Small business owners throughout Indiana are constantly looking for ways to market their businesses effectively while on a budget. If you’ve been maintaining your website, posting to your blog, and keeping up with your social media profiles, you may be wondering what else you could be doing. One way to market your business is to create and optimize a Google My Business profile. Here’s what you should know about why small businesses should optimize their Google My Business profiles—
Google My Business is a tool that’s designed for businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google. It pairs with Search and Maps, so organizations that have Google My Business accounts can be found through Google Search and Google Maps by users—something that’s essential in 2022. Having a Google My Business account is also the only way you can claim ownership and management capabilities over your Google business profile.
There are numerous benefits of using a Google My Business profile and optimizing that profile to the extent possible. The benefits of Google My Business include:
1. It’s free! One of the biggest benefits of using Google My Business as a small business owner is that Google My Business is free! Not many marketing tools are free these days, and for small business owners that are on a tight marketing budget, using all free resources available is a must.
2. It allows your business to show up on maps and local listings. As mentioned above, Google My Business pairs with Google Maps and Google Search. This means that your business will show up when users search for something like your business near them. This gives your business more visibility.
3. Google is highly visible. Google My Business is the biggest factor in influencing Google local pack ratings; Google local pack is a search engine results page that displays businesses related to a search. So, if your Google My Business page is optimized, you’ll have more visibility.
4. Users can leave reviews. As a small business owner, you want reviews—the more the better. Having a Google My Business profile allows users to leave reviews of your business which will then be displayed when others search your business or keywords related to your business. Leaving reviews generates attention for your business and can help with marketing, but also improves SEO.
5. You’ll get insights. Another great thing about Google My Business is that free insights are available. You can check out views, engagement, search queries, audience, and website link clicks!
To learn more about optimizing your Google My Business profile and other social media sites, reach out to our digital marketing professionals at NUVEW today. We look forward to helping your small business reach its marketing goals.