Why it’s Important to Have a Google My Business Page and Optimize It

Transcript

Crystal Horton: 00:00 Here we are ready to start our week to talk about Google, my business basics me exit out of this. So I’m Krystal Horton, I’m an account manager with accelerate marketing where we help businesses become the go to business in their niche. So in other words, we help you dominate your local Seo and online reputation. And today, Ryan and I are going to discuss why having a google my business page is important. How are you today, Ryan?

Ryan Steinolfson: 00:32 Hey, doing good. Crystal, how are you doing? I, uh, really, uh, excited to this. I know there’s a lot of questions about this and it’s really probably one of the quickest and easiest way that businesses can really get found on Google and also, uh, just get, get more inbound phone calls.

Crystal Horton: 00:50 Yeah. And you know, Google, my business is one of those one-stop shops for your business listing information across the board. So having a google my business page and enables you to manage your information on Google search, Google maps, and even google plus as well. So some people kind of ask, why is Google my business important? Let me share my screen here.

Ryan Steinolfson: 01:17 I’m bit, you’re doing this because, you know, we always like to talk about the why because a lot of people are like, well, yeah, I mean, I, I kind of want to do it and I know it’s important, but I mean, you know, we’ve been doing this for a long time. We’ve seen, you know, over the, you know, almost 10 years of doing this that you know, that it’s important. But because we’ve seen that, you know, like Steve Rosenberg and empire and Liberty Management, I’m now just before we got on today, I was looking at case studies, but I’ve created to use as what we call lead magnet for other businesses to understand the depths of the importance of this. Um, by giving them real world numbers. I mean, we’re, you know, I was just thinking about this five years later, astounded when I first approached, you know, Kevin Delivery at liberty management and also the Rosenberg over at empire.

Ryan Steinolfson: 02:10 And I said, you know, guys, this is where things are headed in retreat. Really got to claim your google. My business page, gets more reviews and, uh, and really work at this. And now here we are, I mean, whatever, four, five, six years later, and these guys are hitting, you know, Google is specifically google my business, you know, showing up on the map is their number one source of inbound phone calls and you know, it, it does take some time. I’ve said that over the last three or four times that we’ve been going live. It does take a little bit of time, but Google was actually given us some really cool tools that we didn’t have even a month ago that make it so that you know, so that, so that you can, you know, really, you know, stack the deck in your favor and engage in some engagement tools. One, I know you’re going to talk about where you know, you can actually have people text you directly from your Google my business page. I mean really, really cool stuff. And, and um, I’ll let you go into what you’re, what you’re going to share here.

Crystal Horton: 03:17 Um, so with the reason why Google, my business is important just to, just to keep going from where Ryan is talking about is because it gives you, your searchers are viewers or anybody that finds you, if it’s based off of big keyword or phrase service or even if they just type in your name, address and phone number. It gives everyone a snapshot of Your Business and it also helps maintain the name, address and phone number, which like we talked to last week, how important that is and how frustrated a consumer can be. If they can’t find your information, they don’t blame the directory, they blame you and get real frustrated with that. So Google is kind of like your one stop place to communicate with the world and then 75 percent of individuals are more likely to visit a business website after finding helpful information in search results.

Crystal Horton: 04:12 Not only that, but you know, making phone calls to you as well. And then I’m considering a purchase and they’re more likely to visit to contact you after finding helpful information on your google my business page. And one of the things that I really like is sometimes we have clients who understand the importance of what a google my business page is, but they don’t even know what their Google Google my business page looks like. They know how to sign into Google my business. They know how to check their insights and add photos and update their posts, but they have no clue where it’s showing up. And so, um, it’s, it’s beautiful to know that the spice, they don’t know where it is that they still do it anyways because we all understand the importance of it. So right here, if you’re looking at my page on the right hand side, where it shows accelerate marketing, it has photos, it has, um, how many google reviews you have, your, your address, your hours of operation. This right here that you’re looking at is your google my business page.

Crystal Horton: 05:20 OK?

Ryan Steinolfson: 05:23 I also want to point out that, that, um, that, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s your google my business page, but I mean, what, what an amazing opportunity that you have. I mean, you can change out your photos, you know, you can, you can see there that there’s questions and answers that people can ask. I mean, there’s all kinds of customization that you can do here. You can even create a 360 degree virtual tour of your, all of your business so that people can literally experience your business before they even get there. I mean there’s, there’s all kinds of, I mean, you change your office hours, obviously things like that and you can even make it to the people can text, um, any questions so they can really get quick access to you as well, which is really cool. And uh, and even create, you know, additional things like, you know, posts and I mean it’s just, and this is the reason why this is so important is because you’re looking at like 60 to 70 percent of people they go to Google. And so this is, this is the, you know, there’s a lot of directories out there but none that have that, that volume of people actually going in and looking at those at those other directories. Like Google does like 60 to 70 percent of the search traffic is going through Google, so this is if you’re going to spend your time anywhere in terms of optimization and spending time creating content, then you’ve got to go where the numbers are. Definitely Google’s. Got It.

