”, Google serves what it believes to be the best LOCAL result for your search term.
If you want more business you need an optimized Google Business profile. Riley Summers Marketing Group can help!
Most users will immediately look at the reviews section (containing the total number of reviews and the average, overall rating of those reviews) – if you are looking for a great pizza place – are you more inclined to eat at the restaurant that has 250, 5-star reviews or one that has 25, 2-star reviews? In most instances, the 5-star rated pizza shop will get your business.
This logic applies to any service business! If you are ready to make a powerful impression on new, potential customers, let’s learn about how the GMB profile experts at Riley Summers Marketing Group can help to elevate your local visibility and drive more prospects to your business.
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Why is a Google Business Profile Important For My Jupiter Business?
A Google Business Profile is often the first point of contact potential customers will have with your business and the brand of your business. It is a point of reference in terms of the quality of your services and also provides useful information:
- A link to your website
- Phone number
- Address
- Hours of operation
- Pictures of the location
- A description of your business
… it also provides an opportunity to post short form content on the platform.
Having a polished Google Business profile helps to amplify your business as being professional and reliable. It’s also an opportunity to attract business from other local competitors that may have an outdated, incomplete &/or unengaging business profile of their own.
What is The Role of a Google Business Profile
A Google Business profile plays an important role in how local customers find your business online. Whether they are looking for someone to help with a service need or perhaps, a returning customer that is looking for the hours that you are open – all can be found in a well maintained Google Business profile.
Did You Know? An optimized Google Business profile can significantly boost your local SEO”
In combination with a well-structured Local SEO campaign, an optimized Google Business profile can significantly boost your local SEO – which helps your business to rank higher in Google for relevant, local search results. This means that when someone is using Google to find a local business to provide a service that your business caters to, there is a greater likelihood that your business will be placed higher in those search results compared to your competition and put your business in a better position to get the click or call.
Going beyond a business directory listing, a Google Business profile is an essential tool for building trust, increasing visibility and driving more leads to your business – regardless of the type or size of your business.
Analysis | Strategy | Execution | Results
What Are The Key Components of an Optimized Google Business Profile?
There are several important components that work together to help your Google Business profiles stand out from your local competition. Each element plays a role to best showcase the quality of the services your business offers – which helps to drive engagement with potential customers.
Business Information
The core of the profile is having accurate, up-to-date information about your business. This includes – the name of the business, the local phone number, the address, the hours of operation and your website URL. While it may seem simple, having the right information helps not only users but also Google as it works to deliver Google users with accurate search results.
VERY IMPORTANT – Consistency of this information is paramount as you build a Local SEO strategy and the Google Business profile is the core of that strategy.
Photos and Videos
Visual content is a powerful way to help connect with customers. Having clear, well lit and positioned photos of your business location, the staff and the services that you offer provides a more appealing experience for people visiting your profile. It gives them an indication of what type of quality they can expect should they decide to hire you.
Ratings & Reviews
Nothing speaks more highly of a business than the review/testimonial of a satisfied client. Reviews are one of THE MOST influential factors to convince prospects into becoming customers of your business. In today’s landscape, MOST PEOPLE go online to validate their decision-making process.
The number of reviews AND the star-rating of those reviews are very important and also, an effective way for business owners to help evaluate the quality of the services being offered to customers by their staff (or by yourself if you are a sole-proprietor). Google also pays attention to these metrics – including how long (in time) it takes for you to respond when someone leaves a review on your Google Business profile.
Responding to reviews (when they are either good OR bad) also demonstrates to new business prospects that your business cares about customer feedback and that you are willing to engage with online users. When you actively manage and respond to reviews, it can potentially turn satisfied customers into advocates for your brand – and that word-of-mouth advertising is one of THE BEST ways to generate new business opportunities.
Posts and Updates
A Google Business profile enables businesses to share posts about various topics – these may be special offers, sales, discounts, updates and even character-limited blog content. They are posted directly to the platform and appear on your profile. While engagement in these posts can be variable (depending on what is being posted), it can help to highlight what is new/interesting at your business, what things your business supports (think: community involvement/events) and that your business is actively involved in keeping customers – and prospective customers – updated with new things going on at your business. All of this can be accomplished without viewers even needing to go to your website.
