Sunshine Coast Award-Winning Digital Agency
How to improve your Google My Business Ranking
With the evolution of local listings such as Social Media channels, Yahoo Local, Bing Business Portal and Google Places on the web, it appears that the latter has the highest rankings, with our clients claiming Google Places is certainly driving more referring traffic to their sites. If you’re in business on the Sunshine Coast, and want the status of #1 rank on Google locally, It’s vital that you have an active Google Places page that is 100% optimised to ensure your company’s position as a leader in a particular location, in your business niche.
There are several important principles that you must implement to improve your chances of effective local ranking in Google Places, by optimising your listing.
Business Name – Obviously ensure that it’s your current, legal name and showing correctly and don’t add any additional keywords, or Google will detect it’s not corresponding to other entries on advertising sites.
Business Address – Of course, this should match up exactly, with the details on the contact page of your website.
Contact Information – Use the same contact telephone number as on your site, and add your email address and website URL too.
Business Hours – Customers don’t need to visit your website to discover your working hours, as these will show on your listing, so make sure they are correct.
Category – Select the 5 most popular services you provide. Any more than this and you risk over-exposing your business which will be detected by Google.
Photos – You can be quite creative with your pictures, but remember that this could be the first impression your customer will get of your store. Name your pictures with relevant tags with search and keywords. As an example, add “Queensland+SunshineCoast/your trade.jpg”.
Optimise your listing – In the same way that you optimise a website for Google Search, make sure that your list appears at the top of a SERP. Use relevant keywords in your listing, and engage existing customers to increase your reviews. Add your Google listing to your email signature and on your website, to ensure the most interaction.
Embed a Virtual Tour and a Google Map – Obtain an embed map code for your business from Google Maps (click the 3 lines beside your business name) and copy and paste it to your contact page. Google can confirm your Places listing and your location address is verified to them.
Google Places rank companies higher when they can verify the existence of your actual business. This is done by governing how often your company information (NAP) is listed or cited on the internet. This NAP information must also be consistent, and the best way to verify this is to do a search for your own company, then click through to check your information. Contact any websites with incorrect details, and get it changed.
According to Google, 97% of end-users search online for local businesses, with Google Places providing an instrumental platform for smaller enterprises and companies to get noticed through cost-effective marketing and to increase their online presence.
Is your company using Google Places? For different services and packages aimed at improving your rankings, for businesses located on the Sunshine Coast, contact us.
About the author
PAUL SMITH - For over 20 years I have worked with businesses, enterprises and brands in Australia, NZ, UK and US to drive digital marketing growth using organic and paid traffic strategies. No fluff or BS, just straight-forward return on investment.
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