Optimising your Google My Business profile
Lesson 3 of 6 of our beginner's guide to local SEO
Local business means local SEO!
Now you’ve created your business profile and been verified, you can edit it further from your Google My Business account. Ideally you’ll want to optimise your business profile as much as possible in order to get better visibility in the search engine results page.
To get started, just visit the Google My Business dashboard at https://business.google.com/manage.
From here you’ll see your business listing—just hit “MANAGE LOCATION” to optimise your business listing profile.
Hit the red “Edit” button in the top-right corner of the screen to get started. From the next page you can edit the following…
Business name
This is what will display in Google when this is searched so make it accurate – don’t try and shoehorn in keywords or anything irrelevant.!
Category
Simple enough, but again, keep it accurate as this is vital to how Google understands what your business does and when to display to users.
Address
Add your regular business address. You can also add a “serving customers within” range – very handy if you’re a local business who only provides a service to a defined area.
Opening times
Google will display when you’re open within the search engine results pages, so makes you include accurate times so your customers can get hold of you.
Special hours
If there are ever a time you’re not open for business during your regular operating times, like bank holidays, you can set it here.
Phone number
Check this twice, and then once more! You can also add in an alternative second number if your business has multiple lines.
Website URL
Add your website address in here. It’s not a necessity however as you can create a Google My Business profile without one.
Add photos
Google may show some imagery of your business when users search. This is great to give customers some visual insight as to what you do, and it can also make your listing stand out from the competition.
That’s all there is to it! There really isn’t much to optimise, so you have no excuse for not making sure your listing is 100% completed.