A Google Business Profile is a free marketing tool that helps you manage how your business performs across Google. It lets you add contact details, photos and opening hours. You can also manage reviews that people leave for you.

Google ranks your business based on a number of factors:

• How relevant your business is to the search
• How close you are to the location of the person searching
• Activity around your page such as the number of reviews and how up-to-date it is

Verifying your business

If you haven’t claimed your Google Business Profile page sign up at www.google.co.uk/business‎.

Once you’ve entered your information you’ll need to verify that you’re the business owner before your listing will appear.

Make sure your information is accurate

To get the best results from Google Business Profile make sure the information you add is accurate and up-to-date. Here’s a handy checklist for adding your details.

• Use your full business name
• Make sure you choose a relevant category/categories for your business
• Make sure your business address and phone number appear like they do on your website
• Add your business opening times
• Add some decent photography and images. There are different categories for your images including interior and exterior photos of your business premises and team photos

Getting insights

Your Google Business Profile dashboard contains a section called Insights so you can quickly and easily see:

• How your customers find your listing
• Where customers find you on Google
• Requests made for driving directions
• Any phone calls made directly from your listing

The last point is really interesting. Some people will phone you directly from your listing so it pays to put the effort in.

Google Posts

Google recently added a new feature to Google Business Profile called Posts. Posts are small pieces of information about new events, products or services.

You can add an image, a title, up to 300 words of text and a call-to-action button. As posts are quick and easy to create they’re certainly worth trying. There are certain guidelines that you need to follow so it’s worth researching this before you create the post. Posts are only active for a certain amount of time so they’re ideal for seasonal offers or upcoming events.

Working alongside your website

Remember to keep your listing up-to-date. When someone buys a product or service from you ask them to leave reviews for you through your profile.

Google Business Profile should form just a part of your local search strategy. Keep your website up-to-date with local content and get backlinks from revelant, good quality websites such as local business directories.

Summary

Your Google Business Profile is a really useful marketing tool. It’s free to use, easy to set up and a great way of getting in front of potential customers.

It can help with your local search strategy as long as you remember to keep the information on it up-to-date.