Manny Potter | Internet Marketing Consultant

Google My Business itself is not a public-facing, searchable directory (such as Yelp), BUT  your listing on Google My Business is what many other public-facing, searchable directories pull from.

This includes Google Maps, which has become its own hybrid form of a review site/business directory/navigation service.

Your Google My Business listing can also impact your rankings in search results on both Google Maps and regular Google searches.

If that’s not enough to convince you, here are some compelling stats that highlight its importance.

Businesses with a Complete and Accurate GMB Listing:

Are 2.7x more likely to be considered reputable

Get 7x more clicks

Complete and Accurate GMB Listings:

Are 70% more likely to attract location visits

Are 50% more likely to lead to a purchase

Here’s how you can optimize and take full advantage of your GMB listing.

BASIC LEVEL

1. Set up your Google Business listing

The first step is to set up (or claim) your Google My Business Listing. Go to Google My Business page and click “Start Now” in the upper left corner.

Did you know that anyone can list your business on Google? That’s a little scary, but fear not—you as the owner can claim your listing which grants you the access to edit and update your information, to post timely information, and to manage reviews. The claiming process requires a few steps, but it is a must.

2. Complete your listing

Fill in every relevant field that Google offers. You want to make sure the profile is as complete as possible and that every piece of information is accurate.

The impact of inaccurate or inconsistent listings is not one you can afford. A complete Google My Business listing includes:

Business name: The legal / official name of your business.

Address: Full address of your business.

Phone number: A number with a local area code is recommended. That’s one extra signal to Google that you are actually local. Make sure the number you use for your Google My Business listing is also displayed on your website.

Category: Choose a relevant category. This will help Google decide which searches your local listing belongs in.

Website: Your website URL.

Hours of Operation: The hours your business is open. For days when you have unusual hours, like holidays or special events, you can set special hours.

Description: What you offer, what sets you apart, your history, or anything else that’s helpful for customers to know. Allowable limit is 750 characters. Keep in mind that only the first 250 characters show up in the Knowledge Panel, so prioritize your information. Finally, no links or HTML.

Photos: Showcase your products and services to people who are looking for what you offer. Consider creating a 360-view virtual tour of your business for customers. According to Google, listings that have a virtual tour and photos generate twice as much interest as those without.

Depending on your industry, there may be additional fields such as menus for restaurants.

A complete listing makes it as easy as possible for potential customers to find and contact your business. In addition, the more complete your listing is, the more favor you will receive from Google when ranking you in results.

3. Make sure your information matches everywhere else

One thing Google’s algorithm looks at to verify the legitimacy of a listing is a consistency in how it’s listed across different websites. While that seems simple enough – your address is the same each time you enter it somewhere – it’s easy for little differences to slip in. Maybe you wrote out the Road part of the street name one time, and shortened it to Rd another time, for instance.

Pick a standard way to write out your address, a consistent phone number to use, and make sure all your listings match both each other and the information you provide on your website. And work on getting your website listed in as many relevant directories as possible.

4. Avoid penalty-inducing offenses.

Any work you do to optimize your website or local listing will be for naught if you incur a penalty. Google suspends business listings for a range of offenses. Getting suspended is stressful, confusing, and bad for business, so it’s best to avoid doing anything that puts you at risk of it.

Read through Google’s guidelines for Google My Business listings so you have a full understanding of what not to do. Some of the main things to avoid are:

Using a URL that redirects to your website’s URL, rather than the actual URL itself.

Trying to awkwardly add keywords into your business name field.

Having multiple local listings for the same business location.

Using any address for your business that isn’t a physical storefront or office space where you meet with customers.

Use common sense and don’t try to play the system or get extra listings and you’ll probably stay on the right side of Google.

5. Encourage reviews

You’ll notice that the local businesses listed in the map snippet of a local search usually have star ratings next to their name. Google wants to provide the most useful information to its users, and users want to find the nearby business that seems the best. In both cases, it benefits your business to have a high star rating.

Ask your happy customers to take a few minutes to give you a review on Google. Include an encouragement on promotional materials you hand out or put up in your store. A gentle nudge or a reminder of how much it means for your business can make your loyal customers that much more likely to take the time to say a few kind words about you.

Utilize our proprietary Dashboard Review Widget as well as our Survey Module to get positive reviews for your business listing on Google and Yelp.

6. Make sure your website and content is optimized for search

All the usual SEO advice that helps strengthen the authority of your website in the eyes of Google matters here too. So don’t focus on optimizing just your local listing. Optimize your website as well.

Make sure that you:

Incorporate relevant keywords into the meta tags and copy on each page, where you can do so naturally.

