How to Optimize Google My Business and Leverage It For More Sales?

If you are thinking of visiting an Italian restaurant tonight, what will be the first thing you'll do?

Obviously, you'll pick up your smartphone first and google "Italian restaurants near me".

Perfect!!! That is what we all do, so ranking on top in search engines like google is the most important thing for any business. If we want to find any service or business, then the first thing that we do is 'google'. Since the birth of our beloved search engine "Google," we seem to have forgotten our phone books or dialing toll-free numbers to get the information, right?

Hats off to Google.!!!

No longer shrinking your eyes to look at tiny letters of your phone book spending hours on finding one number.

Well, times have changed.

You can quickly get the information at just touch of a button, without even having to land into their website from Google Listings. 

Google My Business Listing is helping small businesses to create and manage their information at free of cost. Besides, it is an excellent way of marketing for attracting new customers and sharing information about what makes them unique. 

You have got all excited about this Google My Business Listing, and with high hopes, you have already created one for your business.  

Often you might find yourself in this situation of "users finding you but not transforming into a customer," Isn't it right?

That is why I wanted to talk about optimizing Your Google My Business Listing. Use this guide to Completely Optimize Your Google My Business Listing and reap the benefits.

What is Google My Business and know about their basics:

Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing is different, and you need to understand a few basics before you get started with it.

'Google My Business Listing' is absolutely free and bring in more customers for your business. However, keeping one thing in mind, it only compliments your official business website and is not going to replace it.

If you are already using google business tools; then your chances are high of your business already ranking on Google maps and Google searches.

Get started with Your Google My Business Listing:

I know how it sounds all exciting for you when you hear about 'Google My Business Listing and how it brings more customers to your business.

Immediately you want to jump into creating one but wait. There is one most crucial step that you need to perform, verify whether your Google My Business listing already up and running.

Conduct a Google search by yourself and make sure that your business doesn't already have a GMB listing.

If your business is already existing, you just need to claim it.

If not, then you can create one.

Next step, head over to your Google My Business listing page. Punch in all the essential business information as well as fill out the remaining input boxes.

Make sure to verify everything that you have entered is 'accurate and grammatically correct.'

Add or Edit the Location details of your business operation: 

Sign in to 'Google My Business' and change it to "card view." Then follow these steps

Click on "manage location" and go to the menu to click on info then click "Address."

Select "Yes" for "I deliver goods and services to my customers at their locations."

Punch in your service area information.

If you prefer Google to show your complete address, then select the option "I serve customers at my business address."

Tap on the "apply changes" button.

Complete and Verify the information of Your Google My Business Listing:

A crucial and most important step is verifying your listing as it plays a significant role in 'visibility and performance' of your business listing.

Here, let me post a question.

How does Google know that your business address exists and you actually receive mail there?

A better solution to this question is to select the option, 'Verify your listing by mail.' It also evades any false listings.

Once Google verifies your business, you can start accessing your page insights, its analytical information, or business reviews. Also, your business and its edit will be visible to users.

Publish Your Google My Business Listing:

Be wise and use all the resources Google My Business offers within its listing details. Because it helps you to get the most out of your business locations.

Here are the crucial elements for optimizing your listing:

• Ensure that the Data is accurate and complete.
• Do not leave any information to be guessed or assumed. Your customers have no time for this. Make sure that your potential customers get to know all about you.

Make sure to include Keywords:

• Google uses the search result to get to your business listing. So, add all the relevant keywords and search phrases that lead the customer to your business.

Post Accurate Business Operating Hours: 

• It is evident that you enter your business operating hours, and it is equally important to update them whenever you change it. Customize this option to update your working hours, holidays and special events.

Add good quality pictures: 

• An appealing image can say many things than words. Business with photo listings gets higher credibility than the one without photos.

Encourage Customer Reviews and respond to them: 

• One of the best ways to interact with your customers and let them know that you actually care about them is by encouraging them to leave a review.
• Create a link that helps them to write reviews about you.

Appealing and quality photos for Your Google My Business Listing: 

• An image can create much impact on your business. Starting from your profile photo, logo image, cover picture, and all additional images that post need to be appealing and encompassing your brand.
• What are the types of images and how it impacts?
• Profile photo helps to identify your business.
• Logo image helps to carry your brand image.
• The cover photo showcases your business personality.
• Other kinds of additional images that you add increases your credibility, primarily it influences customer's purchase decisions.
• All photos need to be either in JPG or PNG format with a clear focus and represent reality.

Monitor the Insights from the analytical data: 

• Google has come up with innumerable and effective ways to understand your customers and study your business performance. Called as insights or analytical data, they help you in many ways.

Analyze on How your Customers Find you: 

• Analyze how your customers reached you by directly typing your name or by searching on google. You get to see bulk insights report of the Total searches, Direct searches, and Discovery searches here.
• Analyze on Where your Customers view You:
• Find out how many landed into your business through google search and how many through Google maps. Besides this, you can also analyze the number of views that you received from each product that you offer.

Analyze on Customer Actions: 

• After finding your business in the Google listings, what is the immediate action did the customers do?
• Did they visit your website? Or request for a callback? Or viewed your pics? Or requested for directions? You can analyze all these in this section.

Analyze on Direction Requests: 

• At this part, Google maps play an essential role. Your business location is identified by maps and even displays the best route to reach your place.

Analyze on Phone Calls: 

• When and how often you received calls from your customer through google listing?
• The graphical representation shows trends on phone calls and by either day of the week or time of day. 

Analyze on Photo views: 

• Examine how often your customers see your photos and analyze the trend on "Photo views" graph and "Photo quantity" graph.