Google My Business optimization from 0 to 100

Google My Business is a platform that brings advantages both to business owners and to the customers themselves: on one hand, it is a showcase that, if well configured, will allow you to appear where your potential users are looking for you; on the other hand, the reviews of other customers, summarized in a star rating over 5, allows the user to know real opinions of the product or service before deciding on it.

The more search algorithms evolve to adapt to the preferences of consumers with specific, mobile and geolocation-based results, the more local businesses will be favored in the search results.

Local SEO today plays a critical role for companies of all sizes and in virtually every industry.

However, for Google My Business to be an interesting tool for your business, you need to give it a little “love”. Do you know what you can do to maximize your profits?

Optimization of the Google My Business tab

What for? To improve the visibility of a website, make it easier for customers to find it in search engines, increase its online relevance and achieve their business goals.

Below is a list of essential points to have the best My Business card.

Pictures in GMB

Profile picture: The first thing you should do is include a good profile photo, 250 x 250 px that represents the brand, either your business logo or a real team photo (just in case you don’t have a high employee turnover).

Cover: You must do the same with the cover photo, whose recommended measurements are 1000 x 1000 px.

Regarding the rest of the profile pictures, several tips:

• Format: JPG or PNG.
• Size: between 10 kB and 5MB.
• Recommended resolution: 720 pixels high by 720 pixels wide.
• Minimum resolution: 720 pixels high by 720 pixels wide.
• Quality: The lighting of the picture is important, as well as the focus. If you see too many filters or touches, you may be distorting reality, something that would not be within Google’s guidelines.
• It is essential to have real images of good quality … They encourage customers to decide in favor of our business instead of another.
• You can add both photos of the interior of the business (office, store, workshop …) and the exterior (street or square where it is, facade, etc., to help potential customers find it).
• Photos of awards or certifications that the company or any member of the team has.
• The real photos of the team in full operation provide an image of closeness and professionalism.

In the following link you can see the recommendations directly in the Google documentation for the photos: https://support.google.com/business/answer/6103862

If your company has more than 10 locations, it is possible to upload the photos using a spreadsheet: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3370250#photos

Videos in GMB

These would be the guidelines for uploading our videos to Google My Business:

Duration: up to 30 seconds
Size: up to 100 MB
Resolution: 720 pixels or higher

Virtual Tour

Google offers businesses the possibility to take a complete virtual tour. To do this, you can hire street View’s trusted professional photographers. All of them are eligible to use the Trusted Brand resources for advertising purposes.

Pictures not to be used

• Image bank photos (they can be on hundreds of websites, they do not give a good brand image).
• Posed and/or unnatural photos.
• Poor quality photos, which do not meet the quality parameters above.
• Too small photos.
• Old photos, far from the current parameters.
• Photos that do not make clear who you are, what you do or what you offer.

Companies that have photos in their files receive 42% more requests for directions on Google Maps and 35% more clicks on their websites than those that do not have them.

Business Description

The description of the business must be an attractive letter of introduction in itself. For example, for a law firm it should include keywords such as family lawyers (2400 searches), divorce lawyers (2900), family law (720) and all related ones we can think of, as long as we use them naturally, without keyword stuffing 😉

NAP and Schema

It is also essential to check the correctness of all data, including: company name, address, postal code, telephone number, email and fax, which must also coincide with those appearing on the website: NAP: name, address, phone (in the footer of the web)

• Name: you should always use the same name, so as not to mislead.
• Address: in the same way, we must put the same address, with identical data and the same format in all the sites.
• Phone: Google prefers phones with spaces (666 66 66 66), because they are more readable.

Through schema you can see how to correctly implement the NAP: https://schema.org/LocalBusiness

In addition, remember to update the business timetable in periods in which it changes: summer, vacations, long weekends… Even if you define a general timetable, it will be possible to update it on specific dates. Google usually notifies us when it corresponds by email.

Business Url

It is highly recommended that you customize your GMB file url: by default, you will get a numeric code, which you can replace with your business name as soon as you have completed the verification process. This will help Google identify the profile and link it to your website immediately.

