What I’m about to tell you is by far the most economical yet effective task you can do to help grow your business on the internet right now.
And that is getting your Google Business profile PROPERLY optimized. When people search for ‘plumber or landscaper near me’, you want to show up first, right? Those are hot prospects who are close to making a buying decision. If they’re not finding you, then they’re finding your competitors.
Ok, let me show you how to properly optimize your Google Business page right now.
One
If you don’t have an account, you need to set one up. It’s fast and free. And I have a separate video on that, which you can find here: Click Here
Two
Assuming you already have your account created, you MUST make sure you’re fully verified. You can create an account and never get it verified, and that is useless, because customers will only see it, once you verify it. You’ll need a street address, not a PO box, and Google will either send you a postcard with a code on it, or they might give you the choice to do a video call. Also, you can choose to have Google NOT display your business address, so if it is your home, then don’t worry, you can opt to just have your business phone number visible, and not the address.
Three
The MOST important part of your profile is choosing your category. Don’t settle with just ONE category, find a related one which still makes sense. Choose as many as you want. You need to choose as many categories as you can. While of course still being honest. When choosing your category, you’ll have the option to choose your ‘primary’ one, make sure this is your main service/product, example “Landscape Designer”.
Four
This can take some time but you need to create an entry for EVERY service you provide. Even if you have 20 services. The more, the better. This is a great opportunity to build authority with Google. Do NOT leave out ANY of them. If someone searches ‘irrigation near me’, and you do irrigation but you don’t put it in your list of services… then some OTHER contractor is going to show up.
Five
Photos. You want to have photos of your company truck/van, office, crew, and work. This is a great opportunity to let customers see how great you are. Let me put it this way, if you googled a business and they had no photos, and you googled another business and they had photos of their team, their work, and happy customers, which do you feel more at ease with? Which would you trust more? That’s my point. Photos = certainty and certainty = peace of mind. So, get photos and also short video clips (about 15-30 seconds) and add them every week or so.
Six
The icing on the cake are 5 Star Google Reviews. This is the number two most important thing (after choosing your business categories). It is important to think BIG when it comes to reviews and not just hope to get to ’10’ and then call it a day. You need to have more google reviews than any other competitor in your area. You need to be the ‘no brainer’ the choice everyone picks without needing to think because it is obvious, because you have the most and best reviews, so they feel it is obvious to just go with you. Therefore, having lots of reviews helps close curious prospects into paying customers. Having lots of reviews also helps push you further up in Google Maps rankings.
Even though you may only get 1 every couple months, that doesn’t mean it has to be that way. It DOESN’T, you can get active about it, you don’t have to wait passively. You need to reach out, via email and SMS to all past customers, and it can take up to 4-5 follow ups for them to actually leave that review. So this is a big campaign and requires time, energy and a lot of follow up.
At this point, you’re probably thinking “I don’t have time for all this”. Don’t worry, if you can’t be bothered we offer a highly affordable service at Clear Imaging, where we can manage your Google Business account for you.
We’d love to manage it for you and we know exactly how to do it right. But first, let us do a free Google My Business health check… and see what is good, bad, and what needs fixing.
Click here to request it and we’ll get back with you right away
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