Google My Business Services for Businesses

Yes. Creating a Google My Business listing is a free service provided by Google. This free business profile service allows businesses and organisations to manage their online presence across Google services, including Google Search and Maps.

Login to your Google account and sign in to your Google My Business dashboard.

Navigate to the info section and select Services. From there, you can now add service items to your business profile. The services section allows you to add additional content for your customers and add more keywords to help you discover.

Optimising the services section is a proven area for gaining more visitors via the search engine for local results.

An optimised profile can take anywhere from 24 hours to 3-6 months to gain traction and improved rankings.

As a business, you properly provide services to customers, and you might supply these services within a location area. For example, a local pizza delivery business might only offer their food to customers within their local town or county, i.e. Leicester, or Leicestershire. Therefore, the service area is where your business would provide its services.

Here at Dynamics Tech, we work with local businesses within Leicestershire. We still have clients outside Leicestershire and we are actively marketing in certain counties.

A plumber business might have a local service area, but also serve customers in nearby counties. You will choose the areas you can serve. Google recommends only 200 miles unless you have national or international business capacity.

Service Area Business (SAB) is a business profile with no physical location that customers can visit and need to ‘hide’ their address. This includes businesses from home addresses and online businesses that do not have customer facing services. A local electrician, for example, will not list their home address within their Google business profile, as they will come to you. Therefore, most tradespeople and tradeswomen, like electricians, would set up their GMB listings as a SAB (service area business).

A Google My Business account lets you show up in search results when people are looking for you online. So yes, Google Reviews has a massive impact on local SEO rankings.

While there are many other ranking factors, customer reviews are a solid signal to search engines. It helps establish the trustworthiness and authority of that business, its products and services. Using services like our Reputation Manager is a proven way to help collect and manage your online reviews, not only for Google, but also for other online sites and networks like Facebook, Yell, and TripAdvisor.

Many services claim they can, but we cannot vouch for this or have we needed to try, either for ourselves or our clients. Negative reviews can harm a business. It can be used against competitors to damage their online business profile, but this is highly underhanded and not recommended.

However, if you receive real negative feedback, it would be wise to deal with it, just like you would face. Be sincere and offer a resolution, and thank them for letting you know. For example, it happens a lot in food establishments—poor service, poor meals, etc. Take the feedback onboard to address the issues in-house. If the reviews are fake, there are possible methods to have them removed.

Just Googling, we found this blog post How to delete negative reviews and outdated content on Google.

To claim your business profile on Google’s search engine, take just a few simple steps: To get started, all you need to do is create a Google account. To get this Setup, please follow the eight steps below:

1. If you already have a Google account for your business, go to google.com/business.

2. Once you have your account, go to www.google.com. Type your business name and city/town into the search bar and search. Then click on the “Maps” tab below the search bar to search for it on Google Maps. (In this example, we’ll use a fictional business called Whitney’s Pet Store.

3. The map will display your region (city/town) based on the search results. Now find your business, but if your business does not show up, Google doesn’t know about it yet.

4. To add Whitney’s Pet Store as a Google My Business account, click on the parallel horizontal lines (displayed as ≡ a hamburger menu) within the search results bar. This is the drop-down menu.

5. Go down to the menu until you see “Add a missing place.” Please click on it.

6. You can now add a place and use the box to add in your business’s details, including its name, category (type it in), hours, contact, website, and opening date. Please note that this is the primary category of the business. There are over 4,000 categories, so for Whitney’s Pet Store business profile, we would choose “Pet Shop”. We can add more categories at a later stage.

7. Please review all the details to ensure they are correct; then click “Claim this business.”

8. Your business profile will be added to Google’s business listings almost immediately. However, it may take up to 24 hours to show up. You’ll receive an email confirming your Google business listing is active, along with a link to it.

To verify that you are the business owner, you will need a verified Google My Business listing. This will then allow you to read and respond to Google reviews left by customers. Plus, add or edit changes to your GMB page that customers can view.

To verify your Google business page on the Google search engine, Google will send you a PIN verification code, which you must enter online. The PIN code can be sent in a few ways, either via:

• Postcard to the physical business address
• A phone call or text to the phone number associated with the business
• Email to the email address listed for the business
• Instant verification process if the business listing on Google has already been validated in Google Search Console.

Note: It may take a few weeks for your new business listing to appear.

As of 2020, and because of the COVID-19 epidemic and its effect on businesses, Google has introduced an additional feature to help business owners keep their customers informed and safe regarding all COVID-19 matters. This includes COVID-19 Post Types, which are like standard post types like News, Events and Offers, but have Coronavirus icons. This allows the business owner to write information about any COVID-19 updates, such as cleaning processes policies, click and collect updates, news.

Another COVID-19 additional feature was introduced to Google My Business for business owners, including national health & safety attributes that allow you to display info for customers about specific COVID related measures the business does or requires customers to take, such as:

• Delivery
• Curbside pickup
• Take away sale
• Mandatory temperature measurement
• Mandatory mask
• Online bookings
• Appointment required
• Mask required
• Staff require disinfecting surfaces between visits.
• Staff wear masks
• Temperature check required

By using the Google My Business app, you can manage your business on your own schedule. From your phone or tablet, you can update your business hours, check customer insights, and share photos with customers.

Google My Business lets restaurant owners add and edit their menu list.

The restaurant menu is one of the Top 3 decision-making factors that will persuade a potential new customer to pay a visit to your establishment, along with reviews and pictures. Despite the fact that Google provides this feature, less than half of restaurants use it to their advantage.

It is very likely that many people will decide on the restaurant they are going to eat at without ever seeing your website. Therefore, it’s crucial to optimise your free Google listing by adding a menu (along with optimised photos and pertinent business information) in the first place.

It is not only that Google My Business restaurant menus provide relevant content that can persuade potential customers to visit your location, but they also provide information to Google that will ultimately help increase your search ranking locally. It is important to remember that each menu item you add can appear in a Google search from a potential customer, and could be the difference between showing you higher than a competitor in a local search result.

When it comes to making purchase decisions, trust is one of the most important factors.

Local rankings are determined by Google according to three ranking factors: Relevance: How well your listing matches a search Distance: How far your business is from the search or searcher Prominence: How well a company is known (based on several other factors). Using the right keywords will improve relevance.

If you have a good review, it might be the deciding factor that will make prospective customers choose you over your competitors.

Focus on doing things right. Great photos, positive customer reviews are a key ranking factor, post events, news and information. Create offers. Reply to customers quickly. Ensure your business description and profile is correct and fully updated with services and products. Choose the correct category. Ensure you have a good website. These are just some essentials.