Google Business Profiles, or Google My Business (GMB) as they used to be known, may have originally been beneficial for hyper-local businesses like restaurants and beauty salons, but with the explosion in mobile and ‘near me’ searches over the years, they are now essential for just about any business online.
Whatever product or service you offer, any time someone searches for it on Google using a mobile device or with a location modifier, e.g. ‘solicitor manchester’, there’s a good chance the Map Pack of the best Google Business Profiles (GBPs) will show up at the top of the results. If your GBP doesn’t rank in this prime search real estate you could be missing out on potential customers.
What is GMB/GBP?
A Google Business Profile is a free service offered by Google that lets businesses create a profile with their information, which is then used on Google Maps and in Google’s search results.
Most businesses will have a GBP, whether you created this yourself, or Google added one based on other information about your company on the web. However it was created, once claimed and verified by your business, effectively optimising this free piece of Internet real estate is vital if you want to capitalise on the potential business it could send your way.
If you don’t know if you have a GBP, or have a profile but haven’t claimed or verified it yet, you can find more details on this here.
Why is an Optimised GBP/GMB Important
With practically all business sectors becoming increasingly more competitive on the Internet, simply having a GBP is no longer enough. For those traffic-generating map pack rankings, a thoroughly-optimised (and managed, but we’ll come to that later) Google Business Profile is essential, for a couple of reasons.
First of all, the traffic potential – we’ve had clients who get up to 50% of the organic traffic to their site from their GBP ranking in the map pack, and the clickthrough rates for these map pack rankings can be up to twice those of even page 1 organic rankings.
Secondly, relatively speaking, ranking in the map pack at the top of local search results is often quicker and easier than ranking web pages in the organic search results below. There are obviously a number of factors that influence this but for most clients, everything else being equal, they should find it’s possible to rank their GBP without the months and months, or even years, of work required to rank web pages.
So, if your GBP isn’t optimised to rank for searches where Google is showing the map pack, this might mean your business is missing out on a lot more organic traffic and potential customers. To try and capture some more of this potential traffic, we’ve provided the step-by-step instructions we use to optimise client profiles, so you can optimise your business profile yourself.
How to Optimise Your GMB for Better Map Rankings
Before we start, it’s worth briefly mentioning the 3 key factors Google considers for local search rankings:
- Relevance (how relevant is what you offer to what’s being searched for)
- Distance (how ‘local’ are you to the searcher)
- Prominence (how well-known is your business)
It’s worth bearing these in mind as you optimise your GBP (and your location-specific webpages) in order to try and gain the best rankings possible and, just like you might optimise the pages on your website, it’s worth investing the time and effort in thoroughly optimising your Google Business Profile to get the best results.
Click here if you want to jump straight to the quick overview of the steps for optimising your GBP.
Optimising your GBP – step-by-step
Assuming you have already claimed your Google Business Profile, once you’ve logged into the Google account that owns it you can go to the Google Business Profile Manager to start updating it; or simply search for your business in Google and you should see the update options in the screenshot below, then click on Edit Profile to get started.
Business Name
The business name you use for your profile is important for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it’s a key optimisation opportunity, and secondly, it forms part of your NAP, which stands for Name, Address, Phone number.
Consistency between your GBP, the page it links to on your website, and the citations you will be getting/building (see later) is key to success. Google likes to provide quality, reliable results, so making sure you use the same information for your NAP wherever it appears is a key element of optimising your GBP.
Try to use a business name for your profile and NAP that is optimised for your product/service and location, where possible. So if you’re an accountancy firm, instead of just ‘Jones & Partners’ you could opt for ‘Jones & Partners London Accountants’. This can make it easier for Google to understand the searches your profile is relevant for, but don’t overdo it and stuff your title full of keywords, as this rarely works for long.
Business Category
Choosing the right category for your profile is also key, and it may be best to select 2-3 of the most relevant categories for your market. Some categories may be more relevant to searches than others, and it’s a good idea to select the same or similar categories to profiles that already rank well for the searches you’re targeting.
You can do this by analysing the map pack in the search results, or use a handy tool like Pleper’s Category Helper. As you can see from the screenshot below, you just enter your business information so it can find your GBP, and then the search terms you want to be found for, and it will analyse the competition to determine which primary and secondary categories you might want to consider. You probably won’t need them all, just the top 2 to 3 that most profiles are using.
Description
Your business description provides another opportunity to optimise your profile for the search terms and locations you want to be found for. Again, avoid keyword stuffing, but adding your main search terms and locations, along with related keywords and nearby areas, in a description that ‘sells’ your business or service and offers a compelling reason why users should choose you, maximises the potential of this part of your profile.
Opening Date
This is just the date the business opened and is useful to show how long you’ve been around and help provide a more complete GBP.
