The Beginner’s Guide: How to Optimize Google My Business and Leverage for Sales

Are you familiar with the term “Google it”? Even after being a leading brand name, Google has become a generic name for all sorts of online search queries. And that’s why it is imperative in today’s world to learn the details about how to optimize Google My Business, and leverage for sales.

Today Google has become almost a household name and an indispensable part of our lifestyle. Google experiences 80% of the search queries per day. And smartphones and mobile devices constitute 60% of them. And in such a dynamic circumstance, almost every business understands the importance of Google Map optimization.

If viewed from the perspective of a business owner, a Google My Business listing can facilitate to mint out margins and leverage sales benefits. It is the smartest way to promote your business online and get visible, in present times. It is a free tool by Google, which helps the companies to stay ahead in the competition and get visible to the target end-users with an appreciable Google My Business ranking.

In this article, we will discuss how a GMB listing can facilitate business to increase its revenue. To start with, we need to understand what is GMB and how the components of how the GMB listing works. And gradually, we will proceed towards a comprehensive, in-depth discussion on how to optimize Google My Business to generate sales and successful conversion.

Let’s get started.

What is GMB Listing and What are the Basic Components?

Google My Business or GMB is an essential tool provided by Google for local businesses to get visible on search results. It carries all the vital information about a business enterprise with all the details of its offerings, contact information, website link, and so on. Some noted components of a GMB listing are as follows:

Business Name: The name of your business enterprise (Coca Cola, Frenzi, Fire Joker etc.) carries your brand identity. Thus, it forms the pivotal input for your GMB listing.

Business Description: A brief description provides a glimpse of your company profile and the verticals you cater to. Also, it affords a short feature of your products and the services you deal with.

Street Address: The street address of a business enterprise is proof of your physical identity. Apart from validating the fidelity of your enterprise, it helps to let your consumers reach directly and connect with you.

Pin Code: Pin Code in your address provides a general idea about the locality of your business enterprise. It facilitates pulling traffic from your neighbouring areas.

Phone Number: While opting for Google My Business optimization service, it is crucial to provide the contact number for your business. Several business deals and conversions happen over telephonic conversations only.

Fax & Alternate Contacts: Visitors may try to reach you out via fax and alternate contacts as well. Hence, that too play an essential part in the listing.

E-mail Address: Your e-mail address is a quintessential part of your web identity. It is incredibly beneficial to get connected and building alliances with corporate entities and B2B houses.

Website Link: One of the essential parts of creating a Google Map listing SEO is to provide the link or URL of your website. Your visitors can directly reach your website and browse through your products and offerings. Apart from increasing the footfall and pulling in traffic, it facilitates generating successful business conversions with measurable gains.

Social Media Links: GMB listing allows us to provide popular social media links that are available on the website. It facilitates the visitor to get a glimpse of all the campaigns, Adwords, product features, and testimonials of your company and product offerings in a jiffy.

Payment Methods: An essential component to include in your GMB listing is your payment terms. It provides a general idea to your target audience about the payment terms you are flexible. If you are accepting payments via card or mobile wallets, your GMB content speaks for the same.

Business Photos: While making the GMB listing, some photos of the business enterprise (provided by clients) creates an immediate impact on the target audience about the venture. For example, a restaurant, with the click of ambi9ance, menu card, food shots, etc. instantly generate a buying impulse amongst the visitors. It is a quintessential component that makes a GMB listing worth doing.

And thus, by learning how to optimize Google My Business, you can quickly get your brand featured to your target audience, whenever they do a relevant search. With an optimized GMB listing, it facilitates the end-users to get all the vital information in a single go and get connected whenever they want. A good GMB Listing can any day let your business stay ahead in the competition out there.

What are the Latest Features of a GMB Listing & What are the Benefits?

In recent times, Google has introduced some new features in its GMB listing with a plethora of added benefits. It eventually facilitates the business owners and enterprises to post content, track analysis, revert to customer queries, respond to complaints and all the others, using a single dashboard. Hence while discussing the practice of how to optimize Google My Business, it is vital to have an insightful idea about the new features of Google My Business. Following are the latest inclusions:

Google Posts
Videos
Chat & Messages
Appointment URL’s
Questions & Answers
GMB Online Reviews
Business Reviews
Services List

Each of the features, as mentioned above, comes with a set of benefits. The following paragraphs discuss and briefly talks about each of the features and their benefits.

Engage Your Audience with Effective Google Posts

Google Posts allow business owners to create engaging content and post them, once the GMB is verified. It is an effective way to learn how to optimize Google My Business, where options are there for drafting a post of up to 300 words.

When we search a business, 60-70 characters show on mobile or desktop if the Call To Action (CTA) is enabled. There are provisions for drafting texts, uploading images, and also adding titles while listing in GMB. Some noted ways of accessing Google Posts include:

Navigate the GMB listing and reach the ‘Post’ option on the left side of the menu. Draft a post, up to 300 words. If CTA is enabled, up to 70 characters will show on desktop or mobile, when searched.

Feel free to upload images. The images must be in the ratio of 4:3 and must possess a high resolution. Usually, a 5-10 KB size works fine, with a dimension of 400*300 pixels.

The duration of the post remains until seven days, or up to the length of an event.

And thus, Google Posts can effectively be used to optimize the GMB listing for a website.

Use Videos to Make the GMB Listing More Engaging

An engaging GMB listing always facilitates generating sales. And videos promote to make a GMB listing even more appealing. The most manageable steps to create leads by videos can be implemented as:

Under the overview tab, there is an option to add a video.

In case the option for video is not there in the overview tab, click on the blue + sign to get the same.

