Many things can be done to help lift your website to the first page of Google’s search listings. One of the most critical elements that are used to determine search ranking is the Google My Business page. What is Google My Business? Good question! Google My Business is a Google+ account for your business; check out our prior blog post about it here. By developing this profile correctly the likelihood of increasing your ranking on Google searches increases dramatically.
The Crush My Market Team specializes in creating Google My Business accounts that stand above the competition. We follow a strict checklist that we created to ensure that we use the Google My Business profile to its fullest potential. Below we highlight some key must haves that will provide you with a jump-start to creating your own Google My Business page.
- Business Category
When you first go to create your page you are presented with a list of categories that your business falls into. Google provides you with the 5 categories of: Local Business, Product or Brand, Company, Arts/Entertainment/Sports, or Other. Make sure to choose the correct category that fits your business, this determines your competition and how you rank.
- Contact Information
Google will use this information to help your customers contact you. I cannot express how important it is to include your businesses main phone number, address, and email address. When a customer searches for you, this is almost always the information they are searching for.
- Tagline
This is what will appear under your business name when potential customers search for you; making it a great place to highlight your hours of operation. This description should be short and sweet, no more than 10 words.
- Scrapbook
You can upload 5 photos to your scrapbook that best represent your business and products or services that you provide. Make it count, these are the main photos that potential customers will see when searching for your business. These photos are also displayed at the top of your Google My Business profile.
- Reviews
Online reviews are essential for a business operating in the 21st century. Consumers who are searching for services or products online have a wide array of businesses that they can choose from. It is important to make sure that your customers are talking about your business online, this is what will help guide their purchasing decision toward you. Google also uses this information to help rank you on their search pages. Though Google does not analyze the actual reviews that the customers give you, it does rank you based off of how many reviews you have.
The must haves listed above are essential in creating a page that will help your small business stand out above the rest. Of course there are many more steps that can (and should) be taken to help your business reach the top of the search page. This is where we can help. The team at Crush My Market consists of experts that will do all of the above and more to help not only set up your Google My Business page, but optimize it so that Google fully understands what your business services are. Set up your Google My Business page today and start seeing results tomorrow.
