Google My Business (Portfolio) – Seth Kingdon

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Google My Business (GMB) is perfect for the company that has a brick and mortar location. GMB allows you as a business owner to share services and/or products for your customers to find. You’ll be discoverable to those around you if you select the proper words for your listing. They can see updates, photos, hours, your website, and other important information about your company. It’s a great tool when you don’t have a strong online website presence, but want to show up on Google Maps.

Here’s how Google My Business would be implemented with SmileAtMeMore in Virginia. (A fictitious company I wrote about on another section of my portfolio.)

Verify the Google My Business listing

Sign into Google My Business and search your business name. You will have the option to “claim the business” by having a post card sent in the mail. It will contain a code that will need to be imputed on the GMB listing. Once verified, you can move on to adding information to the listing.

The main page of Google My Business

This is what the main page of the Google My Business listing looks like.

Optimize the Google My Business listing

The options on the left column are as follows:

Posts

This is where you can share updates with your audience. Add updates, products, or an offer. Include images, details, and a link to your website. When you share an update, the information is visible to all people looking at your listing. GMB shows how many people viewed your listing and how many clicks it received. The post, however, will only be visible on Google Maps for a week. Viewers can still look at your feed of past posts though.

Info

Under the “info” section, you can denote what your services are. There are multiple types to choose from; “car wash,” “grocery store,” and “dealership” to name a few.

For our sake, when we start to type “dentist,” it populates automatically. We’ll select that as our main category and add additional categories down the rows.

Insights

View important insights about your GMB listings. Things like how many people viewed your profile and how many interacted with your listing.

See how many customers viewed your listing:

See how many potential customers took action on your GMB listings:

Reviews

See, manage, and respond to reviews. It’s a good idea to respond to good and negative reviews so new customers see that you’re active and take pride in your business.

It’s inevitable that you’ll receive a few negative reviews. This is good though! It’s better to have 50 good reviews and one negative one than 50 good ones only because it shows your company to be genuine. Just remember to respond to the negative ones.

Messages

When activated, customers can send a message to you via texting. This is helpful to customers as they gather information about your business. The messages go to your cell phone for quick access.

Photos

Add your own photos and view photos from other users who participated in your service. Snap a picture of the outside of you business so potential customers know where to go when they arrive.

Products

Showcase your products with prices and descriptions. If your GMB listing is viewed by many, then consider adding all products. Otherwise, just add a few of your best ones so viewers understand what you offer.

Services

This is where you can show off what you do as a business. Type in your services and give a detailed description of what it is. More the better, but remember, accuracy is important too. This not only adds more information to your listing, but it also adds keywords to Google.

Website

GMB can create a free website for you. It’s quick and highly encouraged if you don’t have one. It’s encouraged, however, that you build your own so you have flexibility down the road.

Users

This is where you can add more users to the listing.

What you can do with Google My Business

Aside from being a helpful way to update your customers on when you’re open and finding directions to your store, it’s also a powerful organic search discovery platform. New customers can find you through the search (based on proximity and keywords), which will help you generate new customers.

Why your business needs Google My Business

Build loyalty with new customers by getting started with GMB today. Or if you already have a listing, take some time to optimize it for better results.