GMB has become one of the top marketing opportunities for small businesses. This article shall highlight 13 GBM optimization tips, which can assist you to optimize your business to get the best Google rankings. Most marketing consultants use these tips, and you should also use them if you want to attract more customers and increase your revenue.
There is a possibility that you have been or you are still having a challenge with online marketing, and you still don’t know why your marketing strategies are not working. You shouldn’t blame yourself for that, as online marketing has never been easy. You don’t have to blame yourself if you notice that your Facebook reach isn’t as high as you expected, or your online adverts have become costly. You only need to understand the marketing strategies that can assist you to improve your online marketing. This post shall discuss these tips, and they shall definitely turn around your online marketing strategies.
So, what should you do to improve your online marketing strategies with GMB?
Motivate Your Customers to Leave Reviews And Comments
There is a possibility that you don’t take reviews seriously—however, you should understand that they are critical to any online marketing strategy. Online marketing experts argue that if your business attracts a lot of clients, and depends on Google reviews, you should ask your clients to leave reviews. This can be through text messages, emails, or displaying information in your store asking them to do the same. Don’t forget to tell the clients the process of leaving reviews for your business. There is no need to telling your clients to leave reviews and yet they don’t know how to do it.
In addition to this, continue directing your clients to google until you manage to double up your reviews. Most businesses today are struggling with connecting with clients, and then following up with them. If you are struggling with that, you can use a software program to assist you in connecting with your clients. However, the best and recommended method is to text your clients the link to your Google reviews.
Also, you can opt to use a Google review link generator, which allows you to send out emails, and also encourage your clients to leave reviews.
Order Google’s Free Package
This package includes interesting items like cards, posters, or stickers encouraging your customers to leave reviews. Google has around 10,000 of these packages, and you can get yours today for free. This means it’s on a first-come-first-serve basis. You should consider ordering your package as soon as possible before they run out.
In the package, you can get items like social posts, free posters, and other interesting items for your business designed by Google. These items can assist you to show off your testimonials, as well as to encourage your customers to leave reviews. This is an amazing resource that you should capitalize on since it’s free.
Reply to All the Reviews that You Get
Most business owners normally miss the chance to thank their clients and also connect with them for being loyal customers, as well as leaving positive reviews. But, there is another thing that you should be aware of—something that stresses most business owners, which is negative reviews. Getting negative reviews doesn’t mean that it’s the end of your world.
Negative reviews aren’t harmful to your business, as most people have become better when it comes to sizing up reviews. Therefore, if you get negative reviews, most people will be keen to read the reviews to know what they are all about. Moreover, they will want to see how you reply to the negative reviews.
This is usually a character-revealing moment for business owners to show how can they reply and address negative reviews. Negative reviews tend to come off a bit crazy, and most people will want to see how you react to them.
Dealing with negative reviews
Here is how you need to respond to every negative review that you get:
- First, make sure that you reply within 24 hours since that’s the period the customer will still be upset.
- Then, try to resolve the customer’s issue while responding to their review. Your response should be brief and to the point.
Some business owners tend to become angry when they get negative reviews, even when it was their fault. What they do is to put on the caps locks, and then type their response in an inappropriate manner.
If you are one of these business owners, have someone else review your response before posting it. Doing that ensures that you have not worsened the situation at hand. The best thing to do whenever you get a negative review is to promise to fix the issue and keep up with your promises. Therefore, ensure that your response satisfies your customer.
Another thing to note when replying to a negative review is that it’s not about the customer who left the review. Rather, it’s about the other customers who will read the reviews. If your business has hundreds or thousands of searches, people will come across this review. You should, therefore, ensure that you reply to the negative review appropriately to avoid turning potential customers away.
Create Product-Base Google Posts
What is a google post? It’s a way of creating a post, and then providing your business’ information on your Google My Business listing. A product-based google post is a post that has been optimized for your products.
However, what you will notice when creating a product based post is that Google will take the post, and then create a list of other products in your business. What Google does is that it takes these posts, puts them under your products tab, and your products will now be listed.
That means online users can get information about the products and services that you provide without having to visit your website. This is an amazing feature, which is a bit advanced. However, you need to be conversant with it a Google will be rolling it out soon.
Optimize Your GMB Description
This is another new feature that Google has released—the ability to give more information about your business on Google. Most people have done this, but when optimizing your description, ensure that you utilize all the characters allocated for you. Don’t forget to insert keywords that people might use when searching your business in Google. These keywords should also tell Google what your business is all about.
The process of optimizing your business is a bit long, but you should ensure that you fill out every detail in the process. Once done, check to see whether it’s been optimized with what your business does and whether it’s appealing to your clients, and it speaks to them too.
Never make your description formal, or use your mission statement when making your description. The best way to create the description is to make it a little bit fun and informal. Another thing is to ensure that you are giving the right information to capture the attention of your clients and convince them that your business has the solution for their problems.
Capture All the Attributes on Your GMB Listing, and Then Monitor Them
Google has also introduced this feature recently. When we say attributes, we mean those bits of information that google lets you give so that the public can have more information in regards to your business. Although these are little things, you should note that Google continues to add new ones every time. Therefore, you should make sure that you check-in every few months to make sure that your business is up-to-date.
You should also note that these attributes change frequently, and this means you will always have different attributes for your business. But, the idea behind this is that Google is trying to capture all this information, so that whenever an online user visits your GMB listing, they can access all the information they need about your business. This, in turn, allows the users to make a smart and informed decision.
Monitor Your Google My Business Insights
These are the analytics structure of Google My Business. Now, when you want to monitor your photos, check how many photos you have compared to your competitors. You should not that you can have as many photos uploaded and viewed. Always aim to have more photos than your competitors.
