Before you get started with updating and optimizing your Google Business Listing, you have to have created the business listing and you have to have claimed that listing.
If you need help with adding and claiming your Google Business Profile, you can check out this article from Google:
How to add or claim your Business Profile on Google.
So the listing exists, and you have claimed it. If you are a local business that serves a local clientele, then properly setting up and optimizing your Google Business Profile Listing, formerly Google My Business, is essential to getting yourself seen by your potential clients and customers.
Here I’m going to go through the process step-by-step and show you how to do it properly so that you get the best results possible. I highly encourage you to do this on a computer, and not on a mobile device. Depending on your mobile device, things could be harder to find and certain features may not even be available. So find a computer for this one.
In reality, this is pretty easy to do. Additionally, there are some little tricks I’ll share that will make your listing even more effective. Now if you don’t want to mess with this, we can do this! Just click the button below get in touch with us!
OK, let’s get started.
Finding Your Business
(1) Find Your Business On Google Maps
Starting out, you actually want to find your business on Google Maps. So go open Google Maps in your browser. I highly recommend Chrome and it is what I use personally. just make sure you are using a modern browser – Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, etc.
My saved shortcut still reads maps.google.com, which redirects me to google.com/maps. So go to either one of those and search for your business name.
Remember, until you claim the Google Business Profile Listing, you cannot make edits to the business. I linked to the Google article above, but I’ll link again here in case you skipped that part: How to add or claim your Business Profile on Google.
(2) Log In To Access Your Google Business Profile Listing
Once you’ve found your business listing in Google Maps, you’ll need to be logged in as the Google user who owns that listing. For my listing, I’m almost always logged in so I get straight to editing. This may or may not be your case.
Some of us have multiple Google accounts, so you want to make sure you are logged in to the Google account that actually owns that profile listing.
Enter Your Business Information
So this listing exists, you’ve claimed the business listing, and you’ve logged into the correct Google account so that you can start editing this listing. Now it is time to start filling in all the information Google wants.
(3) Fill Out Your Business Name
Your business name needs to match the name of your business.
OK, why even bother saying that?
There are some folks out there who try adding keywords to the business name. For example, if I tried to enter the business name “Cyber Mage Marketing The Best Marketing In Cape Coral”, Google may well ban my listing. That is not my business name. My business name is Cyber Mage Marketing. Just list your name.
An exception is sometimes made when your business signage and various images include a tagline that you’d like to include. Google may allow that if it is pretty ubiquitous across all of your assets. But it is safer to just leave it off.
(4) Select Your Business Category
You want to select your initial business category based on what Google recommends or what you find. The Business Categories are predefined by Google, so you can make one up. You have to pick from their list.
You can choose up to 10 business categories. However, I am going to come back to the Business Category section and we’re going to discuss some research strategies. For now, just pick one or a couple and move on. I promise I won’t leave you hanging here.
(5) Description
This is where you want really strong copy. By the way, what is copy? Basically, copy is writing that is meant to elicit a particular response. Generally, you want the response to be that they go to your website, they contact you, or they visit your store.
So what you do here is create copy that convinces them that you will solve every problem they have, related to what you sell. Remember, no one really sells products or services, we all sell outcomes. You want to talk about the amazing benefits and outcomes they will get when they do business with you.
Too many descriptions focus on the business instead of focusing on the problems, benefits, and outcomes of the client. Focus on the client!
This doesn’t have to be perfect. At the same time, you don’t want a bunch of grammar and spelling mistakes either. Put it through grammarly.com or your basic editing software of choice and make sure it is ready for digital life.
You can go back and edit this. In fact, it helps your visibility when you visit your profile daily and make updates, posts, and changes. We’ll discuss that in another article.
(6) Opening Date
While I, and many others, stress the importance of completely filling out your profile, I’m going to call this section optional. It really depends on your business.
If you are a retail store, sure if you just opened that may actually provide a boost to getting people interested in visiting you. I definitely fall for the new factor myself and want to go check out new places.
If you are in the service industry, this may or may not help you. Do people go to a brand new dentist, massage therapist, chiropractor, architect, or plastic surgeon? Even if you have 20 years of experience, do people see the fact that you’ve only been open for 3 months and decide to go with someone else? Well, maybe they do, maybe they don’t.
