Is Google My Business part of your SEO strategy?

Google My Business has been renamed Google Business Profile.

When ranking on search engines like Google, many businesses often hire SEO providers or do their in-house SEO to get organic visitors to their site. A typical SEO strategy includes keyword research, creating a content plan, and publishing content. Although these are all importal parts of your overall SEO strategy, a commonly overlooked element of SEO is utilizing Google My Business.

What is Google My Business?

Google My Business is a free business profile that all businesses can create. It allows you to set the hours of operation for your business, describe your business, upload photos, and respond to customer reviews.

Google My Business is essential because it’s the first result that appears when a Google user searches for a business or any keywords that are relevant to a business. The business owner can access real-time data on how many customers are finding their business and what optimizations they can make to get more leads to their business.

How can Google My Business impact SEO?

Although Google My Business can give you a free profile for your business to get discovered, what’s the real ROI for using this platform? The key nugget in Google My Business is that it’s one of the best ways to improve your local SEO. If you add Google My Business to your current SEO strategy, you’ll have a great combination of both local SEO and general SEO. Some of the best SEO benefits of using Google My Business include:

Improving ranking factors for local SEO: When a customer searches for a sample local phrase like “ IT company near me'', Google will recommend different companies with a Google My Business. You'll be excluded from these searches if your company doesn’t have a Google My Business. This could result in losing thousands of prospects each month.

By creating a Google My Business, you will start ranking for local SEO. Google ranks local businesses based on relevance, prominence, and distance. Creating a Google My Business account will immediately start ranking for local SEO factors.

Authority: One of the key elements that Google uses to rank businesses is authority. When you create a Google My Business page, you have the ability to get reviews from your customers. As your business accumulates reviews, you will gain more authority from Google that your business is providing a service that customers enjoy. Without a Google My Business, you lose the opportunity to get reviews and rank higher for SEO terms.

Business listing optimization: When you create a Google My Business, you should fill out your business listing with keywords that are relevant to your SEO. These keywords will help your business be found when Google users are searching for terms on Google Search and Google Maps. This is a completely free way to capture thousands of searches relevant to your keywords on Google’s platforms.

Creating a Google My Business is a free and effective way to boost your SEO strategy. To learn more about how you can use Google My Business to get more organic traffic, get a free consultation here.

 You may want to read:

Using Google My Business as a Lead Generation Tool

How To Get Business Reviews On Google

How To Set Up Messaging On Your Google My Business Page