Choose the video you want to add, drag, and drop.

It may take up to 24 hours to get the video approved and displayed. However, it often appears within a few minutes of upload as well.

The duration of a video is up to 30 seconds only.

When two or more videos are added, a ‘Videos’ sub-tab becomes visible on mobile devices, to watch the same.

And thus, the option of video too can be used effectively as a beneficial way of how to optimize Google My Business.

Make Good Use of Chats & Messages

GMB listings are enabled with the option of chats & messages for communication purposes. People finding business through search results can communicate with the enterprise and place their queries through this useful mode. Not only it increases engagement but it also facilitates generating sales by creating purchase impulse through effective product pitching. Also, it provides the option for the business itself to respond promptly to the clients. Especially for new companies, it is incredibly beneficial.

The following steps provide a comprehensive guide about how to optimize Google My Business via chat communications:

Go to the ‘Home’ menu and find the ‘Chat’ option.

If you want to receive texts even after the hours of operation, feel free to turn that feature.

Always keep the necessary information confidential while using this feature.

Never share any sensitive information about your business through this medium.

And in this way, you can let your target audience, communicate seamlessly with your business.

Let Your Clients Book an Appointment through Appointment URL

Depending on your business type, often the clients may prefer to book an appointment before the visit. In that case, you, as a business enterprise, can offer the option to schedule an appointment via a URL address. It will facilitate maintaining a consistent influx of customers, even when there is a rush hour. The procedure to do the same can be briefed as:

Go to the URL section

Add the URL which is created for the purpose.

The best way to implement is to connect the ‘Contact Us page of your business via URL

Always make sure to test if the URL is working fine or not.

Thus, it acts as an exclusive feature of GMB listing, that always maintains a consistent inflow of consumers in your portal, leading in successful conversions.

Let Your Business Interact via Questions & Answers

Discussing how to optimize Google My Business, the feature of Questions & Answers, indeed deserve a special mention. It is a beautiful interactive feature for your business, introduced by Google in GMB listings. The feature helps to promote, track, and understand what the consumers are looking for and what the current trends are. This particular tool of Google My Business comes with some spectacular set of benefits. A glimpse of the same can be briefed as:

It helps to identify and estimate how the end-users are finding your business.

From the pattern of questions placed, it can be estimated that who already knows about your business and searching for the same, and those who did a random search and felt interested in your brand.

The questions can also render you about where people are getting recommendations or finding your business.

Based on the questions placed, it helps to determine the intent of the customers and approach them accordingly.

Perhaps the best way to track and evaluate consumer behaviour is through the questions they ask on the GMB listing.

You can promptly respond to any queries that the consumers face and help them in making the purchase decision.

It also helps to track what the consumers are living up to, the number of phone calls they make and what are the time of such requests.

Thus, Question & Answers can act as a robust tool when it comes to your generate conversions via GMB optimization.

Listen to Your Consumers via GMB Online Reviews

When we think about how to optimize Google My Business, GMB online reviews are the most suitable practice. Perhaps the best way to listen to your consumers and grab their pulse is to listen and accept what they are saying. And GMB online reviews provide the exact platform for the same.

Whether the consumers are happy with what you offer, or they are looking for something else, everything can be tracked with the help of the reviews. It also facilitates understanding the scopes of improvement that you need to work on, to sustain in the long run.

After all, a consumer is a king, and the GMB reviews are nothing but the verdict of the same. Also, there are provisions to respond and interact with your clients in the review segment.

Some key benefits of GMB online reviews can be briefed as:

The reviews you get from your end-users help to understand the buyers’ persona and consumer behaviour.

You can easily keep track of the experience faced by a user who availed of your service and shared his/her expertise.

Scopes of improvement can easily be identified with the help of the criticisms you receive

Reviews can indicate the current trend amongst the end users and what exactly they are up.

GMB online reviews are perhaps the best tool to do a competitor analysis and take needful steps accordingly.

In case your end-users are expecting additional services from your enterprise, you can collect the needful inputs from the reviews and think of increasing your product/service line.

Responding to reviews can be the best way to establish communication with your customers. It facilitates maintaining a long term relationship with your patrons.

And thus, GMB online reviews play a pivotal role, when it comes to the essential tips of how to optimize Google My Business to generate revenue and quality leads.

Make Good Use of the Business Reviews

It is one of the recent addition done by Google in GMB. It allows writing a description of your business in the destined segment in 750 characters. However, only 250 characters remain visible, and the rest remains truncated in the knowledge panel. So to understand how to optimize Google My Business, it is vital to know how to use business reviews properly. With a crisp and appropriate business description, it can be constructive to generate leads and boost up sales.

Create a Service List to Provide a Comprehensive Idea

If your company deals with a wide range of products or services, it is mandatory to provide a general idea of all your services. And that’s where the Importance of a crisp service list comes. The procedure of using it can be explained as:

Check the ‘Info’ tab to find out the section

Make sure to categorize the services you offer

Always show the prices of each of your offerings.

Make sure to update the price as it changes accordingly.

In case you no more offer a product or a service, promptly remove it from the list.

If you add new offerings in your list, make sure to update it in this list as well with all the details.

The Conclusion

So, as the discussion proceeded, hopefully, it has provided a complete three-sixty degree overview of how to optimize Google My Business. In the era of competition, staying ahead in the rat race is the need of the hour. So before your competitor get ahead of you, make sure to get a firm grip on the target segment you are catering to. With GMB optimization, your growth remains consistent, and you achieve the extra mile in your business, with a substantial boost in your sales as well.

So don’t work hard, and choose the path to work smart instead. Gift your business, the growth it deserves, and a boost in its sales, with consistent progress.

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