Phone Number
Another key part of the NAP for your local business, so ensure that you use the same phone number in your profile as the one on the web page it links to, and the citations and other listings for the business on the Internet. It’s also a good idea to try using the same format in all places, too – e.g. avoid mixing up +44 1234 56789, 01234 56789, and +44 (0)1234 56789 all the time.
Website
This is your opportunity to add a link to your website from your GBP. If you are a local business with only one location, this will most likely be a link to your website homepage. However, if you have a number of locations, you would ideally want a separate page for each of these on your site, and then link to these from the relevant business profiles.
Often, businesses with multiple locations, and therefore multiple GBPs, will just link them all to the website homepage. If you have different location pages on your site, link your Leeds GBP to the Leeds location page, the Birmingham GBP to the Birmingham location page etc.
It’s also a good idea to add some tracking to these links, so you can see the traffic you are getting from them in Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Remember the image of the different traffic volumes at the start of the article? You can get the same info by simply adding ?utm_source=google&utm_medium=gmb&utm_id=website to the end of your link URL.
Booking
It’s also possible to add additional links to your profile, which can be useful if you want to take visitors straight to a booking or request a callback page. By clicking Booking in the edit options, you can add other links to your profile to help convert users better. Again, you can add tracking to see how well these are working, and for a link that takes users to a booking form you could change the tracking ID and use ?utm_source=google&utm_medium=gmb&utm_id=booking, and something else relevant for any other links you add.
Social Profiles
A recently new addition to business profiles is the ability to add links to your Social Media. As well as helping to create a more complete profile, it improves your online presence and makes it easier to engage and connect with potential customers across their preferred social platforms.
Shortname
Your profile’s shortname makes it easier to share and access your profile, rather than copying and pasting the huge URL in your web browser. Choose something short but recognisable as this will be helpful when you’re sharing your profile with customers, e.g. ours is simply g.page/GrapefruitSEO – try it.
Business Location
The final piece of the important NAP! If you have a business location you want to use for your profile so clients can find and visit you, rather than simply being what’s know as a Service Area Business where you don’t have a fixed location but visit clients where they are (e.g. a plumber), decide on the address and format to use across your GBP, website, and citations. Again, consistency of your business’s name, address, and phone number is key for the best possible GBP rankings.
Service Areas
As mentioned above, your business might not have a location clients can visit or that you want to use in your profile, in which case you can use this section to add the areas nearby that you service, so Google and customers know whether you cover their location.
Even if your business does have a location clients visit, you should still add in the service areas you cover for the same reason, so you have more chance of showing up for searches in these locations. After all, the catchment area for a local takeaway is likely to be much smaller than the catchment area for a plastic surgeon, so it makes sense to define the areas your business covers, rather than leave it up to Google.
When adding service areas for any type of business, try to include as many of the locations as are relevant for your business. For a small local business this might just be the surrounding areas, but for businesses with a longer reach, look to try and cover as many as possible, expanding out from your location, e.g. City of London, South London, London, Greater London.
Opening Hours
These are what you’d expect and even if your business is a typical Mon-Fri, 9-5 operation, adding in your opening hours will show you as closed, open, or opening soon when your profile appears in the results. For businesses with less common hours, e.g. bars, restaurants, and gyms, it can be more important to make sure this information is current and kept up to date.
There is also an option to add Special Hours, which should be used when different dates like Easter, bank holidays, and Christmas are in the bear future, or if your business is closed for training, stock taking etc. on a particular day.
More
This section covers a variety of attributes and amenities that are not going to be relevant for all businesses, but by going through and checking any that apply, your profile will be more complete, plus you will be providing the necessary information to potential customers who might make their decision based on factors such as whether a business identifies as women-owned, has wheelchair accessible restrooms, or is LGBTQ+ friendly.
Services
This is the section where you get to showcase the services you offer within your profile. As well as helping with the optimisation of your overall profile, by adding your core services, with descriptions and prices where possible, you give Google more information to use to rank your profile and show the relevant services to users who are looking for them.
Products
Similar the the above, eligible retail businesses can usually add information about the products they sell, all of which can help optimisation, rankings, and the conversion of potential customers. Likewise, food and drink businesses can also add detailed menu information with images, to help attract users.
Photos
The map pack is a very visual piece of search real estate, and for your profile to stand out you want to make sure you are adding a good selection of appealing images. Logo and header images are the bare minimum, and you should ideally add as many images as are relevant for your profile and business.
Businesses should consider adding a good quantity of attractive images of their offices, employees, customer projects, products, results achieved, reviews received, accolades won etc. The photo section provides a great opportunity to catch the eye of searchers and showcase all the reasons they should choose your business.