Reviews

As far as reviews are concerned, you should try to promote a natural profile, formed by organic and natural reviews: avoid buying them (sooner or later Google will notice) and remember that it is not natural that all of them have 5 stars. Also, you should always welcome comments, whether they are positive or negative.

Some things you can do to get more reviews are:

• Generate a direct link to share in RRSS, stationery, email, newsletter, etc. Here are instructions for generating it: https://supple.com.au/tools/google-review-link-generator/
• Convert the link into a QR code to share it more easily, in the store and in all the promotional materials we have.
• Social engineering: request them directly from customers.
• Growthacking: offer gifts or discounts for review changes.

Once you have several customer reviews, you can embed them on the web using the EmbedSocial tool, which also makes it easier for the famous stars to appear in the SERPs.

Negative comments

The first rule to properly manage negative user comments is to reply as soon as possible, but without entering into discussions with the customer: it is essential that you respond with kindness, asking for forgiveness for the bad experience, thanking the comment as a way of learning and wishing the user to give you another opportunity to change their perception of the company.

If you manage negative reviews in your profile correctly, you turn them into an opportunity to convince another user who has doubts.

Choosing the right categories

When you create your file, Google will assign you a default category… Remember to check whether or not it is the most suitable for your business. But don’t be left with just one: as more categories you check, as more information you will provide to Google about your business.

Posts

You can use this resource to post events, products, services or blog updates. These are publications that expire after 7 days.

Tags

Add tags: you can use up to 10 and they will serve to complement the information you have put in the definition. They can be all those services that you have not expressly included in the description. A good strategy to correctly optimize the tags is to study what your competitors do to implement in your file everything they have and you do not.

Urls

Add specific urls to the company profile that lead users to specific sections of your website that you want to highlight.

Inside the website

In addition to the optimizations you can make in your Google My Business file, you can perform other actions that benefit your file from your corporate website. Here we explain some of them.

Structured data

You must make sure that the following structured data appears on your website:

• Business contact
• Job training
• Local business cards

This is the Google tool you can use to implement them correctly: https://www.google.com/webmasters/markup-helper/u/0/

In addition, Google has published in structured data the necessary code to implement in our website if we have a local company file: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/local-business?hl=es-419. If you click on the button that says “View Markup Language” you will have a clear example of how it should be implemented on your website.

Your code will look similar to this:

Home

An eye-catching image on your website’s home page, in square format, with appropriate title and alt, inserted in the top area of the page, near the H1 and surrounded by local context, exponentially increases your chances of appearing in a good position in local searches on Google.

In addition, taking advantage of the content of the home page to answer possible questions from users, explained as literally as possible, will help you to be taken into account by the search engine.

Maps

Don’t forget to embed your map from Google Maps on your web.

In addition, you can create your own custom map with the following tool: https://www.google.com/intl/es_ES/maps/about/mymaps/

If you also geolocate the images you publish on the web, your chances of success will be even greater.

Local directories

A very simple and easy strategy to carry out is to include your website in all the local and thematic directories you can think of. Make sure that the NAP is the same in all of them. These are just some of the ones you can use:

• vulka.es
• 11870.com
• anuarioguia.com
• granpyme.com
• yasteq.com
• yelp.es
• indizze.com
• hotfrog.es
• citiservi.es
• paginasamarillas,es
• qdq.com
• foursquare.com
• yalwa.es
• starofservice.es
• avae.org
• startupxplore.com
• tripadvisor.es
• salir.com

In addition, you can use the Local Citation Finder tool to find sites to include your website in, as well as examine your competitors and monitor growth for better local search rankings.

Monitoring

As you know, monitoring the results is the only way to know if the work you are doing is useful or if there is a change to be made because it is no longer effective. In this case, the Google tool itself includes a complete statistics section that will serve as a source of information to assess the course of the strategy:

• How customers are looking for your company.
• Where customers see the company.
• Actions of the clients.
• Telephone calls.

In order to help you manage your Google My Business optimization strategy, we have prepared a small checklist of essential actions to be carried out. You only have to download it, print it and start working.

DOWNLOAD OPTIMIZATION CHECK LIST