Again, I’m making this one optional so you can do what you feel is best for your business.
(7) Enter Your Phone Number
This one is super straightforward. Just enter a phone number where people can reach you.
(8) Website
OK, list your website here. What if you don’t have a website? I’ve seen people listing their LinkedIn profile page, their Facebook page, their Instagram page, and of course some even leave this blank.
My recommendation is to put something here, whatever your strongest asset is that has the most activity. If you are posting on Facebook 3 times a day, and haven’t updated your LinkedIn profile since 2014, don’t list your LinkedIn profile. List your Facebook page.
However, I highly encourage you to get a proper website up as quickly as possible. Even if it is just a one-page here’s who am, here’s what I do, here’s how I can help you, here’s how you can contact me kind of site. If you need help with this (or anything), you know a guy – ME! Even if you just need some advice, get in touch!
(9) Social Profiles
So if you listed your Facebook or Instagram business page as your website, you probably don’t want to relist that here. Otherwise, list them. It is best if there is SOME kind of activity on those assets, even one post every 2 weeks. Anyway, just list them and move on to the next section.
(10) Business Location
This is the address for your business. Another section that is pretty straightforward for most businesses. However, there are some small businesses that don’t want to list their address for one reason or another. That is OK.
Remember that Google has your address on file from when you claimed your business. So they know where you are. This is not that. This section is the address you publicly provide to people who visit your business profile listing.
If you don’t want to publish a business address, you can define a service area, which is the next section.
Personally, I recommend listing an address, but I understand not all people want to. Maybe you are someone who will always go to the clients, like an in-home masseuse who carries all the supplies with him, or a bug spray lady who only shows up at people’s houses and sprays. OK, I can understand going with a service area there. You choose whatever is best for your business.
(11) Define Your Service Area
OK, so here you define a service area. If you follow the Google prompts you will be fine. This isn’t too difficult. Just be aware that Google does limit your service area. At this time the service area limit is 2 hours from your business address.
(12) List Your Business Hours
This one is pretty straightforward. List your hours of operation. Or, Google allows you to not list them. Maybe you are a DJ. You don’t have hours you have gigs. Google understands and appreciates you.
(13) Enter Your Holiday Hours and Other Special Hours
This section is where you list your holiday hours. If you are closed Christmas, or have a half day the day before Thanksgiving, you add that here. You’ll probably add and edit hours here periodically, and that is good, as we’ll discuss later.
(14) Enter Additional Information In The More Section
This is where you can enter your business’s special status. Things like Asian-owned, vet-owned, or woman-owned. Also, you can explicitly state things like you have a wheelchair-accessible bathroom and your business is LGBTQ+ friendly. Go through and pick whichever ones apply to you.
More About Your Business Categories
As I promised above, I’m going to delve deeper into your business categories.
(15) Open your Chrome browser and go to your browser extensions section
All you have to do is first open your Chrome browser. Next, you click on the 3 vertical dots on the upper right side of the browser window. Find the Extensions option and select Manage Extensions.
Why Chrome? Because the extension I use is on Chrome. I haven’t used Firefox or Edge for this particular step. You can try them if you want. I just can’t promise good results.
(16) Find A free “Google Business Profile” or “Google My Business” extension plug-in
The extension I use and recommend is “GMB Everywhere”. If you search for that, you will find it and you can install and activate that extension.
(17) Install and activate the plug-in
Once you’ve installed the plug-in, you are going to need to activate it. You may have to restart your browser before it starts working.
(18) Go to Google Maps and search for your competitors
This step is pretty self-explanatory. Find your competitors
(19) Note what categories your competitors use
This is where these steps all pay off. Now GMB Everywhere will share with you the various categories that each business you click on uses in their profile listing.
You want to take notes here. You want to capture any category you see a competitor using that could apply to you.
(20) Go back to your Google Business Profile Listing and add whatever categories apply to your business
It is important to note here that you are limited to 10 business categories by Google. Most businesses, when they do this exercise, will find 10 categories they can use for their business.
