What is the Importance of Google My Business for SEO

As we move towards digitalization, our exposure to online content can be used to our advantage by establishing a website for both online and offline businesses.

Google My Business is a fantastic tool for establishing your brand and optimizing your online presence. To learn more about Google my Business for SEO, this article is loaded with tips and tricks to improve your overall Google search results and visibility.

Google My Business for SEO is a free tool provided by Google to assist businesses in obtaining a ranking and developing a digital presence across the search engine, which aids in the growth of portfolios.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a process in writing where in your content you use various keywords and key phrases within the web content. When you use your keywords properly in the content, that helps in boosting your content visibility online.

In simple words, it means optimizing your website, so that people can find your content easily via Google search.  Its main goal is to achieve search engine traffic. This can be achieved by doing prior keyword research, preferably on Google ads.

By doing this research, it will provide you with a variety of keywords, from which by comparing the competition of keywords, one can choose the best keyword niche for their content.

Check out some other Top SEO trends to Ace Search Engine Rankings in 2021

Contribution of Google My Business for SEO:

Google offers a free tool known as Google My Business for SEO that assists various businesses and organizations in managing their online presence across all digital platforms, especially Google.

For example, their location on maps is one such way to do so, as it will assist its customers in finding the business, explaining their background and motivations, and providing a tool with which one can verify their business and edit business-related information.

As a result, it aids in web content optimization because not only is your business profile verified by Google, but it also assists in generating that necessary web traffic, thereby ranking your content to the top of search results.

By using this business listing, you provide every important detail about your business on this platform, such as business contact information, email address, phone number, location on Google Maps, and so on, which will help to spread your business locally. While listing a business online is free, money enters the picture when we begin marketing it.

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 Google My Business for SEO Provides Brands with Local Exposure

Business listings frequently include components such as the brand, amenities it provides, pictures, reviews, modes of payment, web URL, the business’s tagline, additional media handles (including Facebook and Instagram handles), certifications, opening/closing time, updating the customers by providing them with articles about the brand or the events, and so on.

It implies that the customer is told almost everything about the brand, and if the reviews on Google, number of clicks on the website are good, the ranking will only go up and will attract more customers.

Importance of Google My Business for SEO:

Various studies confirm that businesses receive an average of approximately 950 search views and 320 maps per month. As a result, your localized content has a greater chance of generating more views, clicks, and actions. And if your business does not have a listing, you may lose a lot of potential customers.

In terms of pay-per-click (PPC) ads, Google local listings have a higher return on investment. As a result, it is critical to invest your money and time in optimizing your SEO and ranking your Google my business.

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How Google My Business for SEO will Help in the Distribution of Your Content?

Content creation and its marketing come with a responsibility to expose your brand completely to the customers. It can be achieved by updating your business listing on Google weekly to keep your audience updated with new additions or important changes.

Here are some useful extensions for increasing your business’s accessibility, which is the primary goal of Google My Business for SEO. It can also be done by adding various ad extensions such as the following:

•     Site Link Extension:

It is a space where you can add your additional links under the main text ad in search. With the help of these links, users can learn more about your brand by clicking on the other page links that you have mentioned under this.

For example, some of the attributes of your brand such as pricing or blogs or about us page, the user can visit directly on that page. It helps the user to get the most important information at the earliest by sending them to specific pages thereby, increasing engagement.

It can be beneficial if you provide your users with at least 7-8 active links. The site link extension should be such that it describes your page/ brand. Avoid sending them to the homepage page.

•     Callout Extension: 

It is 25-character snips of text that describe the most important, exciting, and valuable aspects of your business, products, or services.

For example, if your business deals with dry cleaning services, then you can provide your customers with details like free pick-up and delivery facilities, offers, or any special attributes that will attract more customers to your business and which makes your business different from others. These should be kept short and concrete and compelling. The callout extension highlights the best and bigger picture of your business.

•     Call Extension:

In simple terms, it means adding phone no. in case of direct contact. You can directly add the mobile/ landline no. in the ad to reduce the time of access to your business. It creates a one-to-one connection between the customer and the business associate with just one click.

