Google Business Profile | Google My Business Guide 2022

Google My Business serves the needs of everybody. But it also turns visitors into your paying customers.

As per Google, “It is a free and easy-to-use tool for businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps. To help customers find your business, and to tell them your story, you can verify your business and edit your business information.”

This guide contains all the basic and intermediate levels of details related to GMB. You can either utilize it to set up a new GMB Account or optimize your existing Google My Business profile. In the end, I will share a few stats from one of the GMB profiles that I managed.

A Brief History of Google Business Profile

Google launched its online presence management tool, Google My Business in June 2014.

It came with certain options that were already there in Google Maps. But Google repackaged them with more of a business-oriented approach.

A few options that were present back then were:

• You can add phone numbers so that customers can contact them easily
• You can add photos, videos of your business, and products to your profile.
• You get a messaging facility where visitors can drop queries

In December 2021, Google announced about Google Business Profile. In a recent Google Business profile query, it has been confirmed that Google My Business is changing to Google Business Profile

How to Setup Google My Business Profile?

Digital Marketing is important for your business. Paying attention to marketing along with your GMB profile helps you in the long run. To register in Google My Business is quite a lengthy but easy job. You just need to log in with the Google account that you use for operating your business. What’s next is just filling required details as follows:

Create Profile

Add your proper business name and your business category from the given options. You can also change them at a later stage.

Add Location

If you have a physical store or an office location then you have to add it otherwise you can skip this step if Google allows it.

You can also add the names of states if you are a nationwide service provider.

Add Contact Details

This is the most important step. Here you have to add a working phone number, and/or a website. The contact will also be used for verification purposes.

Add a postal address

Before COVID time Google used to send mail via post to verify your business but right now you can move ahead with this step.

Add your services

Here you add whatever services you provide. For example, if you are providing digital marketing services, you can add  Social Media Optimization, Website Development, Email marketing, etc as your services.

With this your GMB account setup is successful. It takes a few days to appear in search results. Once it gets accepted by Google, you get the name of your listing into Google Search results.

How to optimize your Google My Business Profile?

Like any other social media profile or website, optimizing your GMB profile is very important. At this moment, every next business is coming online.

Here are the few things which have helped me while managing a few GMB profiles which I will share in the latter part of the blog.

Use a proper name

Use a proper, genuine name for your business. Google is strict about any kind of misleading information. The name should not be too short or too descriptive(within 100 characters).

Add valid products and services

Add all the products and services for your business but prevent any kind of ambiguity in them. Google displays the products in the knowledge panel if the business is verified.

Add Videos

If you add a video to your profile, the customers might invest more time in your business profile. Keep videos short in time and size but engaging at the same time. Add videos of your business, workplace, products, and outdoors, to gain more trust.

Ensure NAP consistency

Name, Address, and Phone Number(NAP) should remain consistent across the internet. In case it’s not, it decreases the rating of your business listing and leads to a bad impact in the long run.

Get a place for NAP references in the knowledge panel Photos are a great savior

Google My Business option to add photos is quite awesome. It uses AI to recognize the kind of photograph like work, indoors, outdoors, office, etc. So it is good to add as many images as you can.

Importance of Google My Business Profile

I am sure you have got a lot of information about how to do it and what to do. It’s time to cascade the benefits of GMB for you:

• Increase the visibility and show your business on google to a large audience.
• More easy customer support and engagement.
• Increase the number of visitors and product/service sales.
• Helps you establish your business as a trusted brand.

Conclusion

Don’t ever miss the valuable customers to your business through Google My Business. Ensure you post images and videos on regular basis. GMB helps with local SEO results and engages with your customers by getting reviews.

FAQs on Google My Business   Does Google my business provide a website?

Yes. It provides a free website builder tool to help small businesses easily create a good website in an affordable way. Once created, the website update automatically. By default, you get a business.site domain for your business.

How do I find my Google business account?

To find your Google Business profile, you need to search for your exact business name on Google. If your business has an active business profile that ranks on Google, it will appear in the search results.

Does Google Business profile help improve SEO for your business?

At the least – Yes, it helps with local SEO. If you have a verified GMB profile, it also contributes to a better website ranking and more website visits along with a chance of being in a local 3-pack.