It’s worth mentioning that while great-looking images are important for your profile, just as with your website, optimising these images well can also be beneficial. So using appropriately optimised file names for your images, e.g. ‘jones-and-partners-architects-london-logo’ is advisable, and for the more advanced, we’ve also found geotagging these images for your location to be helpful (we’ll look at geo-tagging in more detail in another post).
Website Updates
Finally, once you’ve optimised all the above elements of your Google Business Profile, the last piece of optimisation to help with your map pack rankings needs to be done on your website.
If your website is already well-optimised, a lot of the information you’ve added to your GBP will probably be what’s on your site, but as we’ve seen the best results by making sure profiles and the web page they link to share the same info, it’s worth making sure.
Look at using the title of your GBP in the meta title of the page it links to. Optimise the meta description and key headings on the page for the search terms and locations you’re targeting. And try to make sure the name address and contact details of the business displayed in the footer or elsewhere on the page match up to the NAP info you added to your profile. You could even look to embed a link or Google Map of your profile on the page.
We’ve seen the best results with clients when the business information on GBPs and the web pages they link to matches as closely as possible.
Quick Overview/Recap
Here’s a short overview/recap of the steps to properly optimise your Google Business Profile:
- NAP: use the same name, address, and phone number across GBP, website, and citations
- Business Name: optimise for product/service and location
- Business Category: choose the most relevant and popular category(s)
- Description: add a compelling sales pitch optimised for product/service and location
- Opening Date: add the date the business started to show credibility
- Phone Number: add the same phone number as the one on the linked-to webpage
- Website: link to location-specific URL on your business website with UTM tracking
- Booking: add additional links to booking pages with UTM tracking
- Social Profiles: add social profiles to increase engagement
- Shortname: create a recognisable short name to help with marketing
- Business Location: add the business address that customers can visit
- Service Areas: select areas covered for businesses with or without an address
- Opening Hours: add day-to-day and any special opening times
- More: add all relevant attributes and amenities
- Services: add individual details for core services offered
- Products: add detailed information on products for retailers and menus for food and drink businesses
- Photos: add logo, header, and other relevant images with optimised filenames
- Website Updates: ensure the webpage linked to matches the GBP optimisation
Ongoing Optimisation
Just like optimising your website, the optimisation of your Google Business Profile is more of a process than a one-off event. Following the optimisation steps above can significantly improve your GBP’s ranking in the map results, but to maintain and continue this improvement, there are steps you can take on an ongoing basis.
Reviews
Data points to the fact that one of the most important factors in determining which profiles rank in the map pack in the search results are those with the best reviews. This doesn’t just mean those with 5 stars, but profiles with a track record of attracting a good number of good reviews.
Depending on how competitive your market you might need 20, 50, 100, or more good reviews to rank well in the map pack, and profiles with a good volume of historical reviews tend to rank best – so you should look at developing your review count as a priority to ensure the long term success of your profile’s rankings.
Implement processes to ask customers for reviews and make it easy for them to leave them by using the link from the ‘Ask for Reviews’ section of the GBP edit screen; and interact with reviews left on your profile, even any bad ones, as this shows others that you’re committed to providing the best possible service/products.
Updates
Active business profiles not only seem to do better in the search results, but they also have the potential to get more engagement from users. Look at adding regular update posts to keep users up to date with what’s going on and prompt them to find out more.
Q&A
Monitor your profile for questions from users and provide them with timely answers that could turn them and other readers into new customers.
Offers & Events
Want to offer a discount for a limited time, or make searchers aware of a sale you have starting soon? Use Offers and Events to include these on your profile and encourage users to visit your website or venue.
Citations
Lastly, one of the best ways to improve your profile’s appearance in the search results is to make sure you build a healthy number of quality citations or listings for your business on directory sites and the like. Remember we said prominence was one of the key ranking factors for local SEO, well there can be no better way to raise the profile of your business than it being found on all major and niche-relevant business directory sites – just remember to get the NAP consistent across all your listings.
Effective GBP Optimisation Can be a Big Opportunity
With the prominence of the map pack in many of Google’s search results, the potential this offers for significantly increasing your organic traffic, and the relative speed and ease with which it can be possible to achieve map pack rankings, proper optimisation of your Google Business Profile could be a huge opportunity for your business.
Following the optimisation steps we’ve outlined above could even be enough on their own to move your profile into the map pack, and a consistent effort to improve the optimisation of your GBP, proactively update it, interact with searchers, and encourage reviews from your clients, could help maintain this increasingly important source of traffic and potential customers for most businesses.
If you’re convinced of the potential of having a fully-optimised business profile and want some assistance to make the most of this opportunity, just complete the callback request form below and we’ll get in touch to discuss how we can help.