Today’s article, Google My Business For Beginners, we will be discussing how you can easily set up Google My Business, even when you are just starting off with your local marketing.
This simple tutorial is what you need to head start your Google My Business listing today.
Watch the video version of this article below:
Google My Business helps you get more visitors in your area. This is an easy and free way to market your products and services locally.
Google My Business is a great starting point when it comes to local marketing. After all, people are now actually searching in Google for businesses near them. You do not want to miss this great opportunity when people search for your industry.
Aside from getting your business listed, it is very important that the information you placed on Google is complete, accurate, and well-optimized for search.
Here is an example of the dashboard and Google My Business listing:
You only need to do 3 steps to have your Google My Business listing up and running.
Beginner’s guide in setting-up Google My Business
Step 1: Create a Google My Business account
To create an account in Google, you need to have an existing Gmail account, if not, you can create one on this link here:
https://accounts.google.com/signup
Once you’ve done that, just head over the Google My Business page and you will be redirected to the step-by-step setup inside Google My Business and all you just do is to fill out the necessary information.
The complete walkthrough guide is available at the video tutorial found at the bottom part of this article.
Step 2: Verify your listing on Google My Business
Once you have everything set-up, the next step is to verify your listing so Google knows you are the real owner for that business.
There are 4 options to verify your business on Google:
Option 1: By postcard
The postcard option takes about 5 days to arrive. If you choose this option double check your address and contact number so it won’t delay the delivery.
Once you received your postcard, you can go back to Google My Business to verify by entering the 5-digit code found on your postcard.
Note: If you have not received your postcard within 5 days, then you can request for another code by simply clicking the “Request another code”, which is the blue banner at the top of the screen.
Option 2: Phone verification
If you do not want to wait for 5 days, an easier option would be by phone verification.
But take note, not everyone is eligible for phone verification. You’ll know if you are eligible when you see this option.
If you are able to verify by phone, you just simply place your phone number and click the “verify by phone” option to get the verification code.
Option 3: Email verification
If you are eligible for this option, you can easily just enter your email address to receive the code in your inbox.
Option 4: Instant verification
This option is eligible for people who are using Google Search Console, which is another tool from Google. You can simply use your email address in setting up your Google My Business Listing and your business can get instant verification.
Step 3 Optimizing your Google My Business listing
Congratulations! If you have done Step 1 to 2 of this tutorial without a problem, you are now listed on Google!
However, you still have Step 3, which is the most crucial step since this is about optimizing your listing on Google in order for the right people to find you.
Generally, the more information you placed on your listing, the better your listing will be in terms of search.
So let us go back to Google My Business dashboard and check the information that we can fill-in. Remember to always double check the information and make sure that everything is correct.
Be on the lookout for any typos and errors as you do not want to mislead people with wrong information. This is bad for business.
Aside from entering an accurate information about your business, another thing you need to polish is the photos sections.
Google recommends posting photos of your business since based from their study, businesses with photos get 35% more clicks to their website. Having said that, it is highly important that you get your cover photo, profile photo, and also your video posted in your Google listing, as much as possible.
BONUS TIP: Once you got everything set-up and you are starting to see visitors from your My Google Business Listing, you can encourage your happy customers to leave a good feedback on your Google My Business listing.
Customer reviews are one of the best marketing tools that you can use to get more visitors. The more positive reviews you get, the more visible your listing will be on Google.
Now that you’re all set up, you want to use your Google my business page to attract customers.
If you enjoyed this article, good news for you. In the coming days, I will be releasing a series of new videos about Google my business hacks and Google my business SEO that you do not want to miss. As a bonus I’ll also cover a Google ads tutorial to help you get instant lead generation results.
