– How to optimize your Google My Business listing in 15 steps coming up. (bright upbeat music) So first off, Google My Business is so valuable. If you can rank on the first page of Google and be on top when it comes to the business listings for your particular industry, that’s a game changer, but how do you do that? Well, in this video, I’m gonna walk through 15 simple steps that you can follow to optimize your Google My Business listing page so that you rank higher. Let’s dive in.

Step number one is your business name. So Google My Business obviously has a field for business name, populate it, and use your actual business name, your legal business name, how you would put it on your business card. Do not try adding keywords to your business name. Do not try adding your city or your location to your business name. This will hurt your rankings.

So make sure that it’s just truly what your business name is.

Step two is to select your primary category. Now don’t get caught in the weeds here. You can only select one. There’s a predefined list that you can choose from, so just make sure that you pick the category that makes the most sense for your business.

It’s the most important category of what you do. So if you do multiple things, just pick the one that’s your most primary category that you would want the most sales to come from. What’s the most important keyword essentially for your business, select that as the primary category. Now power tip here, you’re gonna wanna also optimize your website with that primary category keyword. Use the same phrasing, and use that on your website content.

So put it in your homepage, title tag, on your homepage, content, your headings, everywhere you can that makes sense authentically and naturally, use that term on your website so that Google can connect the dots between your Google My Business listing and your website, that’s gonna help you rank higher. Step three is to select your secondary categories.

Now go through the process here, and this is where you’ll select the other categories of things that you do. Don’t select things that you don’t do. Make sure you only select categories of products and services that you offer that make sense for your industry and what your business does and who you are and what you’re about, right?

You don’t wanna confuse Google here.

You wanna make sure that this is lean and mean. Don’t select a ton just for the sake of selecting a ton, right? Just be very very targeted here with your secondary categories which are other things you do beyond the primary category. Now here again, power tip, take these important phrases and also get that content on your website.

Make sure you have service pages on your website, product pages on your website, and they’re properly optimized with these exact same phrases so that you Google My Business and your website both match, and that’s gonna help give you double power to rank higher. Step four is to populate your street address for your business. So if you don’t have a physical location, no problem this can be hidden. But if you do have a physical location that somebody’s gonna be present at, at least some part of the week, make sure to populate your address. The important thing about the address is the closer somebody is in proximity to your location, the better chance you have at ranking high.

But if you’re using a fake address or something like that, that’s gonna crush your rankings. Don’t try to trick Google. Simply just state the area that you serve and hide your address. You’ll be just fine. Step five is to list your service areas.

So your service areas are areas you serve. Think about this in terms of you visiting your customer. So if your customer visits you, that’s where you’re gonna wanna use the address field so that there’s a physical address they can come visit you at. But if you generally visit your customer, you’re gonna wanna use the service area tool. So make sure that you add your service area or areas.

Keep in mind, once you go outside 20 miles of a service area you’re not really gonna be too visible. So don’t try putting a bunch of different service areas. Don’t put the USA and think that you’re gonna show up everywhere because you put the USA.

The service area should be truly the area that you will serve. So if you don’t wanna serve particular area two hours from where you are, don’t put that service area.

Just put your true service area. Step six is to add your business hours. So this is your hours of operation for customers. So if customers can visit you or call you and find you there available to help them then that’s your business hours. So populate your business hours for each day of the week, put closed if you’re closed.

Also, you can go ahead and you can establish which holidays you’ll close so people can see that in advance. This is gonna be helpful, and keeping this updated and fresh with your listing will help your listing be active and ultimately rank higher. Step seven is to add your primary and additional phone numbers to your listing. Your primary phone number is best if it’s local. So if you have a local number in your area, that will help with your ranking, so use your primary for that.

And then if you have additional numbers, like 1-800 numbers or call tracking numbers, that kind of a thing, use that in the secondary phone number. Now, if you do have a call tracking number you wanna use, try to get one local, and then you’ll use that in the primary. The key is with the primary, if you have a local number, that’s gonna help up with your rankings. Step eight is to add your website URL. So make sure that’s just right to your homepage, or it could be to a product page, or a service page if you think that’s more beneficial.

Or if you have multiple locations and you’re optimizing multiple Google My Business profiles but you just have one main website, and each location has its own URL and own landing page, use URL in that specific business profile page. And then if you’re a marketing guru, you might wanna use some ref codes, or some UTM tracking codes in the URL as well. So keep that in mind. Step nine is to add your appointment URL. So if there’s a way for anybody to go ahead and book services online, book any type of an appointment, or even just fill out a lead form, use that field to enter a URL there so people can schedule an appointment, or a free estimate, or whatever it is online, link them to the form on your site or the scheduling tool that you use so they can go ahead and do this.

