Do you know that most prospective customers learn about your business by performing an online search? In fact, 46% of all searches have local intent, and the amount of monthly local searches is 97 billion. So, what happens when they discover you online and decide to visit your physical location, only to find that you have moved or your hours changed? Chances are they'll switch to a competitor, and you'll lose the sale.
Having a Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business) is now more essential than ever—it is a vital part of your business’s online presence and often the first place customers look for up-to-date information.
Why You Need to Keep Your Business Listings Up to Date
Having a Google Business Profile has always been important since it's typically the first thing customers notice when they search for your business. With an optimized GBP account, you can achieve the following:
- A completed GBP listing can boost a business's local SEO ranking.
- Seeing your business's essential info listed in search will give browsers an immediate first impression.
- With Google Maps integration, it is easier for customers to find your business using the world's most popular mobile map and directions app.
- Optional direct messaging—customers can send messages directly to your company phone number or email via the GBP interface.
- Your GBP profile includes customer reviews, which gives your business social credibility on par with Yelp or Trustpilot.
However, your GBP listing is not a set-and-forget listing. To stay at the top of search results, you'll have to optimize and maintain your listings just as you would your website.
4 Benefits of Keeping Your Business Listings Up to Date
As mentioned above, updates and changes are among the best strategies for optimizing your Google Business Profile listing for local search results. The more active you are on the platform, the more signals you send to Google that your listing is reliable and accurate. As Google trusts you more, you will rank higher on Google Maps and the local section of Google search. Benefits of a higher ranking include:
Get Discovered By New Consumers
This benefit relates to editing your category in Google Business Profile. Choosing a category allows people to find your business when they search for the product or service you offer rather than your name (think about how many customers don't yet know you exist).
This is especially useful for businesses whose names don't imply their services. For example, “Jane's Hair Salon” is fairly straightforward, but “Trails and Tails” could be a dog walking service, hiking tour company, or paving company (see more creative names here). Adding a category to your Google listing is an easy way to help more people learn about your business.
Furthers Your Reach
When you were a kid and selling coupon books, where did you go? You didn’t sell them from your home, you went to people's houses. Why? That’s where the people are. It's the same for businesses today. To get noticed, you have to be where the people are; and that’s online.
In fact, according to Google, 87% of smartphone owners use a search engine daily, and 30% of their searches are location-related. Setting up and maintaining your Google business listing can help you capitalize on this trend to reach as many people as possible where they are already spending their time.
Drive Leads
Unlike any door-to-door sales you did as a kid, customers are not waiting for you to come to them, they’re actively searching for a business like yours. They're searching for products and services near them and comparing businesses through Google Maps and Google Search. To ensure that you're found by people who want your business, be sure to update your Google listing.
Improves Your SEO
SEO can be a daunting task but is easily doable by breaking it into bite-sized pieces. You can easily improve your local SEO by updating your Google listing and ensuring your other listings are identical to your Google listing.
The Google search engine crawls the internet continuously for updated information to provide the most accurate results. If your contact information is consistent across the web, then you're more likely to be favored by Google.
Online listings aren’t just for local or physical businesses
If you run a remote company or a business that doesn’t have a physical store, you might be tempted to skip out on setting up your listings. Many listing services, however, let you set your business profile as a service area business which allows you to reap the SEO benefits of having online listings without having to publish an address online. In fact, setting up your listings as a remote business is crucial to getting discovered by your future customers online.
How Does Listing Management Services Help Businesses?
What is Business Listing Management?
Business Listing Management is a service that manages your company's name, phone numbers, addresses, and other important contact details online. Using this service, your business's data will be consistent and up-to-date across hundreds of websites, search engines, apps, voice assistants, GPS systems, and social networks.
Spend More Time Running Your Business
Whether you maintain the data or not, your business information can be found on hundreds of websites. Websites exist just to catalog and create databases of business information, such as Local Pages and Superpages. Many others, like Yelp, provide a platform for users to share business information.
Do you regularly check to make sure your contact information is current and accurate everywhere on the internet?
Search engine crawlers can be confused by subtle differences, such as misspelled street names or listings that use “Ave” rather than “avenue.” If search engines cannot find consistent information about your business, your rankings will suffer. If your rankings suffer, customers will have a harder time finding your company's website.
Sounds Like a Fit for Your Business?
Get in touch with Pyromaniac Digital to learn more about the benefits of Business Listing Management, or additional digital marketing services, such as website design, ads, and more!
