7 Ways to Avoid Mistakes With Your Google My Business Listing

Google My Business is an absolute necessity in order to be seen on the internet. It is an essential part of any business’s online presence and often the first place customers look for up-to-date information about your company.

The benefits of Google My Business are many.  Keeping your listing up to date can be time-consuming, but it is important. Here are a few of the top reasons to regularly check your listing:

  • Business categories;
  • New features;
  • Responding to reviews;
  • User and Google-generated updates;

The time you spend updating and maintaining your Google My Business listing should be seen as an important marketing function and prioritized appropriately. Make sure you accurately portray your business for Google and your customers. You should offer the most accurate information to ensure a better ranking from Google and higher customer satisfaction. 

Gmb Listing Mistakes To Avoid

When managing Google My Business, be careful to avoid critical mistakes that may occur. Avoid these mistakes that can negatively affect the ranking of your GMB listing.

Listing the business in the wrong category. When setting up your business’s Google My Business listing, selecting the correct category is an essential step. While this may seem like a straightforward task, for some businesses it may become a little harder. Having a correct category listed will ensure you avoid penalty points and help get your business seen in local searches.

Incorrectly listing business hours. Ensuring that your business publishes operating hours and that it is actually open during the hours you have listed, is important. If Google tells a searcher that your business is open at a certain time and they visit your business only to see the door locked, it won’t hesitate to add a strike to your batting count. In this case, the individual’s experience with Google’s listing service has now become negative, and therefore, Google hands that penalty along to you.

Not paying enough attention to customer reviews. While positive reviews across any platform provide value to your business, prioritize Google reviews first to optimize for local searches. Google’s aim is to provide searchers with the highest quality results and businesses, and to that end, filters businesses with poor ratings to the bottom of the search results. Ensuring your business is receiving positive 4 and 5-star reviews on a regular basis is a key building block in ranking success and should be addressed on a regular basis. 

Get The Most Of Your Google My Business Listing

Use all resources offered by Google My Business within its listing details to get the most out of your business locations. Basic but crucial tips for optimizing your listing:

Publish complete data of your business. Businesses offering the most detailed and accurate information will be easier to serve in search. Don’t leave anything to be guessed or assumed. Make sure your listing communicates what your business does, where it is, and how they can acquire the goods and/or services your business is offering.

Add keywords. Including important keywords and search phrases in your business listing will be incredibly helpful, especially since your business website is listed directly within your GMB listing. Use these in the business description and each time you post a Local Post to your audience.

Keep business hours accurate. It’s important to put your business hours, but it’s equally important to update them whenever they change. Google offers the ability to customize hours for holidays and other special events. It should always be updated to keep your listing accurate and customers happy.

Add photos & videos. The most important piece of imagery for a GMB listing is obviously the logo. There likely won’t be an image that gets more exposure, and they’re likely isn’t one that will have more of an impact. Google recommends businesses use their logo to help customers identify your business with a square-sized image. Other types of digital assets that should be added to your GMB listing are cover photos, interior photos, videos, additional photos with the team, or products you’re selling.

Google also offers the opportunity for a Virtual Tour, which will further enhance the brand profile’s visibility.

Let customers message you. Messages to and from customers have solely enabled through the Google My Business app. Messages can have customized automated responses to welcome customers for incoming messages. This helps with the responsiveness and visibility of the business since response times won’t suffer as badly.

For maximum performance and visibility through the GMB listing, it’s critical to keep message response time under 24 hours.

Use local posts. You can publish offers, events, products, and services directly to Google Search and Maps through posts on Google My Business. Posts should be respectful and non-offensive with visuals and links to sites that are trusted. Local posts let you engage with your audience and keep your presence fresh on Google.

Use the product catalogue. For merchants with products to showcase, GMB’s Product Editor allows you to do just that. Most business types are eligible to showcase products, so long as they are small and medium-sized businesses. Offering information about products including pricing, details, and photos, allows customers to get a better idea of products offered and interact more with businesses.

Conclusion

Getting your profile on Google My Business suspended can be a stressful experience. To prevent the suspension of your account, avoid doing mistakes and focus on implementing best practices. Don’t miss opportunities to connect to buyers with serious intent. Even your loyal customers can be turned off by a frustrating experience like showing up at your door only to learn that the hours have changed but no one updating your listing. 

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s more crucial than ever that you utilize and optimize GMB to display accurate, updated information about your business. Think of your Google My Business panel as the first point of contact between you and your customer. By not investing time in optimizing and updating it you can lose a customer’s trust and miss out on the lifetime value of the relationship.

Improve your business’s online visibility with the right local SEO services!  Help your business to stay in Google’s good books, and your SEO will likely benefit as a result.

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