You should think about the customer’s journey to your business as a real-life journey. To find your business, customers will need a map of your location or ask someone for directions. However, that’ll be next to impossible if nobody’s ever heard of you and your location was never added to the map in the first place!

In the same way, you could have a fully-functional website and awesome social media profiles to no avail if you’re not searchable on the search engines. The first step to having an online presence is to establish a Google Business Profile, as this puts you on the map and lets people find you.

In this article, a Los Angeles SEO expert tackles the various advantages of Google Business Profiles and explains why it’s so important to the success of your business.

1. Post Important Information About Your Business

As we mentioned earlier, when a user searches for your business online, there’s a huge possibility the first thing they’ll come across is your Google Business Profile. Any business that’s plugged into Google’s search engines will have a nice, large textbox with their business details on the front and center of the webpage.

Here, you can post anything both potential and loyal customers might want to know about your business. This includes opening and closing hours, site location/s, links to your website and social media profiles, services offered, contact information, and lots more. This way, customers will have little to no issues when conducting business with you.

Your Google Business Profile is also where you can post updates. For example, if you’ve stopped offering something or you’ve moved to a new location, you can post that on your profile. It’s important to keep your Google Business Profile updated regularly so customers won’t unknowingly order something not on the menu or go to the wrong location.

Google Business Profiles can also sometimes change due to unforeseen circumstances. Sometimes it could be Google’s bots updating something by mistake, or sometimes it could be a competitor trying to sabotage you. Either way, looking after your profile is also important to prevent any unwanted changes.

2. Boost Your Local Visibility and SEO

Over the years, Google’s algorithms have become increasingly smarter. They will now show search results depending on the searcher’s location, which is so important for your business as most of your traffic and sales will likely come from people living in your area. The more you optimize your profile and add details to it, the higher you’ll rank on the search page.

This is the reason many businesses have started adding locational keywords to their websites. That way, whenever someone searches ‘video agency Orange County’ or ‘nail art Chicago’, Google can pull up the nearest businesses to them right away. In the same way, you should also add locational keywords and your specific location to your Google Business Profile.

Just be careful not to add too many keywords. This is called keyword stuffing and will get you quickly demoted by Google!

Additionally, adding a specific address should only be done by businesses with an actual store location. If you’re a service area business, meaning that you go to people’s houses to do something (i.e., tree removal, pest control), you shouldn’t be adding personal addresses to your Google Business Profile for safety reasons. Adding an address will have you demoted by Google too.

3. Have a Place Where Customers Can Contact You and Leave Reviews

Communicating with your customers is extremely crucial for any business. Google Business Profile helps you with that by not only listing down all of your contact information but also letting them have a space to post reviews, ask questions, and more.

Having contact information at the ready is very important because it’s just super convenient. You shouldn’t have to make your customers head to your physical store just to talk to you, especially with health and safety concerns still plaguing the country. In addition to that, some people might prefer one way of communicating—people with anxiety, for example, don’t usually like talking on the phone and would prefer to communicate by email.

Having a platform for frequently asked questions and reviews is also a good idea for your business. With a frequently asked questions section, searchers can just search for their questions and not have to contact you, thereby speeding things up. With a review section, on the other hand, searchers can weigh their options and see if you’re worth their time—they can check good and bad reviews to see if your business is as good as you advertise from people who have actually availed of your services.

Review sections are also pretty neat because you can build credibility and reputation. For example, if someone posts a negative review and you respond tactfully by apologizing and offering compensation, then this lets other searchers know that you have a good work ethic and genuinely care about your customers. You can also use said negative review to reflect on things that need to be improved.

4. Analyze Customer Behavior

Besides Google Business Profile, Google has a whole bunch of other helpful analytical tools that can help expand your business. For example, you can check how many views your profile got within a certain timeframe, find out how customers found you, study your audience’s demographic, analyze the searcher’s actions (i.e., looking through your pictures, clicking on your website), and more.

In other words, Google Business Profiles don’t just let customers find you—it can also help you find more customers. You can use this wealth of information to optimize your profile even further. For example, if Google’s tools tell you that many of your customers found you with a particular keyword, clicked on your website after finding your profile, and are mostly ages 24-29, then you can start using that keyword, even more, optimizing the landing page of your website, and start using language and tone those age 24-29 use frequently.

Conclusion

Google Business Profiles may seem simple and mundane, but they actually play a huge role in your online presence. If you need help setting up your profile or optimizing it for SEO, then please give Drive Traffic Media a call at (949) 800-6990 or at info@drivetrafficmedia.com and inquire about our SEO services in Los Angeles.

Here are other ways to optimize your Google Business Profile listing: https://www.drivetrafficmedia.net/ways-your-google-my-business-listing-can-be-optimized/