Why you need to claim your Google My Business Profile Today!

Why you need to claim your Google My Business Profile Today!

Welcome to episode 13 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and today, I will talk to you about Google My Business and why you need to claim it today.

So if you have a local business(physical store), you would want to search your business name and see if Google already has a listing for you, and you’ll need to claim that listing. So you can actually search for your business and then you will see it come up and then you’ll see down below in the information, a little “claim this business” or “this is my business” or “Own this business?” link and that will give you access to your GMB and you will claim it from there. Then you’re not creating one already in existence, as sometimes people will have two listings.

So if you’re a service-based business and you don’t see your listing, you’re going to go to business.google.com, and you’re just going to go ahead and start setting it up. So there are a lot of different elements to your Google My Business profile: reviews, phone numbers, photos, and messages.

You can put your scheduling link, website link, hours, and email in there. So this is important for service providers. So if you are a coach, maybe you want to put your scheduling link there. Then people can book a coaching call or your free sessions directly from Google My Business.

So that is why I’m here today. I’m telling you to claim it today. There is also a newer section called Q & A, and anyone in the public can ask a question about your business and then anyone else can answer it.

So there are some statistics that I’d like to share with you; 79% of global desktop searches take place on Google. That means that most people use Google My Business when doing searches on a desktop, and more Google searches occur on mobile devices than on a desktop. 

So every month on Google, there are 5 billion monthly searches for restaurants, 1 billion monthly searches for clothing stores, and 3 billion monthly searches for hotels. So imagine if you have any of those types of businesses and you still need to claim your Google My Business, and you’ll be showing up.

You want to make sure that you claim and take control of the information that’s out there about your business and that you maximize it. Do you think you could maximize your Google My Business profile?

So the first thing is you will fill it out from top to bottom completely. You’re not going to miss any piece of information and make sure that every single thing that you have on there is accurate. You want to set your hours, you want to put your service area, and also you would like to verify your Google My Business listing, etc.

When you first set up your profile or claim it, you can click verify, and they will send you a postcard. So for service-based businesses, do this and switch off your address. So then that way the public can’t see it. That’s the best way to do it and then that way you’re still going to be shown on the listings and your home address is not going to be shown on the listings. 

My favorite thing is collecting your reviews. So it is an amazing place to collect your reviews from your clients or your customers because this is going to allow you to not only collect them, but you can reply to them. So if you ever got a negative review or someone that wasn’t super happy, you’re going to know about it, and you’re going to be able to reach out to them and see how you can do better, but you’re also going to be able to reply.

So then, that way, people can see that you’re active there and care about your customers and their experience. So that in itself can be a whole other marketing tool. 

The other thing I love about it is that it’s a social media profile. So just like you post on Facebook, you post on Instagram, you post on Twitter regularly, you should be updating and posting to your Google My Business profile. So what that does is it will actually allow Google to put your kind first in the Google My Business listings that come up because your profile is more active.

It also shows your most recent picture in the search. So if you posted a picture of an amazing cup of coffee last Monday and someone comes and searches for your business or “coffee near me,” they’ll see that if you have a special, you can post your specials there. So the more active you are on Google My Business, the more your profile will show up, and the more people will see it. This can lead to more calls and visits.

There is also an Insights section that is going to show you how many times your business came up and searched. It will tell you what keywords you came up with and how many times you appeared on the maps. 

If you are not maximizing this accessible business listing called Google My Business, they will find your competitors. I hope that you get to claim your Google My Business today. I hope you enjoyed this episode.