How to Set Up Google Business Profile for Success
Google Business Profile is an important business listing for obtaining new clients and customers. If you have a Google Business Profile, then you may sometimes come up in the search results, especially when someone does a “near me” search for services or products you provide. However, the same is true for your competition. Below, you can find some tips for building a successful Google Business Profile.
Google Business Profile Optimizations for Local SEO
Local SEO is the process of optimizing your website and business profiles to obtain a larger share of local search queries than your competitors. Google Business Profile optimizations are one of the most important parts of the process. Be sure to follow the advice below to come up more often in Google’s coveted Map Pack.
- Get More Positive Reviews. As previous blogs pointed out, positive reviews signal to Google algorithms that your business provides a positive user experience. Google will therefore rank your business favorably if you have a higher aggregate score and more reviews than your competitors. Obtaining positive reviews is always important.
- Proper Keyword Usage. Keywords are important on your website and Google Business Profile (and the same is true for other listings, for that matter). For example, if you are a consumer bankruptcy attorney, then keywords like “file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy” or “Chapter 13 bankruptcy” should appear on your profile. This is true whether you are posting videos, photos or blog posts on your profile. You should also ask people leaving positive reviews to include high-volume keywords in the body of their reviews.
- Place a Google Business Profile Button. You should link your website and Google Business Profile together. Try to place a button near the top and bottom of your site that can link people to your profile.
- Place Your Services. You should place services and products on your Google Business Profile. If you are a personal injury attorney, be sure to list services such as car accident, truck accident, motorcycle accident, catastrophic injury and brain injury cases. As you know, these are cases that generally lead to a higher settlement or verdict outcome. Try to place as much information about your services as possible.
- Add FAQs. Customers and clients can leave frequently asked questions on your profile. You can answer these questions and even post your own questions and answers. For example, if you or a client were to put “Does this law firm help file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy?” on your profile, then Google is going to pick up that question as well as your answer and the keywords contained within. You should have similar FAQs on your website with the appropriate structured data attached. If you successfully pull off this strategy, then you might show up in featured snippet sections on Google. These sections have great visibility and therefore attract a large number of clicks.
- Proper Category Selection. Prior blogs discussed the importance of having your Google Business Profile display the correct business category. You should pick the category that best describes your business. If you are a bankruptcy attorney, be sure to select that option as your primary category. You want Google to pick up on this information when people are searching for a bankruptcy attorney.
- Offer Frequent Updates. Keep your Google Business Profile up to date with posts. Any time your business hosts any event, make a post about it. Any time your business has a special offer, make a post about it. If you do this often enough, Google sees your business as active, which can help in search result placement. Be sure to link back to your site often. Doing so can help you obtain more traffic over time.
- Fix NAP Issues. Be sure to fix any issues with your business’ name, phone number or address. You want to always make sure your contact information stays up to date. In addition, make sure to make your contact information accessible on Google and across the web. This means if you update contact information on Google, update it everywhere else. If your profile has name-address-phone (NAP) issues, it signals poor user experience to Google.
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