Add schema markup to your website.

Create content with a local focus i.e. locally relevant landing pages.

Look for local linking opportunities.

A strong website that’s optimized for both your customers and search engines will be that much more likely to make it into the list of the top three in a local Google search.

ADVANCED LEVEL

7. Post to Google My Business

Just like with other social media platforms, you can now post directly to Google My Business. Your posts show up on the “Posts” tab of your listing, but might also become visible on your Google Maps or Google Search result, depending on relevance.

Through Google posts you can make announcements, create events, highlight products, and run promotions. The information in these posts is that which customers need in order to stay engaged with you, which is ultimately what leads them to choose you over competitors. In addition, each post type has a call to action button, making the experience from discovery to engagement seamless.

If you’re not already convinced the impact Google Posts can have on your audience, check out this quote from Google:

“Seventy percent of people look at multiple businesses before making a final choice. With Posts, you can share timely, relevant updates right on Google Search and Maps to help your business stand out to potential customers. And by including custom calls-to-actions directly on your business listing, you can choose how to connect with your customers.”

8. Utilize Questions & Answers

Questions & Answers is a great feature for Google local search. It’s very cool! Just like it sounds, Q&A allows people to ask questions about your business and you can answer those questions.

The Google My Business Q&A feature is the perfect opportunity to hear directly from “the people” and you can respond to them. Win-win.

One thing you should do is be proactive and create a Frequently Asked Questions list to preempt people’s GMB Q&As. Check with your sales reps and your customer service staff to identify the questions people most often ask, then put those Q&A questions on your GMB listing.

TIP: Google has said that upvoting questions can make them more visible. If someone has a particularly important question, go ahead and upvote it.

9. Google My Maps Syndication with Driving Directions

Google My Maps Syndication is an advanced level strategy to gain local With Google My Maps Syndications, you can get:

Map mentions from top ranking GEO locations

Locally optimized Tier 2 links and embeds

Driving directions to your location from serviceable areas

Improved local search rankings

Here’s how an optimized Google My Map with driving directions (embedded on the website) looks like.

10. Respond to Customer Reviews. Even Negative ones

The reviews on your GMB page can be a deciding factor in whether or not a buyer engages with your brand. Just check out some of these statistics about Local Consumer Reviews:

85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations

Positive reviews make 73% of consumers trust a local business more

68% of consumers left a local business review when asked

30% of consumers say they’ve judged a business based on its responses to reviews

When making a purchase decision, people look to others for their opinions. We all do it. And we do it often. We want to learn from the experiences of those who have purchased before us. Always respond to your reviews. Positive reviews give a good impression of your business and should be easy to respond to.

But what do you do about the inevitable 1-star rating and the scathing negative review?

Many businesses shy away from them, hoping they’ll go unnoticed. But you need to respond to those reviews. The people leaving them deserve it, and the people reading them need it.

But what do you do about the inevitable 1-star rating and the scathing negative review?

Many businesses shy away from them, hoping they’ll go unnoticed. But you need to respond to those reviews. The people leaving them deserve it, and the people reading them need it.

Conclusion

There are many ways customers can find your business, but there is no denying that Google My Business is an incredibly powerful gateway to your website.

It positions your important business information in front of the eyes of potential customers who are looking for your product, service, or experience.

It helps with your local SEO, offers a chance to engage with your customers via reviews or posts, and provides useful insights on your customers’ purchasing paths.

The post How to optimize and take full advantage of your google my business listing appeared first on Manny Potter | Internet Marketing Consultant.

How to optimize and take full advantage of your google my business listing

Google My Business itself is not a public-facing, searchable directory (such as Yelp), BUT  your listing on Google My Business is what many other public-facing, searchable directories pull from.

This includes Google Maps, which has become its own hybrid form of a review site/business directory/navigation service.

Your Google My Business listing can also impact your rankings in search…

Google announced last month that they are launching a new Google My Business App that provides a host of features that can help small business owners to easily manage their online presence and respond to customers.

Following are the biggest features and highlights:

1. Profile Tab

Google has made it extremely easy to upload photos, create offers and add events by providing a post button. You can also update information of your business from the profile tab and it will instantly appear on the search as well as Map. 

2. Customer Tab

People can connect with you in many ways. They can message you, follow you, book a service or leave google reviews. From now on, you can see all of these customers in one place -The new customer tab. You can not only see but also respond to the reviews & post offers. Not to mention that you will get a notification when you get a new customer connection. Also, you will soon be able to respond to messages directly from the app.

3.  See your Progress in Real Time

The data that matters to you the most is now on the home screen itself. So you can now check how many new people interacted with your business, new connections & more in one place.