It will be free calls and making it available 24/7 or you can mention timings. Prompt replies from your end as a business will be a time saver and efficient for the customer.

•     Structured Snippets:

This extension gives sneak peeks of what your user wants about a particular product or service. It mentions specifics, making your user land on your page directly, and the benefit of mentioning, it is that it creates more qualified authentic leads.

Include information that truly attracts your customers by using at least 2-4 structured snippets per headline. Update your clients with any change in amenities or services of your product or location or contact information to the headline you are advertising with. Mention some details which customers find different.

•     App Extensions:

If your business has its mobile app (application), one can mention that link. By mentioning app extensions, your brand gets more visibility. Also, make it more convenient for your customers as they can directly download the application and explore their requirements.

With the help of this extension, you can track the app downloads based on your extensions. By using generic words and keywords, it can be done by linking your headline text with your web page and app extension to the app store.

•     Lead Form Extensions:

In this extension, you can make a form that you provide to your customers to fill in basic details such as name, email id, phone no., city, occupation, country, company name, job title, etc.

By providing this information, the customer can get customized information about your ad either in the form of email or text message, thereby creating a lead.

•     Location Extensions:

This extension is very important for every business owner as it mentions the location/address of their business (be it online or offline) and contact details on Google Maps.

The significance of this extension is to increase purchases or related issues made by the customers in person. While using this extension, you have to keep in mind, the contact information and addresses should be up-to-date. You won’t require this if your business demands you to travel to provide the service; mentioning location extension can confuse customers.

•     Affiliate Location Extensions:

By affiliate, we mean an individual or an organization that is connected with other platforms, which also provides your product or service.

This extension is used by customers who make direct contact with nearby locations that are authorized to sell your product or service. In other words, if your product is also sold by other authentic platforms from where a customer can buy.

•     Price Extensions:

To avoid confusion, this extension directly mentions the prices to its customers. As a seller, you provide transparency to your customers by setting clear expectations.

It builds trust, and users will visit you/your website with a more prepared mindset and higher purchase intent. This also demonstrates the clarity and variety with which your brand is presented to its customers.

•     Promotion Extensions:

Customers expect to buy things at a discount, whether in an online or offline business, so they look for promo codes because full-priced products are sometimes out of their budget. When customers see how expensive a product is, they may decide not to purchase it.

Here, the company can provide their customers with promotional/promo codes and keep them intact to the services. Customers’ purchasing intent increases when you provide them with eye-catching offers because they will compare the prices with other companies that are offering the same product or service at a different or relatively low price. Mention these extensions on specific dates, days, or hours, event tags like black Friday sale or back to school.

What do We Mean by Providing Backlinks to Your Website and How it Helps to Boost Your Business?

Backlinks, also known as “inbound links” or “incoming links” are provided by connecting one website with another that provides a web source which can be a web page or web directory. A backlink is a type of reference similar to a citation.

They are important for both the search engines and the end-user, as backlinks help to determine how authoritative and authentic your website is based on the keyword mentioned/niche. These are signals to search engines that you are providing links to some external websites for not only endorsing your content but creating a network of information that one can easily access.

By linking different web pages, the search engines which work on a mechanism of AI (Artificial Intelligence) will automatically identify the web traffic on your page and interpret if the content is worth linking, thereby helping in giving a good ranking on the Google search results.

In today’s times, it has become all the more important to provide authentic and quality backlinks, and if provided in good quantity will automatically increase your web page popularity.

Backlinks act as a connection point for sharing/ providing more information that will benefit the end-user. By providing them with a variety of Web pages on the same topic, with different resources. Linking this information is critical for a successful SEO campaign when your content ranking shows up organically. It can be achieved by:

• Original citation of resources with more detailed insights on a particular keyword/niche
• By inviting Guest Bloggers to create content on your web page
• Quality of content helps establish your brand
• Collaborating with various other influencers
• Providing social media links
• Reclamation of your link

You can use various tools to manage your backlink and help you optimize your link profile such as Majestic Buzzstream, Google Search Console, SemRush, Ahrefs, Buzzsumo, and Moz. Hence, using such tools will help your profile on Google My Business for SEO help customers/users access a variety of information and its resources for citation.