Step is to add your services, your products, your product descriptions, and your menu, depending on the type of business that you are, to your Google My Business profile. So menu is only applicable to restaurants so if you’re not a restaurant, you can skip that part. But if you’re another type of a business, you generally have services or products. So definitely make sure that you add your services and products directly to who your Google My Business. Add all the content that you can in terms of your product and service names, and their descriptions, and populate that directly on your Google My Business.

This is better than linking to your website for those products or services. The more content you can add to your Google My Business profile, the better. So take advantage of this opportunity, spend some time doing this. If you have seasonal products or services make sure to keep that in mind, throughout the year you wanna put a reminder out to yourself to update your Google My Business, and that’s actually good, because when you’re updating your Google My Business, Google sees that as an active profile and therefore it ranks it higher.

So just make sure you take advantage of this ‘cos this is something that most small business owners skip.

So you don’t skip it, you do it, and you’ll rank higher. Step 11 is to go ahead and populate your business attributes. Now this is like categories you have specific things that you can choose from here. Just make sure that you’re honest and authentic here, don’t select anything that you don’t have. So some of the things here might be the number of bathrooms you have, if your facility is handicapped accessible, et cetera.

So just go through the list, go ahead and populate anything that makes sense. Don’t skip it because like I said earlier, everything you do on your Google my Business Profile is gonna help your ranking if it’s authentic, true, and accurate. So just make sure that you populate it if it makes sense and move on. Step 12 is to populate your business description. Now this is the money line for your business.

This needs to be your best sales pitch in one paragraph. The character limit here is 750 characters, so make sure that you have a really good sales pitch within 750 characters. Keep it high level, keep it very targeted to your brand, keep it your elevator pitch, don’t include links, or emojis or anything like that, but do include your very best primary keyword and maybe a couple secondary keywords which should match your primary and secondary categories ideally. Make this just your best content right here. This is gonna help attract customers and help your ranking move up.

Step number 13 is to add your pictures. Add photos to your Google My Business. Don’t skip this step. A lot of businesses skip it, and this is really, really valuable.

Google has so many studies and stats that show that businesses with profiles with a lot of pictures rank higher but they also get a lot more traffic.

So make sure that you are actually uploading pictures. Now, let me give you some power tips here. Upload your logo, a picture of your business, a picture of you, a picture of your employees, a picture of happy customers, a picture of your work, and consistently update your pictures like every month, upload new pictures. Now here, again, make sure that you do this right.

So use your camera on your phone because your camera on your phone is gonna capture what Google calls geo tagging.

This is gonna automatically capture information on your actual picture like the physical location, et cetera. So if you’re uploading pictures that are properly geo tagged in your service area, near your location, this is gonna give you brownie points for Google and help you rank higher. Also name your pictures when you save the file. So save the file with your business name, your business category, which is your primary category term, right? You can also maybe mix in some of the secondary category terms as well, and your city and location.

That way the picture is named, optimized, it’s geo tagged, and you’re always updating your profile with fresh pictures. This is gonna be a really great way for you to sneak ahead of your competitors on rankings. Step 14 is only really applicable if you have multiple locations but it’s to use the labels and the store codes features. So the that’s just where you’re gonna wanna label and give your store a store code if you have multiple locations so you can stay organized properly.

So if you don’t know anything about this, Google it, look it up.

If you have multiple locations, you can learn more, but that’s the high level on it, and it’s really only applicable if you have multiple locations. Just make sure you do it if you do. And step 15, last step and last tip, and most valuable and important tip of all, is to get reviews. The more reviews that you have on your Google My Business profile page, the higher you are gonna rank. So just get review, after review, after review.

Ask your customers for a review after you do business with them. It’s so valuable. That way every customer you do business with is gonna refer you five more. Isn’t that great? So just get reviews from your customers.

It’s unbelievably important and valuable, and also make sure that you consistently do it. Don’t just do this on a one time deal. Make sure that you have new reviews coming in every week, every month, for ever.

And ultimately try to have more reviews and a higher average rating than your competitors in your area on Google My Business. If you have the most reviews, and your profile is optimized in every way that we just talked about, you’re gonna rank really high.

And don’t be defeated if you don’t have a lot of customers yet, and a lot of reviews yet. If you do everything else I talked about, you have a good chance of ranking high just with that alone, but by getting reviews, it’s really gonna sure up the strength of your profile page, and you’re gonna rise to the top.

Thanks for watching, and follow us for more content like this down the road, happy marketing..

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