Takeaway

Google My Business App is a very powerful tool that every business owner and SEO professionals must have. It’s easy to use and offers a lot of tools that make tracking, analyzing and making changes easy.

The other big news is that Google is about to launch a chat feature for Maps. So users can directly chat with business owners directly after searching for their business. Having a GMB app will help you with this feature as well.

The post New Google My Business App: Now manage your business on the go appeared first on Manny Potter | Internet Marketing Consultant.

New Google My Business App: Now manage your business on the go

Google announced last month that they are launching a new Google My Business App that provides a host of features that can help small business owners to easily manage their online presence and respond to customers.

Following are the biggest features and highlights:

1. Profile Tab

Google has made it extremely easy to upload photos, create offers and add events by providing a post button.…

Reviews & Ratings: A Local Service ads click study, sheds some light on how the users interact with local service ads and how it affects organic results.

A total of 5500 “impartial internet users” participated in this study. They gave us some invaluable insight into how the local service ads impact the overall results and click through rate.

Below are the highlights from the study:

Local service ads get 13.8% of the overall Google local search clicks.

The local service ad on the top of the search result receives the highest clicks while the lowest one receives the least clicks.

The first organic result gets the highest number of clicks.

Local service ads encourage people to click on paid ads. When it’s live paid ads get 25.3% of all the clicks, while they are absent, the paid ads receive a mere 14.6%.

Review & ratings are the biggest driver of clicks in the local search result.

As much as 91% of customers read reviews while shopping online. This is why the reviews are the number one factor that customers pay attention to when evaluating a local business. Reviews not only help you generate trust among your prospects but, also help you stand out from the crowd. It looks good to the eyes too.

Customers prefer a business which has a healthy number of reviews & it increases the click-through rate up to 25%. The more reviews a business has, the more customers they will get as people generally prefer popular business as compared to the new one, because taking risk is not something we as a human-like to do, very often.

This is why you should be paying more attention to reviews. If your product or service is good, then it is highly likely that there will be happy customers, who are willing to invest some time and effort in writing reviews.

To help you get more reviews for your business, we highly recommend our reputation management widget. It’s a small piece of code which is placed on your website and helps you get positive reviews on Google, Yelp and Facebook. In addition, it helps to filter out negative reviews too thus ensuring positive experience to website users. Need more details? Contact me.

The post Reviews & ratings are the most prominent local search ranking factor appeared first on Manny Potter | Internet Marketing Consultant.

Reviews & ratings are the most prominent local search ranking factor

Reviews & Ratings: A Local Service ads click study, sheds some light on how the users interact with local service ads and how it affects organic results.

A total of 5500 “impartial internet users” participated in this study. They gave us some invaluable insight into how the local service ads impact the overall results and click through rate.

Below are the highlights from the study:

Local service…

It’s quite ironic that an internet giant like Google relied on old school “Postcard verification” process till now. In order to verify your business, you had to send a request via Google My Business and then wait for 14 days to receive the postcard. In many cases, the postcard arrived on time, but in some cases, it didn’t arrive at all. So the whole process was slow & troublesome, to say the least.

Although Google did offer Phone verification too, it was limited to selected industries because it’s really hard to check the authenticity of a business over a phone call, and Google wants to list only genuine businesses, or at least they try their best to do so.

After a ton of complaints and thousands of emails with subject line “I have not received the postcard,” they decided to verify a business over a video call. Although it’s not currently available to everyone, we can say that it will be a norm in near future.

Here’s how Video verification works:

Go to Google My Business and click on the verify my business listing from the left menu.

There will be 2-3 verification options depending on the type of your business. Choose “Verify now with live video chat”.

The post Google My Business Listing: Verify your listing over a video call appeared first on Manny Potter | Internet Marketing Consultant.

Google My Business Listing: Verify your listing over a video call

It’s quite ironic that an internet giant like Google relied on old school “Postcard verification” process till now. In order to verify your business, you had to send a request via Google My Business and then wait for 14 days to receive the postcard. In many cases, the postcard arrived on time, but in some cases, it didn’t arrive at all. So the whole process was slow & troublesome, to say the…

Instagram poll sticker is a new feature, which will allow you to add a poll question to your Instagram story, with two answer options. Your followers viewing the post can answer your poll, by selecting one of the two given options.

How To Use Instagram Poll Sticker

To add an Instagram Poll sticker to your story, upload your post, then click the sticker icon on the top right and select the sticker saying Poll. Put your question with two answer options and post it. When you swipe up, you will see who all have participated in the poll and what is their response. Even you can see the percentage breakdown.

The Instagram Poll sticker can be beneficial to promote your business/brand, here are few ways you can utilize it for your business.

