In a crowded green tech market where you’re fighting the competition every day, you need to do everything to stand out. That’s why it’s crucial to optimise your Google My Business listing.
Especially if you deal within a certain area and want to show on Google Maps when someone searches for businesses local to them. Google My Business (GMB) will help you do just that.
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What Even is a GMB Listing?
Cast your mind back, if you’re old enough, to the pre-internet days of looking for a local trader or business.
(If you’re not old enough…imagine for a moment).
You’d rifle through the irrelevant pages of a local business directory the thickness of an encyclopedia and be met by any number of local firms, all offering the same service or product yet claiming to be the best somehow.
You had no idea who to trust, who was most experienced, who offered the best service- and whether they were even offering the service you needed. If you were lucky, you’d have a business address on the ad (so you could use local knowledge or an OS map to find them), but most of the time, there was a landline phone number through which all enquiries were diverted.
Believe it or not, this rinky-dinky age of business promotion was still better than nothing and served its purpose purely due to the lack of a superior alternative. However, even today, so many businesses attempt to operate with even less information available for the public to access-
Leaving them largely unheard of and making every sale an uphill battle of convincing their potential customers that they’re the best people for the job, that they’ll satisfy their demands and that whatever problem the customer has will be resolved.
This problem can be mitigated through the simplicity of…
Creating a Google My Business listing (GMB).
A GMB is like your Yellow Pages or local newspaper ad. However, the whole world can see it; it contains all of your vital information and can immediately link your potential customers straight through to contact forms. Getting them immediately on the phone, sending you an email or simply heading to your website- usually with a single click.
With so much potential at your disposal, it’s important to make sure your GMB works as effectively as possible, informing your prospects and directing them to your contact channels.
Therefore, you should look to optimise your Google My Business listing. Here’s how.
1. Verification
Here’s the first, obvious step before you even begin to optimise your Google My Business listing.
You need to create your GMB listing in the first place- then get it verified.
To do this, head to https://www.google.com/business/ to sign up and claim your business listing. At this point, you will need to enter your company name, address, and phone number. Once submitted, the verification process begins.
Sometimes google will send you a “postcard” which contains a pin number which you can use to access your GMB dashboard. This can take as little as three days, however can also take around a week.
More recently they have been performing verification automatically through publically available information or getting you to verify via video.
2. Business Name
Once you have access to your GMB dashboard, your listing optimisation can begin.
Start by editing your business name. In order for SEO to function properly, this name should match your business name across all other channels and platforms on the internet- for example, your social media, LinkedIn, and local trade directories.
It’ll also prevent your potential customers from becoming confused about who you are.
3. Category Selection
This is one of many crucial steps in optimising your Google My Business listing. Yet, it’s probably the most important part to get right! You must specify the correct primary category for your business; failure to do so will mean you won’t rank locally in Google Maps when someone does a search relating to your industry, i.e. ‘solar panel installers near me’.
Make sure that whatever you specify directly relates to the core activity of your business; i.e. if you primarily install heat pumps, you don’t want to state that you’re a gas engineer. Any extra services you provide need to be listed as “Additional Categories”.
4. Service Area and Radius
Here’s the next step on the “crucial” list. You need to specify your business address, exactly as it is across all other platforms on the internet- similar to your business name, consistency will mean more accurate and dependable SEO rankings.
A very important detail at this point is to mark “yes” in the “I deliver goods and services to my customers at their location” box- as you’re providing green tech installation services at your customer’s houses or other properties- not yours.
Despite this, a great way to further optimise your Google My Business listing is to state that you serve customers at your business address- even if it’s your home. Doing this will help your local SEO rankings for your solar installation company. If you hide your home address, you’re less likely to appear in Google searches.
You can define specific cities or set a defined radius. It’s sensible to only state the places you’re willing to travel to in order to get higher quality leads- you don’t want to waste time talking with potential customers if you’re never going to travel to them in the first place.
5. Hours, Phone No, Website
If your GMB listing states you’re open 24/7; however, you close at 5 pm, you’ll disappoint and lose potential customers- so you should state accurate operating hours in your listing.
Your phone number needs to be your primary office line and needs to be uniform across all of your other business profiles on the internet.
Lastly, in this step of Google My Business listing optimisation, you should enter the homepage of your company website in the appropriate box. Use the appointment URL box to enter your contact page or sign up/free estimate/quote forms- so that potential leads can quickly get through to you.
6. Services
It’s important once again to be detailed and specific when listing your services. To help you do this, you can organise them into categories and sub-categories.
An example of this could be heat pump installation, with ground source and air source as sub-categories.
If you can add a description to these categories, that’s even better.
7. Business Description
This is your chance to really sell yourself to your potential customers. Use some clever copy techniques to do this without sounding salesy.
Go into detail about what you do, who for, and why they might need your service. Go into some detail about the benefits to using your services, and ideally differentiate these from the services that your competition may offer.
Don’t bother trying to optimise your Google My Business listing by stuffing it full of keywords. The SEO won’t work any better, and it’ll make your listing read like it was written by a robot.
8. Business Photos
Adding photos will help your prospects visualise the service on offer and help show off the quality of workmanship and product, which is undeniable.
Be sure to add your company logo, profile photo and cover photos- again, make sure that they are uniform with any other company logos and pictures you’ve used across the various Internet platforms.
9. Reviews
Giving assurance that you can deliver the goods is crucial. Adding customer reviews is a great way to achieve this.
Once you start getting the reviews coming in (don’t be afraid to ask for them), start replying to as many as you can- whether they’re positive or negative. This demonstrates to your potential customers that you’re active and have good after-sales support.
Google will also display “gold stars” in their search results for your company based on these reviews.
10. Google Posts
A cool Google My Business feature is the ability to create posts. These help you to stand out from your competition and offer a promo to incentivise visitors to click through to your website.
Start this GMB optimisation step by creating a new post with an image or video which describes the offer. Summarise the offer in the headline.
These offers will be displayed when people find you on Google Maps, helping to bring in new leads.
Optimise your Google My Business Listing Today
It’s easy enough to create your GMB listing.
Google wants you to promote your business through their systems as it’s good for them, too. More traffic on Google means more people clicking on their ads and generating more revenue.
The part which really sells your business and sets you apart from the competition is the description. Writing this can be tricky and time-consuming, so it’s tempting to keep it simple and basic- however, this will completely undersell your business, and you’ll lose customers as a result.
A common problem businesses have with this section is all they do is talk about them, their awards, qualifications, experience etc, we discuss what you should be doing in another blog here.
