Everything You Need To Know About Google Business Profile in 2024

The best free tool a small businesses has in the digital age is a Google Business Profile. If you’re not familiar with it, this feature allows you to showcase important information about your business such as hours, location, contact information, services, products, photos and videos. It’s like a digital brochure that’s available to potential customers 24/7 on Google Maps. The cool thing about it, is that it’s free to use. Additionally, it is easy to set up and optimize for maximum visibility. This gem can boost your online presence and attract new customers to your business.

What is Google Business Profile?

With a Google Business Profile, you can provide customers with important information about your business, like your hours of operation, address, website, and more. When people search for your business on Google or Maps, they’ll be able to find the information they need quickly and easily. Consider it a type of social media profile specifically for your business. People can leave reviews, like and share photos of your business, and engage with you similarly to how they would do on any other social platform. Take advantage of this valuable resource and give your business a competitive edge.

What is the Benefit of Creating a Business Profile?

One of the most significant advantages is that your business has the opportunity to be more visible to searchers on Google. While this takes time and work (we suggest working with digital marketing professionals), the impact this can bring to your business is huge. A few Immediate benefits are:

1. Free tool to showcase your business online: We mentioned it once, but we will mention it again. This is a FREE tool you can use.
2. Opportunity to strengthen local seo: Likely a term you have heard of before. Local SEO is a keystone in any modern businesses ability to reach customers in the digital age.
3. Engage with your customers: Answer frequent customer questions, respond to reviews, add updates and offers for your business and talk directly to those you serve.
4. Track analytics and data: Gain deeper insights on how many people view your profile, travel to your website, make calls, and more.
5. Building online trust: Having an accurate and up to date business profile goes a long way in curating your brands trust and recognition amongst customers, both new and old.

How to Set Up a Google Business Profile

To get started and learn how to create a Google Business Profile, follow these simple steps:

1. Sign in to Google Business Profile using your Google account.
2. Add your business name and location. Make sure you have entered accurate and complete information here.
3. Verify your business. This is where we see a lot of businesses get confused. Googles verification process can vary. Your location, type of business, service areas, are all going to determine which method of verification is used. Google will either send you a postcard with a verification code to your business address, send you a text message confirmation, a phone call confirmation, and lastly, may require you to send a short video of your business office, location, signage and storefront.
4. Add essential information and media. This includes your business hours, phone number, website, logo, photos, and videos, products, and services.
5. Wait for verification from Google and then continue optimizing!

Optimizing Your Google Business Profile

Once you have set up your profile, you need to optimize it to increase your visibility in search results. Here are some tips to optimize your profile:

1. Select relevant business categories that accurately reflect your business.
2. Add high-quality photos and videos that showcase your products and services. Make sure to combine these with accurate descriptions.
3. Leverage customer reviews to build trust and credibility. Encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews, and respond promptly to negative ones. Helpful hint, Google scans your reviews for industry relevant keywords – boosting your rankings higher if they are present.
4. Optimize your business description with relevant keywords and phrases when you add your business. Consider your business description your “call to action” section as well.
5. Keep your profile updated with the latest information and promotions to attract more customers.
6. Make sure to include keywords in all areas (where applicable) that are relevant to the locations you serve and do business in.

Leverage Google Business Profile Insights and Features

GBP offers a lot of features that can help businesses engage with customers and drive conversions. Taking the time to go into each of the profile sections and filling it out with all of the appropriate information that reflects your business will help send signals to Googles algorithm. These signals allow Google to understand what your business is all about, and in turn, allows it to show case your business to online searchers looking for your products and services. It is important to always think about and use industry related, and locationally related keywords while filling out your profile.

1. Posts: You can create short messages, offers, and updates for your customers.
2. Products: You can add detailed descriptions of your products along with photos.
3. Services: Like products, you can also add detailed descriptions of your services.
4. Photos: You can regularly add and update your profile with new photos and videos as long as they pertain to your business.
5. Messaging: You can communicate with customers directly through your profile.
6. Booking: You can accept bookings directly from your profile.
7. Questions: You can answer direct questions your customers may ask in the Q&A section.
8. Insights: You can track how customers interact with your profile.

Google Business Profile Help Managing

If you want to stay on top of the game and give yourself a fighting chance in local search results against all of the other competition, your going to have to keep a pulse on your profile on a weekly – even daily basis sometimes. When drafting plans for our clients, we adivse the following actions to be taken on a weekly basis for Profile managment:

• 4-6 updates/posts a week containing unique imagery and copy pertaining to your business.
• 4-6 uploaded photos or videos a week to your profile.
• Try to encourage reviews from your customers/clients on a weekly basis, and respond to all you have/get.
• If applicable, run monthly offers, or seasonal offers as it relates to your business.
• Keep your services and products tabs up-to-date with new information and remove any old information.
• Make sure to check in buisness details tab new services that appear that Google reccomends you list as secondary categories.

How do I get on my Google Business Profile?

In order to access your business profile after set up, simply type in your business name into the Google search bar under the Google account the business is associated with. Your profile should pop up with a indicator button that says “view my profile”. A second option is to log into the Googles business account manager.

Is there any Difference Between Google My Business and Google Business Profile?

If you have already done some research on creating a potential Google profile for your business, you may be wondering if there’s any difference between Google My Business and Google Business Profile? Luckily, they are the same thing. Although confusing to anyone whos just starting to learn about GBP, the name change was just to make it clearer and more straightforward for businesses to understand what the platform is all about.

Conclusion:

When you add everything up, a Google Business Profile is a crucial aspect of any business’s online presence. Not only does it give you the opportunity to show up higher on search rankings, it also provides another platform for you to engage with your current and potential customers. Who doesn’t want to improve customer satisfaction? By putting in the extra time and effort to optimize your profile (although we suggest finding digital marketing professionals to rank you faster!), you can see results like increased traffic and conversions. So, if you haven’t already, take some time to create or update your Google Business Profile, your bottom line will end up thanking you for it.

Karl Gallant