Interact With Your Viewers

With Instagram Poll sticker you can interact with your followers over any Instagram story, you can ask any question with an option of “Yes” or “No”, also you can ask brand-related questions to know your viewer’s opinion and understand them better. For example, a restaurant can post a poll for two of their famous dishes and ask the audience, which is one is their favorite.

Get Your Audience’s Insight

You can make use of this feature to know what your audiences prefer and gain more information about their choice and preferences. Knowing your audience’s preference, you will be able to serve them better. For example, if you are creating an online course you can ask the audience what would they prefer? “Written Course” or “Video Course”, so you can make the course as per their choice.

Include Your Audience In Choices

Through the medium of the Instagram Poll sticker, you can interact with your audience and ask them to choose their favorite, this way you showing them their choices matter you. For e.g., give them two options for the upcoming flavor of the month or ask them to select the new packaging style for your product.

Bring Something New To A Hashtag Campaign, Event Coverage or Location

Just like we interact via live tweeting during events and hashtag campaigns, the Instagram Poll offers you the same opportunity. You can combine a poll sticker with hashtag sticker, or put hashtag to the caption and start an interaction with the audience. Even you can combine the poll sticker with a location sticker for local exposure.

Combine It With “Swipe Up” Link

You can combine your Instagram Poll sticker with the “Swipe Up” post, or add a poll after the “See More” link.  The “Swipe Up” link is accessible only when your account has over 10,000 followers.

The post Instagram poll sticker: Promote your business with it appeared first on Manny Potter | Internet Marketing Consultant.

Instagram poll sticker is a new feature, which will allow you to add a poll question to your Instagram story, with two answer options. Your followers viewing the post can answer your poll, by selecting one of the two given options.

How To Use Instagram Poll Sticker

To add an Instagram Poll sticker to your story, upload your post, then click the sticker icon on the top right and select the…

Google quick links: You can now add them to your local results, thanks to Google My Business’s latest update! They have recently announced that local business owners will now be able to add quick links to their local listings. Currently, it is visible only to select categories of business.

But, those who will be able to enjoy it can add the quick links using their Google My Business account. It can prove to be a boon to those who directly serve the customers. From the limited categories that will be able to avail this new feature, the restaurant owners will reap the maximum benefits from it, since they can add direct links to online ordering menu, reviews and much more.

Google posted the news about it on their release notes page saying:

Add links to specific actions like online orders or reservations. Make it easier for customers to take action directly from your listing.

This new update is to make it easier for the users to take actions. By cutting short the process from Google —> Website —> Action to Google —> Action.

The help center article has been updated to explain the steps for businesses to take to add these URLs. Some of the actions include:

booking an appointment

placing an order

reserving a table

searching for items

viewing the menu

Here’s a screenshot:

The post Google quick links: Now you can add them to your local listings appeared first on Manny Potter | Internet Marketing Consultant.

Google quick links: Now you can add them to your local listings

Google quick links: You can now add them to your local results, thanks to Google My Business’s latest update! They have recently announced that local business owners will now be able to add quick links to their local listings. Currently, it is visible only to select categories of business.

But, those who will be able to enjoy it can add the quick links using their Google My Businessaccount. It…

Google Instant Chat: Local business owners with a verified Google My Business listing can now allow visitors to message them right from the local knowledge graph panel in search results.

Here is a screen shot of the message button in the local panel on Google:

If you already have a chat feature on your website, you know how profitable it can be. The conversion rate increases drastically when you provide satisfactory answers to customer’s queries, instantly!

When people search for a specific product or service, they are usually at the end of the buying cycle. They know what they want, but still, have some questions in mind. So the business that provides the specific information they are seeking and in the quickest time possible, gets the business!

But here’s a warning – Do not enable this feature if you can’t respond quickly. It is exclusively for those who can respond faster. Customers can view your average response time. And if your response time is bad, the chat feature can do more harm than good if you’re slow.

For example: If someone’s car broke down in the middle of the highway and they are trying to reach you, but you are not answering! You can imagine how frustrating it will be for them & how badly it will affect YOUR reputation!

So opt for the chat feature ONLY if your response time is quick. As of now, this feature is available delete this available it’s mentioned twice  currently available in select countries. In the US, it’s live only for a select few local business owners. Google said they sent some businesses emails “inviting you to participate in the pilot.” If you have not been invited, you will not have access to this feature.

For more information on how to use this feature, check out this link from Google – https://goo.gl/bNZYXd

The post Google instant chat to boost the bottom line of your business appeared first on Manny Potter | Internet Marketing Consultant.

