In this blog, I want to talk more and focus on the benefits of using Google My Business.
Billions of people use Google to search for varieties of information every single day. Information like fashion trends, politics news, repair store, and many more.
Google search engine is on top of its game, it remains the most popular search engine in the world with over 75% of the search market share.
Presently over a 5.6 billion search are done on the Google platform in a day and a large portion of these search queries have local intent.
What this means is that a lot of netizens are searching for businesses within their geographical location.
Let’s say, for example, you work in a company, it’s lunchtime, and you want to eat but first, you want to see the list of the restaurants within your present position where you can eat.
What you are most likely to do is to bring out your phone from your pocket and input the keyword “Restaurants near me” on the google search bar.
A lot of People rely on google for everything they do on the web.
Things like browsing for the nearest barbing salon, coffee shop, or browsing for how they can start a particular business e.tc.
This is the main reason why it’s important and necessary for businesses that have an online presence to optimize their website pages for visibility on the Google search engine.
The more your business becomes visible to your potential customers the more you have a chance of increasing your sales.
Optimizing your web pages for visibility on the Google search engine isn’t for only large-scale businesses.
Small scale businesses can take advantage of Google My Business to create their online profile which will make it easier for their potential audience to locate them.
What is Google My Business?
Google My Business is a free internet-based service designed by Google to help small businesses promote their local store online.
The tool enables business owners to manage how their business will appear on Google search engine platform and also make their business accessible to those who will need their service.
So, why do you really need to use Google My Business?
Since a lot of people resort to google for most of their daily needs, it means a huge amount of your potential audience will likely access your profile.
The more often your business shows up on google search engine result pages the better online users will know about your business.
Benefits of Google My Business
With the availability of today’s technology, it’s faster and easier to promote your business product and services.
According to Search Engine watch, 50% of mobile phone users who use their phone for local searches end up visiting a store.
Let’s now take the fact that almost everyone uses smartphones these days; will you imagine how your business sales can increase through organic search and Google My Business.
Now let’s talk about the benefits of Google My Business, below are 4 benefits of Google My Business.
1. GMB Allows You to Become Visible in Google Maps and Local Business Listings
With Google My Business your business will become visible to your potential audience at the top result pages and you will also appear on the Google map.
It’s a full local package, and there are two main reasons you will need to pay attention to it.
- High Visibility
The local package takes up a huge space on the first page of google search engine result pages, and that is the first view of any Google user after they search their query.
- It allows Netizens to get the overview Information of your business
The local package is a search Engine Results Page (SERP) that displays stores that are closely related to searches.
It also includes other relevant information that a potential audience will likely want to get access to.
For example, where the store is located on the map, the business’s contact number for customers to place their call when necessary.
According to research, Google My Business is the biggest determining factor of local package ranking.
What this should tell you is that, if you are aiming to connect to your target customers within your geographical location then verifying, updating, and optimizing your business online information through Google My Business can help.
2. GMB Gives Your Customers The Ability to Leave Reviews About Your Business
Customer review should not be neglected and underrated when it comes to ranking on the search engine.
According to research, online reviews are said to make up more than 10% of how the search engine ranks results.
Therefore, if you want your business to be visible in the search results, you must make use of Google My Business to make it easy for your customers to leave positive feedback about your business. Other importance of reviews is as follows:
- Reviews Improve Local SEO
A lot of online shoppers rely on reviews before they make a buying decision, the online reviews guide them if they will choose to buy or not.
The reason for this is because they know that the reviews are testimonials from customers who have done business with you in the past, because of this shoppers feel the reviews are credible and the people behind the reviews are your past and present customers.
People never get tired of first checking out customer reviews when and before choosing a local business.
Because online shoppers love reading reviews, search engines make use of them to rank search results.
If you can utilize the review aspect of Google My Business, it will have a positive impact on your business.
- Reviews Increase Sales
Positive reviews also serve as free recommendations and reliable ads for your business.
The reason is that customers are likely to purchase from businesses with a lot of positive reviews as opposed to businesses with more negative reviews.
People also trust online reviews as much as they trust recommendations from friends, colleagues, and family.
The more positive reviews your business gets, the higher you can increase your sales.
There is a positive correlation between reviews and sales.
Although your business might also get negative reviews, the best way to deal with negative reviews is to handle them professionally.
Positive reviews are not something to take personally, they will also make your business grow if you use them to improve on your weaknesses.
A properly utilized negative review will provide relevant, useful, and necessary information to help businesses move forward.
- Reviews Let You Know What Your Customers Think About Your Business
Reviews provide business owners with a clear understanding of how online shoppers see their business.
With reviews, you will get to know about how customers interact with your business, strategies that are working, things needed to be changed, or weaknesses that need to be improved on.
It doesn’t matter if a review is positive or negative, reviews can help you understand what your customers are thinking.
View them from a business view of point and take them into consideration.
3. GMB Provides You With Insights That Give’s You Helpful Information About Your Business
The feature of Google my Business is not only to promote your business products and services; it will also help you to understand your business online market.
How is this possible?
Google My Business has a powerful insight tool that provides insights on important areas of your business that will assist you in creating strategies and making decisions.
The insight tool enables you to access statistics and insights that will give you details about where your audience is coming from.
- Views
With Google My Business, you can get to know the number of views that your business profile is getting.
This is done for you to verify the effectiveness of your campaigns – if they are working perfectly well and getting the required attention or if they aren’t delivering results as expected.
- Search Queries
Google My Business also provides reports for you to learn and understand how customers get to know about your business.
It shows what keywords people are using to find your business listing on the search engine.
And knowing the relevant keywords that boost your online presence will also help you to significantly boost your traffic.
For example, you can take advantage of numerous long-tail keywords to increase website visitors to your web pages.
- Engagement
Google My Business also shows how your customers are interacting with your business profile contents.
It allows you to see the type of post they shared and their comments. With this information, you will have an idea about what works and what doesn’t works for your business.
- Audience
GMB also provided you with a section that gives you a summary of the profile of people following you.
You have the ability to check out your follower's age groups, gender, and most importantly their countries of origin.
These are all helpful data that can help you build a successful campaign.
- Clicks on Website Link
The number of clicks to your website will also be shown by Google My Business.
Knowing and taking advantage of the statistics of your website visitors will help you to effectively tailor your marketing strategies.
You can tailor it to improve your customer engagement, and website traffic and boost your business sales.
Take your time to study your website visitor’s metrics; it will help your business a lot.
4. It’s Free and Easy to Use
No matter the use of a product or how helpful it might be, it will lose its value if it is highly expensive and difficult to use.
Yet this doesn’t apply to Google My Business.
This efficient tool from google is free and easy to use, and even businesses that are just starting out can take advantage of it for their business promotion.
The creation of your business profile and its verification can be done in a matter of hours.
You can now become visible to your audience after you have been verified.
It also has great tools that will help you to analyze performance that will help you improve your business ranking.
With Google My Business it is easy for startups and local businesses to promote their products and services online by increasing their visibility and also improving their chances of showing up on the search engine result pages which will make it easier for customers to find and contact you.
Take advantage of this free tool to increase your online presence, connect with your customers, and also to increase your business profits. Open a Google My Business Page Today