Google Business Profile SEO Tips. How to optimize your Google Maps listing. Ep. 110

Do you have a Google Business Profile? If not, it's time to get one; we'll talk about that in today's episode. If you have one, there are some things you can do for SEO to help your Google Maps listing show up more often when people are searching for businesses like yours. Let's optimize that Google Business Profile for SEO. 

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Episode Transcript

Shure MV7 (00:00):
Welcome back to the simple SEO podcast today.

(00:02):
I want to talk about your Googlebusiness profile listing and how
you can optimize it, how you canuse.
SEO search engine optimizationto help improve the visibility
of your Google maps listing oryour Google business profile.
So the very first thing.

(00:23):
Excuse me.
Oh my goodness.
And the very first thing thatyou will want to do is to make
sure.
That you have verified yourGoogle business profile listing
because you cannot really do theoptimization on it until you
have verified it.
So if you've not yet verifiedyour listing, I want you to go

(00:44):
ahead and just quickly go toGoogle and just search.
How do I verify my Googlebusiness profile listing?
Or go to my blog.
There's a, um, there is a blogpost on it.
There.
So, what you're going to want todo is go through the
verification process and theverification process has evolved
over the course of time.
So I don't want to tell youexactly how you're going to

(01:05):
verify it because it does changeperiodically.
So that's why I'm saying.
Go look and see what the mostcurrent.
Option is for verification.
So that's step number one.
Make sure that you own it.
Now note here.
You do not have to pay a companyto verify your listing for you.
It is easy.

(01:26):
It's free.
It's not going to take you along time.
You also do not need to pay acompany to manage your Google
business profile for you.
So I know there are people andthey call you constantly because
I get calls from them too.
Telling me that my Googlebusiness profile listing has not
been verified.

(01:46):
It's not being managed and theycan help me with it for a mere
$399.
Right now.
The funny thing is my Googlebusiness profile has been
verified since 2016.
So, yeah.
So save your money.
Go through the verificationprocess yourself.
Then what you're going to wantto do is to optimize your

(02:10):
listing.
So you're going to be able toput in your business name and
your address and your contactinformation.
You can also put in your hoursof operation.
Now, this is important,especially if you are a brick
and mortar business and you havelike special holiday hours, it's
a really good idea to updateyour listings to be reflective

(02:30):
of your holiday or summer hours.
So that.
Your customers have the mostcurrent information when they
search for you in Google mapsand your Google business profile
is what feeds information intoGoogle maps.
The reason that this isimportant is a lot of people,
myself included.

(02:51):
I search Google maps to pull uphours to pull up locations, to
pull up websites, all sorts ofthings for local businesses.
So definitely make sure that youhave your current operating
information, your correctaddress, all of that in your
listing.
Then you can use keywords.
So think about the terms thatyour ideal customer.

(03:14):
Would be searching for, and youcan use some of those.
In your description and in yourinformation, you also are going
to have an option where you canchoose like attributes for your
listing.
So go through and look and seewhich of those make sense.
You can update and add in photosor videos.
Those are great to do.
You can save those, like youwould on your website.

(03:36):
So saving them with the keywordsin the business name so that
they show up.
You do not have to.
Have offers and specials andpost information on your Google
business profile.
It's not something that you needto deal with on a weekly basis.
It's not really.
Anything that you need to worryabout on an ongoing basis, go in

(03:59):
and optimize it.
Make sure it's verified.
Optimize it.
And then if your business hourschange or something changes,
then go ahead and do the updateand let Google know.
Hey, this is changing.
But you don't have to be activeon there and putting all sorts
of updates and information.
It's really not necessary.

(04:20):
Just make sure you have thecore, basic information.
Correct.
Now.
Why do we want to do this?
The reason we want to do this,especially as local businesses
and small businesses.
Is very often.
Our map listing because of theway the search results pages.
They refer to it as the mappack.

(04:42):
Very often our map listing willactually rank higher than our
website, especially if we'rejust getting started with SEO.
We're in a competitive niche.
There's multiple people in our.
Local market, et cetera.
So by optimizing.
Your Google business profile.

(05:03):
You have a better chance ofranking more often in that map
pack.
They're not going to showeveryone who's got a business in
your community.
In that map pack.
They're only going to show threeto five.
But we want to own as much ofthe search engine results, page
real estate as possible.
Meaning we are hoping that ourwebsite is going to show up.

(05:25):
We're hoping we show up in themaps.
We'd like it.
If our social media listingshowed up, et cetera, we want to
show up.
As a business, as many places aspossible.
So I know this is a quickepisode today.
It's just one of those things.
Make sure you have verified.
Your Google business profile andthen go in and do some

(05:48):
optimization on it.
Make sure that you are usingkeywords in there.
You have your local information.
You've put in your photos,you've updated your hours, all
of that, so that you canhopefully show up more often in
the map pack.
In the search results.
If you've got this all set upand optimized and you, or set up

(06:09):
and verified, you will get amonthly report from Google
business profile that will letyou know how many people.
I searched for you.
How many people saw yourbusiness?
How many phone calls did youget?
How many people went to yourwebsite?
How many people asked fordirections?
It's kind of interesting to beable to look at it and just see,
okay, this is working, it'sshowing up quite a bit.

(06:30):
I'm getting linked.
So I'm getting clicks to thewebsite, I'm getting calls,
whatever it is, because thathelps you to just know that that
channel is also.
Working for your business.
All right.
That's it for this one.
It's just a quick episodebecause there's not really.
Hunting to do.
As far as optimizing your Googlebusiness profile.

(06:51):
But if you have any questions,you can leave them on our Google
form or you can text them to methrough your podcast app.
All right, bye.
For now, we'll see you nextweek.