SEO – How To – Google My Business Monitoring

Purpose of this How To Guide: To ensure that localised search is optimised, and in a consistent fashion to the onsite optimisation.

Applicable to: SEO Executives

Customers: All

Timescale: Time may vary depending on what has already been done / what needs implementing.

Things to Consider Before Optimizing the Page(s)

As an SEO, your role is to ensure that localised search is optimised, and in a consistent fashion to the onsite optimisation. A major platform for this is Google My Business which has many features we can utilise and benefit from.

If you don’t have ownership of this listing, has it already been claimed? If not, claim it. This could take a couple of days to take effect. If yes, contact the company and check if the email connected to it is still in service and rather or not that person can give you access or transfer ownership to SQ Digital. If it has already been claimed, but the website is inactive, claim it. This will take 7 days to take effect.
Is the information factually correct and does it reflect the business and its products/services? You might have to contact the client beforehand to confirm addresses, opening hours and request images.
Does the information match that on the website?
Is there enough or too little images? Are they suitable?
Also check the customer images, if inappropriate or wrong, should you seek to remove them?
Can it benefit from any extra optimisation techniques that aren’t currently in place?
Does this company have more than one location and therefore more than one GMB listing that we could manage? And are we managing them?
Though we cannot obtain these ourselves, do we need to recommend that they acquire more reviews and improve on answering questions etc?

Updating Features Within Our Control

1. Ownership/Management

Does the listing exist? If not, create it; if yes, claim it or gain access to it.
Do we have the correct log in details? If not, request them and add them to the company’s Assets in Accelo.
Are there multiple locations? We need to have access to all the relevant accounts. Make sure that from our end all locations are registered to the same Google account within SQ Digital, for ease of management. Annotate the Google account connected to the company’s Google My Business (GBM) listing on the tags of the company profile on Accelo.

2. Contact Details

Ensure that the following are correct and up to date. If absent, add them:
- Phone
- Address
- Opening times; If there is more than one location, do the times match up, are they different?
- Select the correct businesses categories. If working with multiple locations, make sure they all match.

3. Images

Are they current? Request more images from the client if necessary.
Is there enough of them?
Do they represent the business and its products/services and their personality?
Do they need more of a variety?
Are there some that need to be removed?
Are there customer photos? Are they appropriate and representative? If not, should you remove them?

4. Business Description

Does this fit within the allocated character count of 220? If not, rectify and make sure it fits.
Does it discuss the USPs of the business, whether this be the customer service, price, or value?
Is it up to date – be careful to mention specific products because this could easily lead it to become outdated as they go out of stock etc.
If you have more than one location and are using the same description for consistency and because you offer the same service, ensure that if location is mentioned that it is correct, and all services/product categories mentioned are offered at all locations.

5. Posts

Appropriate for pushing products or services that you may have a particular focus on, whether this be due to the time/season of the year or sales and promotions
Posts last for 7 days, with a description word limit of 100-300, you can add this as an event, offer, what’s new or product, dependant on what it is that the client wants to promote.
If there is a particular focus across social media channels, content, and SEO within that interval, look at putting up posts for this too.
Have you tracked this with the campaign URL builder? Though the post will itself tell you how many times it has been seen/clicked, it does not keep this information for a long period of time.
Have you added the appropriate button, for example ‘learn more’ or ‘get deal’ and is the corresponding URL built through the URL builder? https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/

Updating Factors Out of Our Control

1. Questions & Answers

Prospect customers can ask the company questions via this platform. Is the customer good at responding to questions or even aware that they need to respond? If not, make a recommendation or bring it to the client’s attention.
If there are no questions, should they try and encourage more questions and reply to these to show engagement and a good level of responsiveness and customer service?

2. Reviews/Ratings

Are there any star ratings/Google reviews?
Is there an average rating (likely to be Facebook or something similar)?
Should we recommend getting more and encouraging the business to acquire these from customers?
If there is more than one location/business that belongs to the company, are their reviews similar or is one listing lacking focus, attention, and optimisation in comparison to the others?

Summary

Pay particular attention to the accuracy of the content in regard to the client’s website and work closely with the client to improve their listing. Pay attention to:

Having the company listed under the right categories;
All contact details being accurate and matching the website;
Opening hours being correct even on bank holidays;
Photos representing the client and their product well;
Business description being correct and reinforcing the business’ USPs;
Posts that push promotions, events, or products;
If boasting multiple locations, that all the listings match as much as possible for consistency.