EPISODE 18 OF THE MARKETING SOLUTIONS PODCAST: WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CHECKED YOUR GOOGLE BUSINESS LISTING?
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Okay. I can not believe I'm recording an episode on this because I thought it was basic, basic stuff, but I'm honestly blown away by the number of businesses that do not have this [inaudible 00:00:39] sorted. I am talking about the Google Business listing, rather. I don't know if you saw my little video of Papa Reid, that's my dad, late last year when we were at family Christmas. My boomer dad is not particularly tech savvy. I mean, he's not terrible, but there are a lot of phone calls between us where I have to troubleshoot PDFs and the printer connection. Anyway, I digress. I was sitting there and he pulled out his phone and spoken to it saying, "Bermagui tip days, opening days", Siri spoke back to him telling him that it was currently open. So he got into his Ute the load full of renovation debris and headed 20 minutes out of town to the tip.
40 minutes later he was back. His Ute, was still a full of junk and I asked him, "what happened"? His response was, "Siri lied to me". So, I pulled up the tips website where it clearly stated that on that particular day of the week it had never been open. Hmm, weird, I thought, where on earth did Siri pull this information from? So, I actually went and did a little bit of deep dive and tried to find out where the info gets pulled from and it turns out it was from the Google business listing and I saw that on there it stated that it was open every day except for Sunday. So this is just one example of why you need to make sure you're regularly updating your Google business listing. I've had situations where I've Googled for a restaurant, clicked the number that appears on Google maps and suddenly I'm speaking to a plumber, what the heck. Turned out in this particular scenario the restaurant was owned by the plumber's wife and somehow he's number what was on the listing rather than the restaurants.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
There are also situations where competitors will try and claim your Google business listing, which is sometimes automatically generated without you setting it up. So it's important that you go and check that you actually have control over this. Also, if you are setting one up for the first time for the love of dog, please, please, please save your log in. I'm constantly amazed that when we're doing web updates for clients or search engine optimization. I asked them to give me access and they don't even use the email address the account is attached to anymore. So, it takes a long time to then go and get that access. So the thing is, guys, this is actually a free opportunity to market your business online and on Google. Why would you not want to take up that opportunity?
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Let's get started with basics. How do you know if you actually have ownership of your Google business listing and that it's up to date? So keeping it simple, just head to google.com and Google "business name". Sometimes you will need to Google your business name plus the city or suburb. And by the way, doing this on the computer, not on your phone. Okay, so take a look to the right and see what comes up. Is there a section with rate images, a website, a phone number, and reviews? If not, that's totally blank. There is no Google business listing for your business yet and you need to head back to Google and type in "Google my business listing". There will be a top result that comes up that will literally walk you through step by step setting up that listing. So this is the website by Google, by the way, so make sure that looks legit.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
What usually happens is that Google will send a postcard to your address that will have a verification code on it that you need to log back into your listing and then add that code in to make sure that it's verified. And all listing goes live. So again, make sure you keep your login information when you set up this listing account. And by the way, if it's been a couple of weeks and you haven't received the postcard in the mail yet from Google, log back in or request it again. Honestly, it is taken up to five times for me to get this postcard for my clients in the past, so just keep persevering.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Alrighty. Scenario number two, when you Google your business plus your suburb, your listing comes up, but it says claim this listing and it's a bare bones listing with very minimal information. This indicates that it has been auto-generated by Google. So, what you'll see is there's a blue text button that says click on, sorry it says, claim this listing. Click on that and follow the prompts so you can get access to control the information that is being shown.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Scenario number three, your listing comes up and you own it. Congratulations. Now, what I recommend from here is that you jump in and make sure that it's up to date around once a month. So add new images in, check the contact details and opening hours. Just check that everything is up to date so you can even add in special hours for holiday. So, say you're closed on Christmas day or something happens and you need to close the business suddenly for a couple of days due to a family emergency for example, you can actually update it to this special specific hours and days where it's showing that you're closed. So this really plays a big factor into your search engine optimization and where you're ranking on Google. So please, start encouraging your customers and clients to leave you a review on Google. We do this for all of our clients. So, so important.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
Actually. Do you know what? I'm going to give you a freebie from this episode that's an example of a PDF that we've put together for our clients to send to their clients to promote reviews on Google. So the process with this is they pay the final invoice and then you would send them a followup. Saying, "Thank you so much for your final payment so we can attract more amazing customers like you. Would you mind taking two minutes to leave us a review on Google? Here's a step-by-step PDF on how to actually do that". And within that PDF document there's clickable links so they just can follow that and it's very, very easy for them to take two minutes out of the day to leave your review.
Sonya McIntyre-Reid:
So I cannot, I cannot stress the importance of building as much authority on this listing as possible when it comes to ranking on Google. Basic stuff, free stuff, but a big impact. So, if you get stuck with any of this, Google also has a help service that you can tap into. Just Google, "Google business listing help" and follow their first result that pops up. All right, thanks for listening guys. Now go check to your Google listing.