Google My Business – Show your business on Google

Google My Business is an important system for small and medium businesses, local and international businesses, and others with branches. The system allows you to show your business in the search results of different locations on Google.

By adding your site to the Google My Business platform, customers can find you and reach your local business on both desktop and mobile devices.

The idea behind this is to create a business page on Google (like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.) where you can add photos, posts, videos, your business phone number, geographical location, email, website and more.

After creating a “Google My Business” page, users will find you via:

• Google Local Search – that is when your customer searches for a business like yours with a device that has access to GPS.
• Search with a place name – when your customer searches for a business like yours and indicates the city or region.
• Google Maps Search – When a customer searches for a business like yours in Google Maps.
• Google Business Search – Google may display your business within the knowledge graph with details about your business (photos, map, address, phone number, website address, reviews, opening hours, and more).

How to create a business page on Google My Business?

In order to open a business page on Google, you must first log in to your Google account and then you can access the following page: google.com/business (if you are not logged in, you will be prompted to log in) and then click the button “Start Now”.

These are the steps:

1. Name of business

Enter your business name (or brand name) and click Next.

2. Business address

Next, enter your business address including country, city, street, and zip code.

At the same time, choose whether you are giving products and services to the customer’s home or not (you do not receive customers in your business). If you have checked, you can choose whether to display the business address or just the region. Then click Next.

3. Category

At this stage, choose the category to which your business belongs. The category should represent the services your business offers. The category should describe your business as a whole, you can not create your own category, and you should choose the primary category of your business.

For example, if you have a gym/sports club and you also sell sports clothing, there is no need to add a “clothing store” and it is a mistake to do so.

4. Contact details

Next, add your contact details so your customers can contact you. You can enter a phone number and a website address.

5. Receiving notifications

Google will offer you the possibility of sending your messages and tips. Select whether you want to accept or not.

Business verification

Google will ask you to verify your business, to make sure that your business does exist and is not fictitious.

Usually, you will need to verify your business by postcard so that it will be sent physically to your business address and you can also add a contact name so that it actually gets to you and will not get lost.

Google will send you the verification code will be sent to you within a few days, usually about 20 days.

Until you’ve verified your business with the code, it will not appear as a local business in Google’s search results.

Set up a business page

In the meantime, you can edit your business page and add content to it. When you click Customize or re-enter the Google site for my business, you will be directed to the control panel of the page where you can add more information about your business, contact details and more.

Here’s how it looks:

Now let’s go over each of the categories on the side:

Home

This is the most general part and it shows general details about the location of your business.

Posts

These are stories and other information that you want to share about your business to your customers. Your posts will appear next to your business in Google search results when customers search for you.

You can add a standard post of text, photo post, event, offer, product, and more. You can also add a call-to-action button to these posts that helps you get your audience to do something.

Information

Here you can add and edit all the details of your business. You can change the business name, business category, business address, days and hours, phone number, website address, description of your business, and more.

In this section there is also a possibility to close the hide out of your business.

Insights

Like any activity you perform, you need to measure it to understand and compare performance. In this section you will have the following metrics:

• Where customers find the business page – whether your page appeared in search results on Google or Google Maps, on a regular computer or on a mobile device and total views.
• Search queries – what customers entered in search before they found you.
• How they find your business – how many customers have found your business and how.
• Customer actions – what customers do when they find your business. Have they clicked on a site visit, a request for a track (how to physically get to your business), a call to a business and total operations.
• Direction requests – Here you can see where customers are when they want to reach you for business.
• Phone calls – When often customers call you.
• Images – The number of images displayed and how often they appear.
• Features – What are the familiar features of your business. This allows you to see what customers think about your business based on subjective information.

Photos

Here you can manage all the photos and videos of your business page. Your profile photo (business), cover photo, video, internal space of the business, appearance, work, team and identity.

Users

Here you can manage the users who have access to the business page.

Create an ad

Here you can manage an ad using Google Adwords (or its new name: Google Ads).

Manage locations

You can add another location, such as another branch of your business, and you can manage all of your Google placements.

If you have more than 10 locations, you can upload them all together using the Google interface.

Linked accounts

If you linked your account to Google Adwords, Google Merchant Center and more – you can manage them here.

Reviews

One of the things Google allows is adding reviews from your customers. In fact, when customers find your business on Google, they can add criticism and say what they think about you. It is very important to be in the know and know that your customers have left a review and of course you should respond accordingly.

It’s important to know that the better the review, the more likely that new customers will contact you. Of course, the better the rating, the better Google will have to show you more.

Conclusion

So far on the topic of Google to my business. Once you’ve verified your business with the verification code, customers can find you on Google.