Google My Business: concept, advantages and its importance in Local SEO
If one of your goals is to give your brand a greater presence on the Internet, it's time for you to learn about Google My Business .
A very important tool to increase your positioning within this search engine (SEO) which will allow your potential buyers to find you more easily.
What is Google My Business?
Google My Business is a platform that is part of the suite of free Google products that allows your business or company to obtain greater visibility within this search engine, and in turn within Google Maps.
It is an excellent tool for businesses that have physical establishments such as restaurants, clothing stores, technological accessories stores, technical services stores, among others.
Just as Facebook and Instagram allow their users to create a business profile, Google also offers this benefit to business owners who want to stand out in local searches, increasing their chances of appearing in search results with an attractive visual format.
This way, when someone enters keywords related to your services and products or even the name of your brand on the Internet, your Google My Business profile will appear to them.
We show you an example:
The Google My Business platform offers you multiple advantages, including:
Add contact information
Google My Business asks you to add your company's main contact information such as: phone number, location (address, map and directions), business hours, your website and a brief description of your business.
Showcase your products and services
This platform allows you to post photos of your business's facade and your products and services so that customers can see in advance what your company offers and what it looks like physically. We recommend posting high-resolution images that are attractive to the public.
Receive grades
Through Google My Business , users can rate your business and provide feedback on their shopping experience and customer service. These ratings are displayed in the form of stars, with 5 being the highest.
If you get good ratings, other users will feel more confident about buying telegram free number philippines your products and/or hiring your services, so this platform is an excellent showcase for adding new buyers to your client portfolio.
Use calls to action
One of the advantages of Google My Business is that it automatically places calls to action within the box that appears in the search results, such as “call,” “directions,” “website,” “save,” among others.
If a person clicks on the “call” button, they will see the number you linked to your profile in their directory, and they will just have to press a button to get in touch with you.
Get statistics
Google is a company that has fully understood the power of metrics and this platform is no exception. Google My Business shows you statistics on the traffic your business profile receives, which calls to action receive the most clicks, where the users who visit your business profile come from, which photos receive the most attention, among others.
Create a web page
As one of the new features of Google My Business , if you don't have a website for your business yet, you can now create a page within this platform, which you can insert into the corresponding link to your website. It should be noted that the website is very basic and you only have a few templates to customize it. However, it is a very good option to start with.
What is the importance of Google My Business in Local SEO?
Local SEO refers to a set of web positioning strategies aimed at increasing the visibility of your business in the first search results of people who are geographically close to the location of your physical establishments.
In other words, local SEO allows a company that has a physical store or provides a service in a specific geographic area to be found by potential buyers who are located in that area and perform searches related to that business.
In this way, when you create a profile on Google My Business you increase your chances of positioning yourself within your locality, since thanks to the address you provide through Google Maps, Google will automatically index your business among the search results of those people.
In the following example, we set our search engine location to Venezuela and search for “vegetarian burgers in Caracas” (the country’s capital).
As you can see, Fixie Veggies appears at the top of the Google Maps results, since this company has a Google My Business account and, as the search engine detects geographic proximity, it positions this brand among the first results.