Why You Need a Google My Business Listing
With current trends of mobile-first and local searches, taking advantage of your free-to-use Google My Business (GMB) listing can be very beneficial to boosting your local presence. Having a GMB profile will give you the opportunity to show up in Google’s Local 3-pack, increase your appeal with customer reviews, and help you stand out from your competition. See the example of a listing below.
Signing Up For Google My Business
Before you begin, do a quick search for your business to see if there is already a listing. If so, you can claim the listing for your business. If there isn’t a listing already for your company, simply search for “Google My Business” and click on the Manage Now button. This will take you through the process of creating your listing. Google will need to verify your listing either by phone or by having them send you a postcard in the mail.
Important: When you set up the listing, you will need to enter your home or office address because a verification code will be mailed to that address. Google will not accept a PO Box or the address of a shipping store. Your address will not appear on the listing as long as you check the box for “I deliver goods and services to my customers” and check the box for “Hide my address”. Follow this article to learn more about how to set up your service area.
You must have a Google account to set up your Google My Business Listing. If you do have a listing, but you aren’t sure where to access it, log into your Google account and click on the icon that looks like 9 boxes in the upper right corner. Then scroll through the apps and look for the one that says “My Business”.
Google’s Local 3-pack
The Local 3-pack is a very sought after position in the search results. These 3 business listings are displayed in the search results towards the top of the page, or “above the fold.” To get your company to show up in one of these top spots, you must have a GMB listing. Customers searching for “home inspectors near me” will find these listings according to the proximity of those businesses to their device’s current location. By creating a GMB listing, you greatly increase your chances of showing up in the Local 3-pack. These listings not only show the location of your business, but they also show up before any organic search results.
Building Reviews on Google My Business
Online review building is an important part of marketing your business and your GMB profile plays a major role in how your website performs online. The quality and quantity of customer reviews on Google can account for up to 20% of your SEO and are critical for local search. Because of this, we recommend putting your efforts towards building reviews on your Google My Business page.
Once you have published and verified your GMB account, HomeGauge Services users can use the Time Released Message (TRM) feature via your HomeGauge dashboard to send a message to your customers after the report is uploaded inviting your them to write a review on your Google My Business profile.
Stand Out From Your Competition
GMB is your virtual business card. Filling out your listing completely will provide your customers with the most essential information they will need to engage with your company. Providing an effective business description, relevant photos of your company, and keywords relating to your services offered will help to show your value to potential new customers. With an estimated 40% of users conducting a search on Google and not clicking anything at all, this means more people are finding what they need directly on the results page.
If you are looking to increase your digital presence, contact the HomeGauge Web Services team about our SEO Builder program. We will be happy to provide more information on what we offer for home inspectors.