oogle My Business, or GMB, is a free tool that allows you to promote your Business Profile and business website on Google Search and Maps. With your Google My Business account, you can see and connect with your customers, post updates to your Business Profile, and see how customers are interacting with your business on Google.

For starters, you want to know what Google My Business is before you decide to invest your time into trying it. As the name implies, Google My Business allows you to create a listing for your business on Google. When a consumer researches your business on Google or even searches for terms related to your business you want to ensure they have all the information they need to visit, make a purchase, or contact your company. How do you accomplish that, though? With Google My Business. With Google My Business, not only can you create a listing for your business on Google, but you can also manage your company's appearance on one of the world's most popular search engines. Those features, as well as freedoms, offer your business a lot of perks.

Why Is Google My Business Important

Google My Business is a crucial tool. It helps your business interact with your target audience, as well as provides helpful information to current and potential customers. Skip on Google My Business, and you miss out on potential sales, exposure, and revenue for your company.

When users search for localized keywords or terms using Google, they're presented with relevant local business results, all tailored to the search term used. People turn online multiple times a day to find information to make their lives easier. As the main search engine to help you find what you need, Google has developed a way for businesses to stand out. Whether through a search result or a maps query, over five billion searches are made each day through Google. That means that a large audience can see your Google My Business profile. In an era where Google not only is a noun but a verb, since searching on the website is so universal ”just Google it!” improving how your business appears on Google can have a big impact.

It gives your business consistency. You want the information on the web about your business to be accurate no matter where your customers find it. GMG helps you input, manage, and update the correct information and details about your business across the internet on one directory so that searchers are getting the right info through search engine queries. This is one with a caveat: you must keep the information up to date in order to gain from this Google-powered benefit. It also helps Local SEO Boost. GMB can be a key part of your local SEO and marketing strategy, helping customers in your area find you, and your business improve search engine rankings.

What are the benefits?

Engage with consumers

There are a lot of ways consumers can interact with your Business Profile, and you use your Google My Business account to engage back with them. You can respond to reviews, answer questions, enable direct messaging, and set up associated alerts. You can even use Google My Business to publish posts to your Business Profile, much like you would with Facebook and other social media platforms Your Google My Business dashboard is where you can respond to reviews, publish posts, and answer questions asked on your Business Profile.

Highlight your business

A Business Profile alone contains limited information about your business. But through your Google My Business account dashboard, you can provide hours, a link to your website, products and pricing, attributes, and other details that make your business unique . You will also use your Google My Business to make edits and updates as needed. A complete Business Profile offers a complete snapshot of your business, including its best features, right in the SERP.

Gain insights

You can use the Google My Business dashboard to gain key insights on your audience and local search performance . In the analytics tab of the platform, you can see the queries customers are using to find your Business Profile, whether they found you on Google Maps or Google Search, a breakdown of actions taken on your listing, and how your photos are performing compared to other profiles in your category. Note also that there are ways to track clicks from a Business Profile via UTM parameters and Google Analytics.

Perform local SEO

Just as Google has algorithms for ranking its ads and websites, it also has one for ranking Business Profiles. Through your Google My Business dashboard, you can incorporate keywords into your Business Profile and perform other optimizations to help it rank in local results, which we're going to cover next.  Google My Business can help you optimize your Business Profile to show up in the coveted 3-Pack.

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