Business Categories
The platform also has the ability to place your business into specific categories – for example: plumber, law firm, electrician and so on. There are primary categories and also, secondary categories – which enable your profile to be more eligible to be shown in relevant local searches in Google. You can also add additional attributes including onsite parking, wheelchair access, women-owned and more. This can also provide prospective customers with important information so that they can simply read it on your profile and not have to call and ask.
Question & Answer (Q&A) Section
A question and answer section is also available – where readers can ask questions and you can then respond to those questions. NOTE – it is important to respond in a timely manner to these questions as Google is paying attention to responsiveness.
Insights, Analytics & Data
Google also provides a wealth of data from the profile should you be interested in paying attention to these metrics – at Riley Summers Marketing Group, we are a data-driven agency which enables the data to help inform many important decision in regards to marketing strategy and where we spend the time helping to ensure your marketing budget is deployed in the most effective manner.
The data available includes:
- Number of times the profile has been viewed (within definable date-ranges)
- On mobile and on desktop computers
- How many reviews received (within definable date-ranges)
- The average rating of those reviews (on a 1 to 5 scale)
- How many users asked for directions
- The number of users that viewed the profile and clicked-through to your website
… all of these metrics can also help to measure the results of updates and changes that have been made to your Google Business profile.
When managed by an effective team, a Google Business profile becomes more than just a business listing – it becomes a powerful advertising tool that can help to grow your business.
Rank Where It Matters
Hyper Local Targeting
Proven Results
How Does An Optimized Google Business Profile Help With Local SEO?
Local SEO and Google Business profiles work hand-in-hand. The Google Business profile is the core center of the local SEO function – all roads lead to the Google Business profile. Having an optimized Google Business profile enables Jupiter businesses to rank higher in Google search results that have been performed by users that are specifically looking for the services that business provides.
Local Business Directories: When going beyond the Google Business profile, there are hundreds of online business directories that your business can be listed in – Google identifies these signals and, compares their accuracy to the Google Business profile of your business. Consistency is key here where the information published in these business directory listings must be the same as the information listed on your Google Business profile (think: name, address, city, zip code, phone number, hours of operation and so on)…
The combination of an optimized Google Business profile AND all of the online business directory listings results in higher ranking positions in the Google “3 Pack” map listings which often feature ABOVE the Google Organic listings in the Google search results.
However, in very competitive markets, more power is needed and at Riley Summers Marketing Group, we have the strategy to help propel your business ahead of that competition.
More Search Term Exposure: Beyond the enhanced visibility, we can also leverage the power of Google’s machine-learning, which can associate your business with other, highly relevant searches from users thus expanding the reach of your Google Business profile.
Improved Customer Experience: Customers can interact with your Jupiter business via the Google Business profile, which also includes posting a review of their experience with your business. It also provides businesses with an opportunity to reply to those reviews.
Posting News: An optimized Google Business profile enables businesses to use the platform to make announcements and publish content about other promotions your business may be interested in announcing.
FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions About Google Business
Why Choose Riley Summers To Handle Your Google Business Profile Management?
- TRUST: we have over a decade of experience building, optimizing and maintaining Google Business profiles – we know what works, what to spend time on and be trusted to get it done.
- PROVEN RESULTS: we are experts in local SEO with the proven ranking visibility to demonstrate our strategies work.
- REPUTATION MANAGEMENT: we have over 15 years of experience managing the online reputation of businesses and can help YOUR business obtain reviews from not only new clients, but also prior clients that may not have been contacted by your business for an extended period of time.
- TEAMWORK: we have a dedicated team focused on Google Business profile management.
We are marketing experts that live and breath online advertising. We have proven results and can apply the strategies we developed that have repeatedly produced successful results in numerous markets nationwide.
To learn more, schedule a conversation with our team – we are ready to help you today.