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What are the Takeaways for The Customers from Google My Business for SEO?

• To learn about a company’s working hours so that the customer can go to the company by either making prior reservations/appointments or as per their convenience
• To make online reservations
• To go to the company’s website
• To find a local business’s address or get directions to it
• Writing and reading reviews about a local business, which will further help other customers as well and help get ratings
• To contact a local business without first visiting their website, will be more time saving
• To view images of a local business and its products or services to get an idea about the company/brand/business and their authenticity
• To see what products and services are available
• To inquire about and respond to a local business

How can You Improve The Quality of Your Content, Which can Have an Impact on The Ranking of Your Company’s Website?

Google My Business for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) if managed well can expand your reach to your customers and help you develop and grow your business. It can happen if you keep in mind a few pointers:

• Content Should be to The Point: This can only be achieved when proper research is conducted, for example, the usage of apt keywords. It can change the face of your content. By using Google Adword Tool, you can analyze the components such as average monthly searches, top page bidding for your keyword, its monthly competition, and cost per click.

• Learning about the competitiveness- low, medium, or high- of your keyword, which is determined by the number of advertisers bidding for each keyword with all other keywords across Google.

• The details such as about the business, address, phone no., social accounts, email id should be accurate.

• As a business owner, one has to think like the customer, identify their needs, the intent of the customer. This will help give you a broad perspective and help you in creating content that will attract customers. By providing them with special offers is what will set your business apart from your competitors.

• SEO requires an understanding of first, how search engines work, secondly, what are people searching for (that is keywords and key phrases), and lastly, the intent of their search.

A successful SEO makes its site appealing and takes care of the combination of technical (on-page SEO) and its marketing (off-page SEO). The user is always searching for the specifics.

Content is mostly searched through hashtags on various social media handles (like Instagram, Facebook), keywords, directly landing on the website page, or scrolling our feeds. And here comes in the picture a mechanism that is running our Google search results.

No matter if we search on Google or any other platform, our digital footprint is read and analyzed by AI (Artificial Intelligence) which thereby, produces results on Google accordingly.

This happens because AI observes our set pattern and tries to suggest what we are looking for. First, it learns our search patterns, tracks data, and stores that data. And then, it predicts your search, which can organically rank your content on Google pages.

• Put up photos of your shop/office, your work photos, or featuring your products.

• Customer reviews should be valued and encouraged because they allow you, as a business owner, to interact with your customers by getting their feedback.

Negative feedback allows you to improve your services and products. Positive feedback has a ripple effect, attracting more customers. This improves your online visibility. You can accomplish this by providing a separate link for your customers to provide feedback/write reviews.

• Message service should be made available through Google My Business for SEO purposes.

Frequently Asked Question:

1. Can Google My Business help to get a good SEO ranking?

Yes, it can help your website to get a better SEO ranking if you are aware of the techniques that should be implemented to do so.

2. Is there any way to check Google My Business ranking?

You can get your results by tracking the “Google Local Rankings” by searching for it on “Settings”.

3. What does “Google Local Rankings” suggest?

It can show you the results for the particular topic you are searching for on Google and it shows you all the nearest locations or services that provide you with the similar services you are searching for.

Concluding Thoughts:

Google My Business for SEO is one tool that gathers all of the important information about your business and depending on the extensions used and how well your content is written for the audience, will ultimately determine your internet reach. Links are treated differently in Google My Business Listings.

Local citations are taken into account here. Citations are mentions of your company’s name, physical address, and phone numbers on the internet. The relevance and authenticity get verified by using Google My Business for SEO; when your website is constantly cited in all the important and relevant places, your content/ brand gets more recognition.

Organic SEO, on the other hand, may not be able to effectively establish its presence on the internet because it is not available everywhere, and data about the brand is insufficient to attract customers. As a result, Google My Business is an excellent tool for optimizing your data.