Google recently rolled out new features in Google My Business designed to help businesses better promote themselves and provide additional information that may interest users. Since 2014, Google My Business has been a free application available to business owners in order to showcase information such as location, phone number, business hours, website URL and more! With this announcement, Google is also going to start to reward business with the top 5% Google My Business profiles in each category by assigning them a “Local Favorite” badge. In some instances, Google My Business listings have been removed altogether for “poor quality issues”.
The Basics
So, what can you do to ensure that your business listing is up to snuff? There are a few basic pieces of information you want to add to your listing. These include business name, business category, service area (if you provide business services away from your location), address, business hours, phone number, website URL, business description, profile image, and other photos. If your business listing has all these components, you’re most likely safe from having your listing removed by Google.
Advanced Categories
There are ways to really make your listing stand out from the competitors and razzle-dazzle! The platform allows businesses to add services and products to listings. In the services module, you can enter service category, item name, item price and item description. You can even add multiple items per service category. In the products module, you can enter a product collection name, product image, product name, description, product price or price range, and add a button with an external link to the product on your website.
Customer Feedback
One of the most important features of a Google My Business listing is the ability for customers to leave reviews as well as directly message the business. These are two-fold as the business owners can also respond to customers who have left reviews or sent a message. In the ever-growing digital world, it is important to interact with customers in any way possible. Increasing these interactions can help grow your business and also help with damage control.
If you think that your Google My Business listing needs a little work or have any other digital marketing needs, please feel free to contact us today!