Google My Business: 9 Elements to Optimise on a Listing

There are nine elements to optimise on your GMB listing.

1 – Ensure the information on the listing is accurate and up to date.

This might sound pretty straightforward but what I’ve noticed is a lot of people will rush to set up their GMB listing and as a result, always end up making small errors.

Which in reality, those small errors are far from small and can actually be quite detrimental.

A few years ago, we were working with an electrical company based in London who rushed to set up their GMB listing. The mistake they made was entering a wrong digit for their phone number.

You can guess how big of an impact that had on their business.. Of course, we found out this mistake at a later date and corrected it but for a good two months, the client received no calls!

2 – The second thing you want to check is to make sure you select the relevant category for your listing.

The category you select for your GMB should essentially be the main service your business provides. To give that some context, for Level Finish, it would be “flooring contractor”. Not “carpet installation” as that’s one specific service which comes under the main category of flooring contracting.

It’s really important to get this right as If you picked the wrong category it can hinder your rankings.

3 – Fill in the description

This would be a description of what your business does. Google allows up to 750 characters for this. It’s best to take full advantage of this and use as many characters as possible. I highly recommend that you include the keywords you’re targeting in your description to help increase your relevancy for those keywords, however, don’t just spam the description as that’s unnatural, you want to focus on including your keywords naturally. In addition to this, you want to be sure the description clearly describes the services your businesses provides whilst also highlighting anything that makes your business unique, this will help you stand out from the competition. It’s also a good idea to state the areas/ locations you target too.

4 – Add photos

Adding photos helps build up social proof and allow you to show your potential customers what you’re capable of doing.

5 – Add your website URL

You may have noticed in step 2.2 that the top listing did not have a website connected to their GMB listing. This is a wasted opportunity, always connect your website to your listing. Linking the two together also lets Google know what listing is related to what website.

6 – Add your business hours

GMB listings on mobile devices have the call button feature, adding the hours you operate is critical as it allows potential customers to know what time you are open and what time they should call.

If your business has a physical location like a shop front, then this will also let customers know what time you’re open.

7 – Create a free GMB website.

Google allows everyone with a GMB listing to create a free GMB website. These websites are very basic and are typically tailored for businesses who do not have their own website. However, it’s a chance for us to increase our relevance even more for our keywords and services, so it’s a good idea to take full advantage of.

8 – Collect reviews

Collecting reviews is another great way to help build social proof for your business and show people that you are actually capable of doing what you say you are.

9 – Add GMB post

GMB posts allow you to share updates related to your business and also push forward messages to your client base. These messages appear in the Google search result when customers search for your business name.