Your Google Business Profile is the single most important part of local search engine optimization. It’s so important it’s often referred to as your “second website.”
If you don’t have one yet, the first thing to do is claim your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business). It’s free, but you’ll need to verify your physical location by postcard, video, or other means before you can use it. Only businesses with an actual storefront (and service area businesses that operate from a location) are eligible to have a Google Business Profile.
What is a Google Business Profile?
Your Google Business Profile is your shop window to the world. It’s what people see as they’re passing by (searching), providing a 24/7 glimpse of what’s inside. It’s your first impression.
It can invite visitors into your online store or lead them to your physical location. More than three in four local searches lead to a visit within 24 hours, and more than a quarter result in a sale. Google Business Profile is largely responsible for that.
According to the latest annual study by Whitespark, Google Business Profile is the single most important ranking factor in reaching the Local Pack (or Map Pack) and Local Finder (36%), which is where you want to be: displayed prominently at the top of the organic results. (Ads will always appear higher; sorry.)
What Does “Optimizing Google Business Profile” Even Mean?
Optimizing a Google Business Profile means keeping the information on it:
- correct,
- complete, and
- current
to increase your visibility in local search results for people looking for what you have to offer.
That’s what we’re doing here: keeping it correct, complete, and current.
Why Optimize Your Google Business Profile?
Google Business Profile is not a static profile but an interactive tool to manage your local marketing and customer service with ease. You access and manage it in a web browser or the Google Maps app on your phone or tablet.
The world of local SEO is always evolving, and so is Google Business Profile. Challenges and opportunities come and go.
So do GBP features, or they get merged with something else, all to meet the changing habits of people searching “near me” or “open now.” Some changes affect only mobile or desktop search results. You don’t need to keep up with everything, but be aware of the options available for your type of business.
Google Business Profile is useful for:
1. Boosting rankings.
Google Business Profile instantly tells the algorithm whether your business meets the three main criteria for ranking in local search:
- Distance. This is why your correct business name and address or service area are critical. This is local search, after all.
- Relevance. Your main category, posts, and products and services all signal whether your business meets the searcher’s needs.
- Prominence. Reviews signal how well your business is regarded. You can collect, manage, and respond to them right in GBP.
2. Responding to customers.
Reviews and user-generated content can have a major impact — good or bad — on your business and rankings. More on this below.
3. Marketing your business.
Google Business Profile is a simple (and free!) tool for ongoing marketing and promotion of your business in local organic search.
That’s why managing it on a phone is so easy. You can easily add posts and photos, update your hours, get reviews and more.
Optimizing your Google Business Profile is central to an effective local search strategy. But how to do it?
First we need to look at the goals of GBP optimization.
Two Goals of Optimization: Rankings & Conversions
We tend to focus on the importance of Google Business Profile for local rankings, but often overlook that it’s equally about conversions.
Surprisingly, only three elements—literally a few lines—of your GBP actually contribute to your rankings: your business name, address, and main category. In a flash, the local search algorithm uses GBP to determine how close your business is to the searcher and how likely it is to provide the sought product or service.
The remaining GBP elements are geared toward conversions: answering questions about your products, services, amenities, or other aspects of your business. The top 10 converting elements on a Google Business Profile include reviews, photos, and the ability to book an appointment or message your business directly through GBP.
Depending on your business, Google makes available different options for visitors to engage with your GBP, especially on mobile devices. A hotel or restaurant will have different needs than a hair salon or clothing store.
How to Optimize Google Business Profile
To create a GBP monitoring and update schedule, I find it helpful to organize the information according to update frequency:
- Static
- Updates
- Promotional
Static Information
Some things don’t change: your business name, address and phone number, main category, and website. Possibly your scheduling or messaging links if you have them. In most cases, you can set these things once and then forget about them.
Not always though. Visitors to your Google Business Profile can submit changes even to this core business information. You still need to monitor. More on this in a minute.
And even though your scheduling and messaging links may never need updating, the appointments and messages they generate may need your attention every day. Hopefully.
Updates
Other parts of your GBP need to be monitored or updated regularly—and perhaps frequently. These include the many options provided to describe your business: amenities, service options, shop hours, health precautions, ownership, and more.
Updating your hours (holidays, etc.) and other attributes goes a long way toward helping visitors choose your business. “Complete information” is one of the top 10 conversion factors on a Google Business Profile.
But no matter how well you’ve completed your profile, visitors to your GBP can—without your permission—upload photos, change your hours, amenities, even core information about your business like its name and address.
So you need to monitor. User-submitted edits are meant for well-meaning customers to provide helpful updates, and most changes are benign or even positive.
But unscrupulous competitors can use them to cause havoc with your rankings, conversions, and business itself. Some industries are beset by malicious changes and GBP spam, which can take time and energy to fix.
Finally, responding to reviews is one of the most important elements of all: 4 of the top 10 conversion factors involve reviews. It’s critical to respond to reviews well and quickly, and you can do it directly through GBP on your phone.
In short, a lot can happen to your Google Business Profile that needs a response, sometimes daily but maybe only once a week or month. And changes to your hours, facilities, health precautions, and other attributes need to be reviewed about as often.
Promotional Information
Finally, business updates and information about your products and services provide another way to inform and engage visitors. They’re easy to do.
Posts and photos enable you to showcase your business, employees, community, offers and specials, or other news and updates. To be clear: posts, photos, and attributes (see section above) don’t have any effect on your rankings. But they can have a powerful effect on who clicks through your GBP to your website or driving directions.
How Often Should You Optimize Google Business Profile?
There’s no one “right” schedule for optimizing a Google Business Profile. It depends in large part on your business and even your industry; some are especially beset by spam problems, for instance.
And it depends on your resources, how much time you’re able to devote to, say, posting updates and photos. You can post weekly or month or in between.
Local SEO expert Claire Carlile offers a great free template to use (as I do) for creating your own GBP management schedule.
Clean Your Shop Window
The purpose of optimizing your Google Business Profile is both to get your business found and make a good first impression, so that a searcher/customer makes the click to take the next step.
Above all, that means creating a good user experience, including:
- correct, complete, and current information about your business,
- interactive features that make it easy to contact your business.
It’s important to stay on top of this. The world of local search changes constantly and rapidly; Google Business Profile keeps up with it.
Read the whole series introducing local SEO to small business owners:
- 7 Reasons Why Local SEO is Important for Your Small Business
- How to Do Local SEO: The 4 Building Blocks of Success
- How to Optimize Google Business Profile to Engage More Customers (this post)
- How to Boost Local SEO with Local Blog Content
- It’s Your Reputation: How to Manage Reviews (coming soon)
- Citations: Should You Get Listed in Online Directories? (coming soon)