This should be your goal, and something you are working to achieve. Uploading many photos of your business allows people to have more information about your business. This is a visual component of your business, which should make people gain more interest in your business. After that, you will realize that they are more likely to take action—something like asking for direction, or visit your site more times than your competitors.
You shouldn’t afford to miss this opportunity. Upload many photos as you can, and also encourage your customers to leave photos about your business on your GMB listing. However, always make sure that you see where your listing is compared to your competitors before you start uploading the photos.
Download the GMB App
Google has been investing time, money, and resources in Google My Business app. The company launched a newer version recently, which has a nice appearance. You can use the app to take videos and photos, and then upload them to your Google My Business listing without much hustle. This app is available on both Android and Apple platforms.
If you don’t have this application, consider downloading it since it allows you to do many things within a short period of time. Some of these things include:
- Creating and uploading posts
- Receiving review notification
- Replying to customer reviews
You can easily do all that without using your PC. This app comes in handy for those business owners who don’t have PCs in their business, but they have phones and tablets. That means they can use Google My Business app to do whatever they want.
Order Google’s Virtual Tour
Not many people are aware of this feature. A virtual tour is the only paid feature on Google My Business that’s recommended by experts. Everything else in GMB comes for free. The size of your business determines the cost of your virtual tour, but the average cost ranges between $300 and $500. A virtual tour allows your customers to get a visual representation of your business. That means the customers can have a 360-degree view, and virtually walk through it.
Everyone who owns a business should order a virtual tour today. But, one of the major challenges facing business listings today is that they don’t have the capacity of hiring a professional to do their virtual tour. That means their clients can only look at pictures. Investing in this can prove to be valuable for your business since most clients will want to have a feel of your business before contacting of visiting you.
Upload Photos and Videos
Here, you can opt to upload any photos and videos that you have. The most interesting thing is that you can upload photos or videos whenever you want. This is an amazing opportunity that allows your customers a behind-the-scenes of your business, and its objective is to persuade them.
It’s not a must for the videos or photos to be professional. If you have the ability to get professional photos or videos the better. However, so long as you have an authentic and genuine video or photo that shows a behind-the-scenes of your business, just upload it to your Google My Business listing.
At times, you will realize that some customers will take photos or videos and then upload them directly to your Google My Business listing. Some of the videos and photos won’t be of the best quality. That’s why we said you don’t need to worry about their quality. However, they will work perfectly if they have an authentic appearance of your day-to-day business operations. These videos and photos will give you a perfect opportunity to market your business.
Include Secondary Categories in Your GMB Description
There is a possibility that you’ve already added one category, but you did that several years ago. What you need to do now is to find and review your primary categories since Google has added new categories. In fact, Google says that there are over 2,000 categories today. Adding secondary categories is an essential part of your listing since you’ll be telling Google what your business is all about.
Google has done this for SEO purposes, mainly because they want to categorize all the businesses. So, if a customer types something, Google can easily identify the category of business it belongs to. Therefore, you should make sure that you add secondary categories in addition to your existing primary categories.
For example, if you are a dentist, your primary category should be a dentist. You can then proceed to add periodontist, orthodontist, or endodontist as your secondary category. Doing that can assist your business to appear on top of search queries. Being more specific allows you to have an upper hand, particularly when competing with other businesses.
What you need to do is to become specific with each category. If your business does several things, ensure that you add them to the different descriptions. If you realize that you cannot figure out your primary category, consider adding the one that brings you more money, on the one with less competition.
Review All the Search Queries on Your GMB Analytics
This might sound a bit more advanced for some people. Search queries are the information that Google allows you to see in terms of what people are typing into Google when searching for your Google My Business listing. With this, Google allows you to have valuable information about what it knows about your business, as well as the searches its showing.
When viewing these searches, don’t look at the ones that are at the top. Rather, you should look for the searches that are lower than what your pop is displaying in Google. There is a possibility that you are ranking second, third, or you aren’t featuring in the top three. What you will realize is that these terms allow you to do more than the terms ranking at the top.
You can opt to use the terms to create more posts, or to add them to your site. You should note that Google My Business is associated with your website, and this makes it a plus when it comes to your online presence. Please note that Google views site, your GMB listing, and your online directories as a group, and then it tries to figure out the quality of your business. That means, you have the opportunity to view what Google is ranking you for, and you can add extra information to that is you have an opportunity to rank higher.
The backend of Google My Business allows you to see all the search queries people use when searching your business. These the most common search queries for your business from unique users.
For example, if you are a vet, you can opt to type in vet near me or vet and your zip code. Now, take a look at the businesses that show up, and see if your business ranks, and at which position. In case you notice that your business has low rankings, you should create more Google posts about vet services. In addition to that, you should add extra information about vet services in your GMB business description, or upload more photos and videos about your business.
Moreover, encourage your customers to leave photos of your business or to leave reviews about your services. Lastly, add a page to your site about the services your business offers—that’s if you don’t have such a page. You should note that Google acknowledges that you offer vet services, but you should give more information about these services.
Enable Chats on Your GMB App
Chats have become the next big thing on the internet as more people prefer to text rather than calling. Fortunately, Google has identified this and has started to offer a free service. Today, you can go to the business’ listing on GMB using your phone, and send a message directly to the owner.
This is an interesting feature that you can get for free. However, this feature doesn’t come by default as you have to activate it on the backend of Google My Business. When this feature is activated, a customer can click on it and message you directly. Also, note that Google gives random numbers, which means online users cannot get your personal phone number. Turning this feature on helps in filling up your profile, which makes your business look more legitimate. This makes it an essential feature for a new business that is trying to make it into the market.