If you really don’t feel like you can find 10 categories that apply, I guess just use your best judgment. I’ll just say that every category you list helps your Google rankings, so do as you will.
ADD YOUR PROFILE LOGO & IMAGE
We are not going to add a simple image and logo to your profile. We are optimizing your profile, so we are going to add a geo-tagged image to your profile.
(21) Get an appropriately sized image of your business logo
As I write this, Google recommends a minimum dimension of 720 x 720 pixels. Google currently accepts a minimum of 250 x 250 pixels up to a maximum of 5200 x 5200 pixels, with a file size no larger than 10MB. We’ll do more with this image, just get it ready.
(22) Get an appropriately sized image to use for your cover photo
This will be a near repeat of the logo information. Again, as I write this, Google recommends a minimum dimension of 1080 x 608 pixels. Google currently accepts a minimum of 480 x 270 pixels up to a maximum of 2120 x 1192 pixels, with a file size no larger than 10MB. And again, we’ll do more with this image, just get it ready.
(23) Open Google Maps on a computer and select your business
This is as simple as it sounds. Find your business on Google Maps and click on it. Here you want to drill down to the maximum zoom level and be very precise about your marker in the next step.
(24) Right-click on your business in the map to get your GPS coordinates
Now that you have your business highlighted, you right-click on your business. This gives you the exact GPS coordinates of your business which you are going to use very soon. After you right-click on your business map pin, you click (left-click) on the coordinates to save them to your buffer.
(25) Save those coordinates in a text file
Now you want to save your coordinates somewhere. You want them somewhere that it is easy to copy and paste them from because that is what you’ll be doing soon. Writing them down is not the best idea. I use a mindmap for my workflow and I capture the data there. Whatever you use is good.
(26) Open https://tool.geoimgr.com
Now we are going to use a free tool located at https://tool.geoimgr.com. So open that URL in your browser of choice now.
And just to let you know, there is a free version and a paid version of this tool. The tool works the same either way. However, with the free version, you are limited to tagging 5 images per week. So don’t plan to sit down and tag 250 images in one go. Or maybe you want to pay the 10 bucks a month. That will allow you to tag 1000 images each month. For this, the free version is perfect.
(27) Upload your logo or cover photo
There is a big empty box on the top right of the page (on a desktop) that says “Drop JPG / PNG / WebP photos here or click to upload”. So grab that logo or cover photo you already prepared and upload it here.
(28) Add the latitude and longitude coordinates for your business from Google Maps
Once you upload the photo, the tool will default to GPS coordinates that put you in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean (at least it does for me). This is where you grab those GPS coordinates you previously copied and saved from Google Maps. Google gives you latitude first then longitude second. When you add the coordinates, the map will adjust to whatever you entered. Just make sure it is correct, and then proceed.
(29) Add the keywords/tags and a description/alt text for your image
Now you want to add your keywords and a description. Keep in mind that when Google processes your image, it strips out all the metadata you’ve added. However, it is believed that Google stores this image metadata. And many tests have been run to prove that all this data absolutely helps your search results. So throw in your keyword-laden text here.
(30) Write EXIF Tags and download the image
Now that you’ve entered all that, you have to click on the “Write EXIF Tags” button. The tool won’t let you download the image until you do this at least once. After you click that button, give it a few seconds and then it will be ready to let you download the image. So, go ahead and download the image!
And a friendly warning. If you edit the data after you’ve written it at least once, you have to write the data again. The best practice here is to write the data right before you download the image. And do that every time.
(31) Upload each image according to the prompts
Finally, you can now upload your GPS-tagged business image and logo into your Google Business Profile Listing. Just log in and follow the prompts and you tick this off your list!
Conclusion
You’ve now optimized your Google Business Profile Listing! Congratulations!
If you need any help with any of these steps, or you’d just prefer to have someone else do this entire process for you, don’t hesitate to GET IN TOUCH! We are more than happy and more than capable of doing this for you!
Next Step
Now that you’ve claimed and optimized your business listing, the next step is to start posting to your listing! We go in-depth in our soon-to-be-released, “The Best Google Business Profile Listing Routine To Grow Your Business”. Look for that article to be released soon!