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One factor often ignored by businesses is the importance of Google Maps. This tool allows your business to be more easily discovered by new customers, and lets you stand out among your competitors and bring in more business. You’ll need to develop a strong visibility for your business in order to receive these benefits; so we’ve compiled a list of tips to get you to the top of the list on Google Maps!
Before you can get yourself high in the ranks, you’ve got to take the baby steps of actually adding your business to Google Maps. Thankfully, Google makes this easy for any business looking to use Maps as part of their marketing. First, you’ll go to the Google Mapps site or app and search for your business name. If it appears in a drop down menu; it means your business is already listed! If not, you’ll need to create a listing of your own. To do this, simply click the ‘add a missing place’ option in the drop down menu. You’ll then be asked to add your business name, category and location. Ta-da! Your business is now listed to Google Maps.
Now that you’ve created your business listing, you’ll need to claim your listing as well. This allows you to provide more details about your business, lets you list your hours of operation, and even add photos! This helps raise your ranking not only on Google Maps, but with a variety of SEOs as well; as adding this sort of information can bolster your rankings on Search Engines. Make sure to note, you will need a Google My Business account in order to claim your Google Maps listing. From there, prompts in the GMB system will help you claim your listing.
Now that your listing is created and claimed, you’re going to need to start adding information that’ll make you relevant to local and global searches. By using Google My Business; select the ‘info’ tab. From here you can edit your name, category, address, service area, hours, special hours, COVID-19 restrictions, your website, phone number, products and services, as well as a business description. All of these pieces of information are vital to having a high ranking on Google Maps, and should be actively updated to reflect the correct information. Keeping your details consistent makes doing business easier for you, and your customers.
Photos are a great way for your business to show off what you have in stock for your customers! It makes your listing appear more active in search results, as well as using Google’s photo-recognition technology to show images in local search results. Most of all, photos are a great way for you to increase your SEO ranking. Without adding photos to your Google Map listing; your viewers will only see a generic map; which isn’t very inviting to first-time customers.
One great feature of listing your business on Google is the ability to receive reviews from your customers. Another great feature of reviews is being able to directly address customer complaints or issues publicly. This helps your business build a reputation of reliability and accountability. While reviews can be intimidating, particularly for young or small businesses; they’re intricate to success.
Bad reviews are few and far between as long as your team is offering their best possible service, and with the proper response; you might be able to turn a bad customer review into a good one.
Similar to Facebook or Instagram, you can use Google Maps to post directly to your business listing. Regularly posting not only raises you in both Google Map rankings as well as search engine rankings, but gets your important messages out to new and old consumers alike. You can use this feature to plan events, product launches, and more!
Your website being a part of your Google Maps listing might be more important than you think. One of the first things you should be doing after your listing goes live is to optimize your site for both mobile and computer viewing. In fact, a recent study shows that nearly 60% of all Google searches are performed using a mobile device or smart phone. So, you need to make sure your website is responsive on all formats; or else your ranking may suffer. Additionally, its recommended for your site or listing to use words that are locally relevant to the customer/consumer, as it’ll help raise awareness of your business in your local area as well as globally. Finally, embed your Google Map listing on your website itself. This helps potential customers find your location information without them having to do the digging.
There’s factors are all important to making the most of your Google Maps listing. Its clear that your business can only do better when you put yourself out right with the right information!
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