How to optimize Google My Business in 2020 | ®

We are going to tell you all the details about how to optimize the (GMB) file to get more visibility on Google. If in the last post we told you the tricks for , now it is the turn of one of the Google platforms that has been most developed in 2019 and offers more possibilities, especially for local businesses or those companies that have one or more establishments physical. Let’s start at the beginning and with the most basic…

“We take the hamburger business very seriously” (The Founder, John Lee Hancock, 2016)

What is the Google My Business listing?

Google My Business is the cover letter of your company or business on Google. It is a digital and online file where the NAP (Name, Address and Phone) is collected, but it has been developing and adding a lot of elements that help the user who searches on Google to know everything (or almost everything) concerning a company, where the images and the evaluations of other users take on a fundamental weight. Google company listings are no longer static to become a dynamic element where customers and users also have something to say about the company or business. This last reason is what makes it so important for the company to worry about keeping the My Business file optimized.

The Google My Business tab and SEO

At the end of the day, the GMB file (at least until now) is one more organic element within the search engine. The tab is triggered and appears on our desktop or smartphone screens when we perform a search, usually with the specific name of the company, but sometimes also with some keywords that concern the business. The tab, when well optimized, occupies a predominant space in the SERPs and visibility is brutal for the company. There are also more chances that the Google My Business tab appears by geolocation, that is, if someone searches for a business that is close to the user they are looking for. To this location factor are added others that influence Google to give more prominence and positioning possibilities to the tab. We explain it in the next point.

Positioning factors of the Google My Business listing

Google has its own algorithm to position these tabs, with its own factors that differ from those used in algorithms that apply to the organic positioning of websites.

The NAP data, schedules, categories,… and after all, having a file with all the fields filled in is a fundamental factor for Google to give you preference and authority. These data also have to have “relevance” or what is the same, that they coincide with the information that Google already extracts from other sites (web, directories, social profiles,…)
Keywords: Google will check the categories (keywords, taxonomies) by which your business is defined and will weigh the relevance for certain searches that are related to the services, products or characteristics of your company.
Verifying the locations of all the stores or physical establishments that the company has is essential for Google to give credibility to the business and therefore position it in its search engine.
User reviews: number of reviews is not equal to higher positioning, Google prefers interaction with these comments or ratings.
Images: uploading quality, descriptive, well-labeled images is a fundamental element for the positioning of the file.
Updating: keep the file active, updating the schedules (holidays, holiday closures, …), publishing events, posts, products, etc. is another factor that Google detects.
Geolocation: as we have mentioned before, the distance factor is essential to appear in the local pack or for the file to appear in Google.
Brand authority: here influences the power of the brand in question for a certain sector, the authority of its website, citations on other sites.

Google My Business and the famous local SEO

The optimization of the file is accumulating so much importance for our local SEO strategies that sometimes the file exceeds the importance of the web if we look at its conversion rates. Keep in mind that from the file a user can:

leave a review
add photos
Ask a question
Call the establishment directly
Book services
Use the “How to get here”
visit website
Start a chat conversation (for now only in the US)
Follow the tab and receive updates

The listing becomes essential for certain predominantly local sectors… The optimization of the listing is closely linked to what Google calls Local Pack. Its geolocation factor makes you appear on a certain site in its SERPs, which is triggered by local searches such as: “nearby restaurants”, Moncloa teeth whitening”, and the like. Normally this result in Google either triggers your listing, or triggers your location on Google maps. Of course, as long as your company “deserves to be there” above others (according to the factors mentioned above).

How to optimize the Google My Business listing: fundamental elements

There are many elements to optimize in the GMB file. This 2019 Google has given this platform a boost by seeing how relevant it is for users, who are using it more and more. So much so, that the interface even has its own data analytics section so that you can see the performance of your company file (we will see this in detail a little later).

After this long, but necessary preamble, we begin to gut the platform and give the appropriate advice so that the Google My Business listing obtains maximum visibility. (We take for granted the previous step of creating the file, verifying and publishing it)

The first thing is to familiarize yourself with the GMB desktop

Once familiar with all the blocks of the interface The first and most important element is the following:

1. Information:

This is where we have our NAP and other descriptive elements of the company that we must fill in such as hours, service area (if we only provide service in a certain area for that location), short name of the profile (this is a kind of hastag so that be easy to follow and share information about the company by the user), Url to request an appointment or service (if so), products (here we can add the products of the business), services (to add the services that the company facilitates), attributes (in case you consider any characteristic of your business that could be useful, for example a hairdresser that only serves men), a brief description (here it is important to describe the company adding keywords that define your business), opening date ( if you want to indicate the activity time of your company) and the images.

Title and categories

Do not limit yourself with the name of your company in the title, you have to take into account the importance of keywords, so a possible file title would be: the brand name + service + location. Invented example: «Tientovit | Dental clinic in Argüelles». In the categories it also optimizes these keywords: orthodontics, dental whitening, dental implantology,… Keep in mind that if your file becomes relevant, any user who does that search on Google can make your company appear.

Publications:

The publication block is surely the one that has had the most development during 2019. Google has opted to create an interactive online ecosystem similar to that of a website. Some see this as one more method for the Mountain View giant to keep the traffic that would normally be directed to the web. We do not see it as drastic, but as one more business opportunity to have visibility and the proof is that the tab is improving conversion metrics in local SEO and directing a lot of traffic to the websites, whatever happens in the future will not we know.

We have several types of publications: News, Events, Offers and Products. Here we can add any of these publications to accompany the company file. In all of them, the title, the image, the description must be optimized and you can add a button to expand information by redirecting to a URL, indicating a phone number or a downloadable item.

It is very useful if we have a blog incorporated into our website, to also publish the posts here. The same happens if we have new products or flagship products or if the company organizes an event.

Reviews

Reviews are a key point within GMB. The good management of them will be what will give credibility to your listing and will also prevent a bad score from tarnishing your visibility on Google. We will not talk here about optimizing reviews, but about how to manage them, since establishing communication with your clients through this means favors positioning. Google does not care too much about the number of reviews a business has, but the interaction with them. Having a strategy for getting reviews, responding to both positive and negative ratings, and keeping track of them to react to any “fires” is essential.

Can reviews that we suspect are malicious be removed? It’s complicated. Google’s policies are restrictive in this regard when it comes to restricting the free expression of users. Of course, it is easy to complain to Google about those offensive or distasteful reviews, but negative comments about a service or the company will have to be very insistent and sometimes we will never be able to get rid of them.

Photos

It is an important block. Selecting good photos as a showcase for the business is essential to have a good cover letter. GMB gives a lot of options to upload photos: Logo, Cover, Interior, Exterior, 360, Video… We can organize them in such a way that they are easy to visit later by the user who wants to have a visual image of the company.

Users can also upload images to our tab. eye! because this is the most delicate point, since, as a general rule, the images that customers upload are usually not of good quality or in many cases they show completely inappropriate aspects of the premises, service,… Google knows it, so in this case it is relatively easy to demand that this photo be removed. You simply have to mark it as “offensive” among the options that Google asks you to select.

Services and Products

Google My Business calls it Services and Store. As we have told before, in these sections you can add the products or services to which you want to give visibility within the file.

It is important to describe and name the products or services by introducing our business keywords in a natural way. It must be remembered that one of the objectives with the GMB file is to trigger it with the largest number of keywords related to the business.

locations

Optimizing all the sections of your file is just as important as creating a…