July 2022

Let’s start with Google My Business and what it is. Chances are you see a GMB profile every day, but may not know what it is or how it came to exist. Almost every business has a profile that lives in Google’s search engine. It gives us all the information we need (when maintained) about any given business. Things like photos, services offered, phone numbers, links and even posts (think social) and so on. If you have a business; brick and mortar or not, you need to be on top of this – otherwise it’s costing you business. It’s easy to set up – but can be challenging if you have several locations – each of which needs to be maintained.

What’s happening now? Google changes things all the time to keep us on our toes. Algorithm headache anyone? Moving on. For those of you that manage your Google My Business page through the app, which we love – it’s going away sometime this year. For us – it keeps things both neat and manageable when dealing with dozens of GMB pages. So, we too will have to get used to Google Business Profile upkeep in Search and Maps.

Where’s it going? You guessed it; Search and Maps. If you access your GMB profile you can experience the “new” way of managing your content as Google with prompt you. We’ve done it both ways and still prefer the existing way, but – we all have to conform to the new product.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization has been around a long while and continues to be a strong force. We won’t get into the definition of it here, but we can tell you that simply participating / updating / actively using your Google Business Profile is big. How big? Well – Google knows that people are adding content like blogs and video to their sites to rank higher – some of which is a lot of fluff. That said, if you aren’t blogging or spending $1200+ a month on “How To” content, you need to be active in Google Business Profiles. The proof is in the pudding. Set up your profile and watch the numbers before and after.

Takeaways:

-All businesses need to consistently manage and update their Google Business Profile

-Google Business Profiles will be managed in Search and Maps

-With 85.5 percent of searches done on Google, you can’t afford not to be in this space