Time to read: 6 minutes
When you are a local business looking to gain clients in your area, having a Google Business Profile listing can be crucial to not only help you get more exposure, but improve your rankings as well.
However, for small businesses that run their companies out of their homes, displaying a personal address on maps not only isn’t ideal for privacy, but it also is against Google’s guidelines.
Follow our steps for creating a profile that can help you get results while abiding by Google’s rules.
How to Create a Service-Area Listing on GBP
- Go to google.com/business and sign into your Google account. If you do not have an email associated with Google, you will need to create one.
- After you are signed in, click “Manage Now” and then “add your business to Google.”
- Enter your business name, the category that best describes your business, and then, when asked, “Do you want to add a location customers can visit, like a store or office?” select “No.”
- If you are told your business category requires a location to visit, you will need to try a different, relatable category.
- Once that step is completed, you will then be prompted to add in the areas for where you serve customers. You can select up to 20.
- Next, you can add in your phone number and website URL. If you only have a personal cell phone number, we suggest a service such as CallRail that allows you to create a new number that forwards to your real number.
- Lastly, you will need to verify your listing so that Google knows it’s real. They offer numerous ways to verify, including through video recording, phone call or text, email, live video call, and mail. This step can also be skipped, but your listing will not be live until it’s verified.
Before or after the verification process is completed, you can start optimizing your profile with other pieces of information such as your hours, business description, products, services, and more.
5 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your GBP Listing
Once your listing is live, there are a variety of local SEO tactics you can use to optimize your profile’s potential:
- Get reviews – Not only do reviews establish trust with potential customers, but they can also help your listing look trustworthy in the eyes of Google as well. You will want to build up your reviews to get as many as possible, along with obtaining as many strong ones as possible. So reach out to satisfied customers to start building those numbers! But make sure you abide by Google guidelines and not manipulate or pay for reviews.
- Add quality photos – Photos are a great way to highlight your products and services, show users the team members they will be working with, and prove that your operations are legitimate. On this last point, it may seem strange, but some GBP listings are fraudulent, fake, or virtual only, and all of these aspects go against Google guidelines. Having photos of your company’s actual operations, as well as photos of clear signage, will prevent your business from being reported as not existing or a scam.
- Add high-def videos – Videos are another viable option for your Google Business Profiles, as they can illustrate many of the same aspects as pictures but can really make things come alive. And you don’t have to hire a professional photographer, either. A modern smart phone camera and some good lighting can go a long way in making a worthwhile video.
- Write posts – Google Business Profiles aren’t just static listings. They can be used as another means of reaching users and potential customers the same way social media profiles do. So use the post feature to let visitors know about products, services, deals, upcoming events, and more.
- Include additional categories – While you chose a main category when you created your listing, you can also add four additional categories that fit your business type to help improve your chances of being found.
Other Ways to Move the Needle Locally
Along with fully optimizing your Google Business Profile, you should also do the following to get the most out of your local online traffic:
- Build local links – Links going to your website from other reputable sites are one of the key ranking signals for Google. While all worthwhile links can increase your site’s reputation and value, local links unsurprisingly make a major impact on your local rankings. You will want to gain links from chambers of commerce, area directories, citation sites, and local businesses and organizations to give yourself a sizeable boost.
- Create local landing pages – Another way to increase your rankings is to develop landing pages for key services that connect to specific regions. For instance, if you are a northeast Ohio business, you might tie keywords to regional signalers like “Cleveland,” “Akron,” “Lakewood,” “Cuyahoga County,” “northeast Ohio,” and anything else relevant. Doing so will boost your presence in searches and deliver more leads.
- Make multiple GBPs – If your business has multiple physical locations, including other franchises or satellite offices, you’re eligible to create multiple Google Business Profiles. Each profile will be tailored to the specific area your business operates out of, giving you a hyper-local focus and increasing your overall online local presence within a region.
- Report Google Maps spam – As we mentioned above, some businesses found on Google Maps are fraudulent, fake, or virtual (featuring no physical location). Others try to game the system by cramming in keywords within their business names and engaging in other deceptive practices. You can report businesses that break Google’s rules in a few different ways, and with any luck these bad actors will be removed from the map, clearing the path for you to be found by future customers.
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This post was originally published in August 2020 and has been updated to reflect new information.
