A Beginner's Guide to Google Business Profiles

Making sure that your website performs the way it should doesn’t just mean that you need to employ search engine optimisation for your Twickenham based business. There are many more tactics that you can use to optimise your Google Business Profile. 

Before we get started, let’s look at what a Google Business Profile is. It’s a “multi-layered platform that enables you to submit information about local businesses, to manage interactive features like reviews and questions, and to publish a variety of media like photos, posts, and videos”. 

You will need a Google account that you can have access to whenever you need it. You will need to respond to Google reviews at all sorts of times in order to help your customers/clients, so it is easier for you to have access to your Google account rather than it being managed by a large marketing agency that works Monday to Friday 9am-5pm. You will then have access to the GBP dashboard, which has components for ongoing management “of your basic contact info, reviews, posts, images, products and other features”. After that, the Google dashboard is particularly useful as it hosts GBP Insights which give you lots of very specific information about your website’s performance. 

 

The website for Brown’s Artisan Butchers on King Street in Twickenham is performing very well. When you search for ‘butcher Twickenham’ on Google, it is the first hit that appears. The good performance of their website is dependent on the business information that they have input on the Business Profile. This is key to driving traffic to your site. You must ensure that the “business information in Business Profile is accurate, complete and engaging”. To get results like that for your business, you need to consider how Google determines local ranking. “Local results are based primarily on relevance, distance and prominence” when calculating their algorithms. This means it is imperative that your website content is carefully created to make sure that it performs perfectly for local SEO. 

 

When creating your Google Business profile, you need to consider the matter very carefully. What your Google Business profile says about your business is a form of online marketing for your Twickenham business. For heightened targeted visibility on Google, you need to: 

 

1) Claim your Business Profile 

2) Complete every section of your Google Business Profile account 

3) Be meticulous with contact information 

4) Select primary and secondary categories 

5) Mark off applicable attributes 

6) Write a complete “from the business” description 

7) Publish Google posts weekly 

8) Upload new photos weekly 

9) Answer questions 

10) Collect and respond to reviews 

11) Add your products and/or services 

12) Set up messaging 

13) Maintain your Business Profile 

 

The more information you feed into your Google Business profile the higher it will rank and the more your business will profit. The information you put on your Google Business profile is the information on which prospective customers/clients are reliant, to decide on whether or not to approach your business. This means that you need to look at all aspects of the algorithm that Google uses for ranking Business Profiles. The higher the quality of the information you post as well as how active you are, then the higher Google will rank you in local results. 

If you need any further encouragement to take a second look at your Google Business profile, then it’s important to know it is a free tool that “helps business owners manage their online presence across the search engine and its growing portfolio of utilities”. 

An accurate and detailed Google Business profile is vital for new and established businesses. It gives people your: 

- Business address 

- Business Hours 

- Category 

- Reviews 

The more information you have placed there, the more likely it is that traffic will visit your website. From there, it’s down to you to convert the traffic into sales. This becomes more and more likely if your business’s website is easy-to-use, professional, and attractive. Our ecommerce website package gives you access to an easy-to-use web editor. They will make it stress-free to update your website with photos of your new products, promoting them as efficiently and seamlessly as can be. 

Consider all aspects of the information you can place on your Google Business profile, even ‘Pre-populate Q&A on your listing’, ‘Setup a welcome offer…’ and ‘Consider enabling Google Assistant and/or direct messaging’. 

 

After that, it is important you monitor and respond to reviews and update your listing regularly as the Google algorithm looks at how active your business profile is as well as the information on there. 

Getting started couldn’t be easier. To “add or claim your Business Profile on Google”, follow these simple steps. 

By employing all the tactics and strategies we’ve gone through, you will soon see traffic to your website increase. However, to maximise your website’s performance and to save time, it is worth enlisting the help of professional web designers like us at It’seeze Twickenham. 

 

For local, professional help with your website that will ensure your website is running the way you want it to, contact It’seeze Twickenham. Their friendly, impartial service will boost the number of visitors that your site receives making sure that it is running as efficiently as possible. If you have any questions about what It’seeze Twickenham can do for your business, then get in touch to have your bespoke website crafted by a Twickenham web designer. We have a wide range of affordable web design packages for you to choose from.