Do you have a business and don’t have a verified Google My Business listing? Find out how it is created and how it occurs, and make it easier for customers to find them on Google.
If you have a business and want your customers to find you more easily on Google, now is the time to create a verified Google My Business listing. Or, if you already have one, optimize it and update it in every section to ensure that the world’s number one search engine gives even more visibility to your products and services. Let’s find out how to do it now.
What is Google My Business, and how much does it cost?
Google My Business is a service created in 2014 that, internally, brings together Google Places ( Maps ), the Google+ Business, and Local ( social ) Pages, which were once distinct. It is designed to help businesses and organizations manage their online presence on Google, including Search and Maps, by verifying and modifying their information to grab users’ attention and better attract customers.
The Google My Business service is free. It is possible to insert a company on Google My Business without costs and independently, following the steps indicated in the guidelines provided by Google itself.
How to create a Google My Business listing
The first step is to log into your Google account or, if you don’t already have one, create it. Then, on the page of the Google My Business site, click on the Try now button. At that point, the actual registration procedure begins.
The first information to enter is the name of the business. Next, you must first specify where it is located: country, address, postal code, city, province. Other fundamental data are the business category (e.g., marketing agency) and contacts (phone number and website).
For businesses that have multiple branches, it is recommended that you create a profile for each of them. This way, it is possible to communicate its future opening to the community promptly. On Google My Business, it is also possible to create a card even for an activity that has not yet been opened.
It is good to know that, up to the decisive step of verification, the information entered in each Google My Business card is invisible to anyone except for those who entered it.
The verification card sent by Google to the address of the location of the business serves to avoid the risk that someone may pretend to be a representative of a business even if they are not. The postcard has a code to be entered on the platform to prove that you are actually the owner. In some cases, the verification procedure on Google My Business can also be carried out in other ways (for example, via text message, e mail, or telephone).
Once you have completed the verification procedure on Google My Business, you can enter additional data about your business in the relevant tab, such as location on the map, opening hours, photos, and videos of the business and products.
The Google My Business service also allows creating posts to promote certain products or events and show constantly updated content to customers (the posts are visible on the platform for no more than seven days).
Those with a Google My Business card should pay particular attention to the space reserved for user reviews, to which you must always respond without arguing with those who criticize. In addition to reviews, a particularly useful feature for connecting with your customers is the instant messaging service via SMS, through which you can reply to those who ask for more information on the business.
Furthermore, it is essential to monitor the statistics made available by Google My Business on how customers search for the activity and their origin.
Google My Business: How local search results are shown
To display an activity among the first results of a local search, Google is mainly based on three factors that, interacting with each other, identify the best match through an algorithm. These three factors are relevance, distance, and evidence.
With the right specific actions aimed at optimizing their Google My Business listing, those who run a business can make Google rank it higher than its competitors.
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