Google instant chat to boost your the bottom line of your business

Google Instant Chat: Local business owners with a verified Google My Business listing can now allow visitors to message them right from the local knowledge graph panel in search results.

Here is a screen shot of the message button in the local panel on Google:

If you already have a chat feature on your website, you know how profitable it can be. The conversion rate increases drastically when you…

My Business Website Builder: According to Google, almost 60% small business owners don’t have a website because they think that either it’s too complex, expensive or way too time consuming.  To combat that, Google has launched a new platform within GMB (Google My Business) that lets business owners create a website within minutes.

Google is offering a FREE single page website bundled with all the GMB tools. However, it’s not for those who are willing to have at least 5-10 pages (which is recommended btw). It’s just a very basic webpage, where one can list their business name, tagline, few images, content, contact information, timing and directions. Here’s an example – http://ift.tt/2vn1ucF. It will be difficult to even impress your prospect clients with this website, let alone generating trust.

Google My Business

Now, if there is a verified listing in GMB, the data for hours, driving directions & business name as well as photos will be automatically inserted into the web page. Any changes to the GMB will also auto-flow to the web page.

We feel the product is not really a replacement for a full blown multi page website but it can be a reasonable play for a business that has a social only presence but wants more exposure in local search.

Although you can buy a customized domain from Google – little better than using business.site domain, it will still lack that WOW factor. The product lacks a number of obvious features like social sharing buttons, structured data, control over title tags & meta-descriptions  and an easy way to create a call to action button. Also, when a user clicks on your uploaded image, they will be redirected to Google Photos, an instant curiosity killer!

As of now there are close to 200K website developed, which can be confirmed by searching this in Google – “site:business.site“. Over the past several days, sites have been coming on-line at the rate of about 1500 per day.

The product isn’t an obvious knockout win. While it may be of value in developing countries, it is not at all clear what value it will provide in the US were websites are the norm and can be built inexpensively.

What do you think?

The post My business website builder is being released to the world by Google for free appeared first on Manny Potter | Internet Marketing Consultant.

My business website builder is being released to the world by Google for free

My Business Website Builder: According to Google, almost 60% small business owners don’t have a website because they think that either it’s too complex, expensive or way too time consuming.  To combat that, Google has launched a new platform within GMB (Google My Business) that lets business owners create a website within minutes.

Google is offering a FREE single page website bundled with all the…

There is no denying that customer reviews play a huge role in customer’s purchase decision. It’s so crucial that people often overlook the good products just because it doesn’t have any review and they don’t want to take any risk. e-commerce websites, such as Amazon, provide users the option to filter the results as per average customer reviews ratings and most of the customers consider it in their purchasing decision. It makes sense since nobody wants to receive bad items, after waiting for 3-4 days.

Studies have shown that approx 84% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. And that is the reason why it works like a charm. But what about the reviews for the local business? Do people really pay attention to it or they just go to the site that is at the top of the search engine result page.

A recent study by BrightLocal revealed that customers prefer a business that has an average rating of 3 stars. And if it is above 3 stars then the click through rates increase up to 25%. The more reviews a business has, the more customers they will get as people generally prefer popular businesses as compared to the new ones, because taking risk is not something we as humans like to do, very often.

So if you own a local business, it is highly recommended that you try to get as many positive reviews as possible. In general, 7 out of 10 customers will happily review the product or service if they are asked to. Since very few businesses ask for reviews, the selected few who do, reap all the benefits.

In the local pages, it not only help a business generate immediate trust among users, but it also looks good to the eyes as well. And to increase the click through rate, your listing should stand out from the crowd. And this is exactly what reviews have to offer.

As much as 91% customers read reviews while shopping online and that is why the reviews are the number one factor that customers pay most attention to when evaluating a local business. 56% of customers pick a business from local pack based on the number of positive reviews.

Positive customer reviews not only help business in the local packs but it also helps them in the organic search since reviews are the part of rich snippet. And this is why you should be paying more attention to reviews. If your product or service is good, it is highly likely that your customers will be happy, who are willing to invest some time and effort in writing reviews. It is going to drastically improve the bottom line of your business.

A very effective and easy way to generate more positive reviews is to use our review widget. Its a small piece of code which sits on your website and looks like this.

  Quick Features of Customer Reviews in a Widget

Get genuine reviews on Google & Yelp

Positive reviews get featured on your website

Filter negative reviews

Absolutely FREE for customers using our dashboard

Completely customizable

Designed with mobile and tablets in mind so users can access it from any device

More reviews means improved Local SEO rankings

Improved brand reputation

The post Customer reviews: Why you should be paying more attention! appeared first on Manny Potter | Internet Marketing Consultant.