Google My Business: Why You Need it and How to Set it Up.

The purpose of Google My Business is that it helps you reach and engage with your users on Google.  It also enables your customers to leave you Google Reviews which is one of the key things in my opinion (check out the link to see what I mean if you are not sure).

When someone Googles your business, your listing will come upon the right-hand side of the page (on desktop) with all your business info and also the reviews that your business has. On a mobile, it will come up as one of the first few listings when someone Googles your business name and it will also appear in Google Searches and Google Maps.

You can listen to a mini-episode on this topic on The Business Greenhouse (my podcast) – full show notes here.

It’s a massive sign to potential customers that you are great at what you do if you have a load of 5* and very positive reviews from existing customers saying how great your services or products are.

First of all, go to Set up my Google My Business Profile – it’s free to set it up and also very easy.  You can do it yourself you don’t need to get someone like your website or tech person to do it for you.

You will be asked to add in basic information about your company such as location, contact details, hours of opening and services.  You will also need to verify your listing which can be done in various ways (I was sent a card to my home address with a code which verifies that my address is the correct one).  Note that if you don’t have an actual office or retail location and you don’t want your home address to show up then there is a place in the settings where you can change that. Make sure that you use the same address on Google My Business that you have on your site so that Google knows its all legitimate.

Encourage your customer and clients to leave you a review and make sure that you respond to anyone that does. Thanking them for doing so and commenting with something that is relevant to what they said. If the comment is not a good one then make sure that you address this both in real life and in the response.

Some people believe that good reviews might be a sign to Google that you are good at what you do/authority in your space and might have a positive effect on SEO (search rankings).  Whether this is the case or not I am pretty sure that you can guarantee that good reviews will have a positive effect on potential customers who are always looking for social proof that what they are going to buy is worth the purchase.

You can update the GMB listing with photos, videos and posts about yourself and what your business does so that people can get to know, like and trust you.  Just do it – it takes 10 mins and is well worth the time!

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