Every company wants to increase its online presence, especially on Google. In local search listings and the Map Pack, how can you get in front of the correct people? Your local business's Google Business Profile (GBP) listing can be optimized to help it be found and convert motivated searchers into paying customers. Here are a few pointers to help you obtain some rapid wins without going broke.
Request Reviews!
One of the most effective strategies to increase your GBP is to write reviews. They are free yet do a lot to improve your company's visibility among organic searchers.
Consider how you'd go about sorting through a wide list of area general contractors if you've never worked with one before. Because you don't have a third-party validation of areas like pricing and quality of labor, you have no idea if the statements provided on a contractor's website are accurate. In this scenario, GBP reviews will help you rank higher in local searches. People looking for contractors in their region will be more likely to trust your company if you have 10 or 15 four- or five-star reviews. Those reviews, however, will not appear overnight.
To persuade pleased consumers to submit reviews at all, you may need to perform some outreach. You can do this by sending them an email, a postcard, or just asking them to give you a vocal assessment of their experience with you. Another alternative is to use review management software such as BirdEye, ReviewPush, or Pozative. You can use these applications to:
Organize your customer reviews.
Send text message review requests.
Respond to new Google reviews directly from email alerts.
Your review requests should encourage customers to be honest and detailed in their analysis, regardless of how you do it.
Don't Be Spammy
Google is certainly clever enough today to detect attempts to game the system by automating content, establishing doorway pages, and keyword stuffing, for example. GBP follows the same logic. Why would Google, the world's largest and most powerful search engine, let you get away with spamming practices like bribing individuals to create favorable reviews? Real, honest reviews will be trusted by potential customers. Google, as well as the review sites I mentioned, do. They can tell if you bought a shady website to write a false five-star review for your company.
In reality, review sites may detect phony reviews and mark your website as untrustworthy. When users arrive on one of your pages, the flag will appear as a popup alerting them not to trust your site. Offering incentives, like future discounts, for consumers who submit favorable GBP evaluations is a similar notion. In this scenario, doing so may have a negative impact on your online reputation. Potential buyers may believe that persons who mention the inducement in their reviews are lying.
Attempting to bribe people for positive assessments, on the other hand, obscures the situation's potential reality. Even if customers had a bad experience with your company, they will not mention it in their reviews. This increases the chances that future customers may be "duped" and have a terrible experience when they expected something better.
Be Sure To Respond To All Reviews, Including Negative Ones
Instead of working more than necessary by employing these strategies, I recommend either preventing unfavorable GBP reviews from occurring in the first place or promptly responding to any negative GBP reviews that do occur. The former would certainly necessitate you getting your hands dirty and ensuring that every area of your business is working well.
At all times, cater to your consumers, and if something goes wrong, be understanding, handle it right away, and make sure everyone leaves happy. Reach out to customers who have left poor reviews online to apologize and empathize. This demonstrates to the general public that you care about your customers even after they leave your business.
Be Sure To Use Google Business Profile
My final piece of advice for increasing your GBP is to use Google's online business tool.
The Google Marketing Kit is one such product, which allows you to make free stickers, posters, and social media postings to promote your company's promotions and events. The social posts, in particular, should be a huge help to your internet profile. You may make amazing posters out of your favorable evaluations, complete with written blurbs, and then share them on social media.
Users may also follow your company's local profile on GBP in the same way they would on Facebook or Instagram. Your followers would then have access to your company's:
New social posts.
Offers.
Blog posts.
Events.
Product updates.
All of these things will help your followers become more aware of your brand. Finally, Google Posts allows you to creatively promote new coupons, deals, and events. You may also increase user engagement by using photos, videos, and call-to-action buttons. Because its analytics function allows you to monitor how users responded to whatever you wrote, Google Posts is a wonderful GBP advertising tool. You can utilize the information you gather to create even better posts in the future.
Also, look at Google's Local Favorites service. It honors the top 5% of local businesses in each category with digital and physical badges. Google wants you to improve the local profile of your company. It aspires to foster the healthy competition that exists among small businesses in the area. Almost everything Google does these days is in the interest of improving the user experience.
Who can establish themselves as the finest provider of any product or service the user requires? Your response should be "you." You can only do it if you have a killer GBP that attracts all of the correct consumers. If you need help with GBP optimization, be sure to reach out for a free discussion on how we can help you.
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