How To Optimize Your Google My Business Listing

These days, more and more people are using Google My Business to find different home service providers around them, which presents a significant opportunity for your business to engage new potential customers.

The truth is, 70% of new leads for local businesses come from Google My Business if done the right way. This makes GMB listing the most crucial part of your local marketing strategy.

1. Before You Start…

Please note that optimizing your listing takes time. You should plan to set aside 2-3 hours of your day for this process. Be patient and take your time; a properly optimized GMB listing is vitally important in helping your business grow, so don’t rush it.

The video in this module goes over how to optimize your GMB Listing.  There are some things you should prepare before beginning this process.  These are:

• List of Service locations with a good mix of counties, cities, and zip codes,
• List of all services you provide, 
• Services descriptions (up to 300 characters each).

You will also need a business description consisting of around 750 characters.  It should contain:

• A quick introduction to the business, 
• Services you provide, 
• Locations you serve, 
• The company phone number, and 
• A call to action.  

You will also need 6-8 business photos. These should include:

• Your business logo,
• A team photo, and
• 3-4 photos of your technicians while working.  

When you have this information ready, you are all set to optimize your Google My Business listing.

2. Optimizing Your Google My Business listing.

A)  Category

Categories describe your business and connect you to customers who search for the products or services you offer. Depending on the type of business you operate, you may also use your category to assign a place label to your business. 

Always start with a primary category that describes your business as a whole. You can add up to 2 additional categories. You must be very particular about this part. You should have 1-3 categories listed in this section: Pest Control, Lawncare Services, Wildlife Rescue.  

B) Business Address. 

The address here is the same that you used to verify your Google My Business listing. So you don’t need to make any changes.  

Important Note:  The Business name, address, and phone number (also known as NAP) are the top three things Google monitors.  Once these are set, DON’T CHANGE THEM.  Any changes to these may cause your listing to be suspended.  

C) Service Area: 

This section is only applicable to home service businesses like pest control.  You can add up to 20 locations.  It would be best to have a good mix of counties, cities, and zip codes.  

D) Hours of Operation:

Once you are done adding your service areas, the next step is to add your hours of operation.  

• Under More hours, you can add hours for any specific services you might provide.  
• The special hour section adds hours for days when your business has an irregular schedule like holidays.

E) Phone numbers.  

Google will let you add around 4-5 phone numbers. We recommend you add 2 phone numbers max 3. That way, if anything goes wrong on Google’s end with the primary phone number, there will always be that secondary number ready as a backup.  

F) Short Name. 

When you search for a business on google maps, it will show a long URL. This is not ideal, especially if you are sharing your GMB URL with customers.  A long URL like that doesn’t look good.  A profile short name takes that long URL and replaces it with whatever short name you come up with.  

G) Website URL. 

This section is self-explanatory.  This is where you put your website’s URL.  We want to track the traffic from GMB going to the website, so we put this (?utm_source=gmb&utm_medium=organic) (shown on-screen) to the end of the URL.  You can use this expression to track how many people are actually visiting your site.

H) Order link.

Mainly used by retailers, the order link feature is something you can use for your pest control or service area business. 

Google allows you to add up to 10 links per category to help customers take action. Among these links, you can choose a preferred link that displays at the top so customers can easily find it. To set a preferred link, click the Star next to the link you chose.

You can include 2 types of links that make it easier for customers to learn more about your business.

• You can add a single link that helps customers review a list of all your pest control services. 
• Alternatively, you can set links to help customers directly book an appointment. 

I) Products. 

Many service area businesses like pest control don’t use the product feature thinking that they sell services. They don’t have any physical products to sell. However, the truth is, Google is fine with you using this feature to present your services or features. 

Most of the pest control businesses offer Monthly, Quarterly, Semi-yearly, or Yearly service packages. You can, in fact, use these packages and present them as packages. This will help you gain that additional real estate for your pest control business in the Google search.

J) Services. 

This is a vital section.  In this section, you should list out all of the services that you provide.  

It is important that you segment your service by category, and if Google doesn’t have all the services, you can add your own.  Along with listing your services, you also need to describe each service.  

Google allows 300 characters for each description, and you should mention where you are located in the description.  Once your descriptions are complete, you can also add the starting price of the service.

K) Attributes.  

Attributes are a way for google to make your listing look more appealing and provide more details about your business.  Just select and add any attribute that applies to your business.

L) Business Description.  

This is another essential section for optimizing your GMB listing.  Google considers many signals to determine how good your business is, one being the business description.  You can have up to 750 characters in your description.  You will want to include a brief about your business, the different services you offer, the locations serviced, and if you provide free estimates, you want to mention that here.

M) Date.  

Again this is self-explanatory. This is the date/year when your business started.  

N) Photos.  

It is important to include photos with your GMB listing.  You should never use stock photos. All the photos you use should be unique to your company.  We recommend starting with 6-8 photos.  One of your logos, a team photo to use as your cover image, and photos of your team working for the customers.  

O) Reviews.

Under reviews, you will see any reviews of your company, and you can reply.  

P) Messages.

The messages tab will let people send your business messages.  You will need the GMB mobile app, and we recommend that you should always be logged in.  Just press turn on, and now people can send you messages.

Q) Google My Business Website

Under the website section, you can set up a google website.  If you already have a website, you should still set this up because it’s a direct google property.  The more footprints you can have of your business on different Google properties, the more your business will flourish on google.   

R) Google My Business Posts

Posts are a way to regularly update your website and send signals to google that the account and website are active.  You should make a post at least once a week.  

There are 4 different types of posts:

• Covid-19 updates, 
• Add Offers 
• Add Product,
• Add Event, and 
• What’s New?

S) Insights:

Lastly, you will want to be aware of the insights section.  Under insights, you will see statistics on how customers search for your business, where customers view your business on google, customers actions, Directions requests, phone calls, popular times, and photo views.  

With Google My Business, it may take 4-6 months before you start seeing results.  Growth takes time, so monitor these over the coming months.