Hello and welcome to the Working Image Podcast. I'm your host, Jared Michael Gordon. This is episode eight, Google My Business. Let's get started. It was Thanksgiving here last week in the United States. I hope you and your family had a great holiday if you celebrated, but now we are back and I want to talk about Google My Business. I'll Google My Business page is a summary page that Google has created for your business free of charge, and it's based off your company's public information. Companies are a part of public record and Google simply adds them to its business directory. When they are created, you might say to yourself, that's great then I don't have to do anything because Google is doing everything for me and you would be wrong. Google wants you to work with your Google My Business page to make it easier for your company to be a part of search results. Obviously, Google wants their search results to be the best offered and you want your business to grow. Put these two wants together and you've got a Google My Business page. A Google My Business page is another way for someone to find your business on Google without having a website. That's right. You don't need a website to have a Google My Business page. Well, at least not at the time of this recording. I've seen plenty of business pages without a website listed. Now, is it better to have a website listed? Of course it is. Can the Google My Business Page act as your website? No, it cannot. Every business should have a website, but we'll talk about that in another episode. However, the power that a business page gives a company is incredible because it increases your organic ranking within Google, and organic ranking is non-paid ranking. As I mentioned, the Google My Business page is a summary of your business. It lists all your contact information maps, your location, lists, your products and services, which is very important for searching hours of operation, photos, videos, and of course your company's logo. It's a quick and easy way for someone to see if your business is what they're looking for. Google even gave its business owners a spot on the business page to talk about how they were handling covid, so it's not a set it and forget it business directory. With that in mind, Google My Business profiles are just like social media profiles. You can write a post with different types of media to your Google My Business page profile. Now, you're not gonna use this business page like a normal social media page, but it gives someone a peek into your company when they are searching for your products or service. This in return builds trust and when someone has trust in your company, they will contact you. Google ranks your business higher and learns more about your business with each post that you provide. So posting to your business page profile is extremely important and should be done on a regular basis because the Google algorithm is always watching and will promote the business page that is active over one that is not no matter how big the business is. So the first thing you need to do is claim your business page. That's right. They call it Claiming your page. So go to google.com/business link in the show notes and hit the Manage Now button should be in the lower left hand column. If you're on your desktop, you'll be prompted for all your company information and most importantly, the location of your business. Everything is based on your location. For those of you who don't have an office, you can use your home address, and if you don't want to do that, you can use a UPS box in the UPS store or something like that. Now, I don't know if a traditional post office box from the actual post office will work. They did not work in the past, but it's been a long time since I've tried using one of the PO boxes for a client as an address or for myself. So you never know, but the other options are most likely best for you. Once you have claimed your Google My Business page and verified your address, you will have full access to your profile to make changes and upload videos and photos, and of course, your logo Pro Tip, your competition can claim your page. I know it's not fair, but they can. Now Google has done things to help prevent this from happening, but it still happens. It's a long and tedious process to get your Google My Business page back. In fact, it is so demanding that companies just give up and never get their page back. So be sure to claim your company's page even if you have no other intention to use it, just so you protect your company and make sure that you keep your competition at bay. One of the most important elements of your Google My Business page is the review section. All of your Google reviews are managed via your Google My Business page. A little bit about Google reviews. They're the best. No other reviews matter, not from Facebook, LinkedIn, or perhaps third party company you pay to collect reviews for you, which some companies do have. The most powerful reviews that will give you the best ROI are Google reviews. There is no other reason for you to have any other reviews. It's a waste of time. When someone searches for your product or service, they will find your Google My Business page first, even if they don't know it's a Google My Business page. Read the reviews before contacting you, or they will find your website first and then find your Google reviews, which is on your Google My Business page to help them make their decision to contact your company or not. Here's another pro tip. Have your Google reviews automatically appear on your website so someone doesn't have to leave your site to find your reviews. This will result in more conversions and therefore leads. Let's talk about managing your reviews. Do you manage your reviews? A great way for Google to rank you higher is to respond to every single review you receive. That's right, every single one. If someone leaves a positive review, simply thanking them for the review and writing a little something else would help your Google ranking. If someone leaves a bad review, you need to address it as well. However, I recommend saying you are sorry for what happened and offer to speak with them offline about the issue. Then if the issue is solved, you could write a follow up response to that bad review stating how you addressed it, and again, thanking the customer for the feedback. In Google's eyes, you are doing the right thing and addressing any situation, good or bad, remember to never, and I mean never engage a review in a defensive or God forbid, an abusive manner, even when you know the reviewer is completely wrong, it's not worth a bad reputation. Also, remember, you can report any review to be reviewed by Google, and if they feel you're in the right, they will take down the questioned review. It'll take Google some time to review any reported reviews you have, but they do do it. Reviews are extremely powerful and one, if not the best tool offered within a Google My Business page, so be sure to take them seriously. We have noticed something in the last six months or so when you have a healthy Google My Business page, so you're posting to it, you have photos up there, everything is filled out, a healthy page, your organic results, aka non-paid results increase. This is important as it affects your SEO or search engine optimization. For those of you who do not know, SEO is another way of saying Google rankings. Companies have been paying digital marketers a ridiculous amount of money every month to boost their seo, but if you make sure you have a healthy Google My Business page, your company should appear on more search result pages and this results in more leads. I'm sure digital marketers will email me and yell at me and say, this is not the case, but let me tell you, one of the services my company offers is digital marketing, and this strategy has been an amazing solution for my clients. And here's the kicker. If you want a company like mine to oversee your Google My Business page, these maybe just don't have the overhead to take care of it. It's now a fraction of the cost of a traditional SEO campaign. This is why digital marketing companies hate this strategy. It works and costs much less, which hurts their bottom line, but changes are happening and everyone has to adapt to them. Companies then take the money or at least part of it that they are saving and invest it in a pay per click program. So adding a Pay per Click program with the aforementioned strategy is a great way to see positive growth in your seo, and ultimately it's costing you less money than a traditional SEO campaign. Remember, claim your Google My Business page, make sure all your information is filled out and post to it on a regular basis. You will see an increase in the leads you get from Google. Well, that's it for episode eight of The Working Image Podcast. Google My Business. All the necessary links and information are in the show notes. If you have any questions, email theworkingimage@gmail.com. We know your time is valuable. Thank you for using some of that time to listen. Take care, everyone.