Crystal Horton: 06:53 Yes, definitely. And if you’d like a copy of this document that I have right here today, just type in gm be basics and we’ll get that sent over to you. Also, if you have any questions in regards to anything that we’ve been talking about, send us a message at m.me/accelerate marketing and we’ll get in contact with you with either a video message or an audio message. Um, so in regards to a google my business page, another thing as well is it’s very important that you fill out all the information as much as possible because if you see right here, anyone can suggest an edit. And once that and it goes onto your google my business page and if the information is incorrect then that’s something that’s out there for the world to see. So it’s most definitely important to make sure that you have all your information updated.

Ryan Steinolfson: 07:49 Yeah. And I think it’s also important to point out that, you know, crystal, you got a lot of experience with this because I mean, you’re dealing with the Google my business forums. You’re dealing with google my business experts on Google’s side, you know, day in, day out on behalf of our, of our customer base in order to deal with situations like we just had a situation come up where, you know, all of a sudden one of our, one of our customers, you know, just last night and you know, because Google, because crystal is like a, like a hand watching over all her little account manager eggs, you know, all of our customers, you know, she sees one that got out of the nest and you know, getting out of the mess so to speak is mean, you know, when your Google my business page is all of a sudden, what do they say is last night there was reported as a, it was basically taken offline.

Ryan Steinolfson: 08:39 I mean there’s Google my business page, right? So, um, this can happen. I mean, those, those kind of challenges can happen if you don’t have somebody, if you’re not watching over or you don’t have somebody watching to your google my business page can be, you know, all of a sudden you might scratch your head and look back a month and say, why did we get 40 percent fewer phone calls this past month? And if you, if you don’t know what’s going on and you’re not paying attention and you’re not at the wheel, so to speak of your google my business page, you can lose a lot of traffic before you really even realized what happened. And, and just having your google my business page taken down like happened last night. And we, we’re just trying to figure out what happened. Why you don’t know, you know, we don’t know yet, but because crystal knows where to go to, you know, in order to get answers so that we can get to the Google my business page reinstated.

Ryan Steinolfson: 09:40 You got to actually submit a request to have it reinstated. Um, you know, and, and a lot of, a lot of business owners aren’t going to know this kind of stuff, so I would, it does pay to work with a company that knows their way around this world of directories because if you don’t then you could literally like just lose a month or two or three or four months. I mean sometimes if a business isn’t even looking at this stuff, they might just lose thousands of phone calls over years and years and years and not even know why it, why it happened. If you don’t know about your google my business page and how to manage it, manage it, et cetera.

Crystal Horton: 10:23 Yeah. You miss out on a lot of website clicks. You miss out on a ton of phone calls. It’s not good. It’s definitely not good. And then, you know, the thing too that we’ve discovered last night with the suspension of that Google my business page and just kind of like a random, oh, it’s just because of a quality issue and there’s no other explanation. I mean, you don’t want to stop there. You can, you want to keep digging until you ask for a second chance or start over or you don’t want to start over either, so having us on your side and asking us those questions so that we can help you better understand google my business is definitely something that you want to check out because it’s gone.

Ryan Steinolfson: 11:07 I mean and, and, and what’s and what’s the unquote quality issue, you know what I mean? So it’s so generic, you know, so if you don’t have a way to connect with Google and talk to the Google my business expert at Google in order to request for reinstatement that Google my business page as to the quality issue was, was brought up, then I’d like, you know, I mean basically the website, the google my business pages down. Like if he was showing up in search results yesterday, yesterday or the day before, he’s not showing up in them today. I mean they are literally their, their Google, my business page is wiped off of, through my doesn’t fly on. It’s wiped off the map. You’re literally wiped off the map.

Crystal Horton: 11:53 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something like that. That’s why we’re here and so back to we only have a few minutes, so I just want to get through why it’s important to optimize your google my business page and you need to realize that just like your content on your website or a blog or live video, that information is used to can be used to optimize and put on Google my business so you know, keeping that information consistent just like you have to with your content, it’s got to be consistent on Google my business as well because then you’ll show up on Google. People will visually see your location that will be able to find contact details really quickly and then see your business hours because I know, you know, a lot of the times we searched online just to see what the business hours are and then it leads into one thing and then the other. And then the next thing you know, we’re looking at their website and reading this and that. So keeping your business hours, um, current is very important. Even just signing in to say we’re closed for Easter. That matters. Even though you think the world though, sometimes they don’t and that matters, you know, you can take advantage of that,

Ryan Steinolfson: 13:15 you know, gone to or even talked about the fact that you mentioned like did it really does matter to your office hours so you know that you’re really paying attention to your customers and their needs. Same thing with like reviews and getting reviews is important. Getting reviews on Google. My business is even that much more important because of what I mentioned earlier, because this is where 60 to 70 percent of people are going to find local businesses and then just the same as it’s important to put your office hours down for the sake of your customers or potential customers so that they don’t show up at your, at your doorstep and waste wasted time going around because they don’t know if you’re open or not or because your office hours are wrong. It’s the same thing for the same reason. You want to reply to your reviews on your google my business page, which is a whole nother topic, but I’ll, uh, I’ll let you keep on going there.

Crystal Horton: 14:12 Well, we’re actually out of time. Ryan’s, can you believe how fast that time goes?

Ryan Steinolfson: 14:17 I know, it’s funny. There’s the minutes or what.

Crystal Horton: 14:20 Yeah, it’s been 15 minutes.

Ryan Steinolfson: 14:24 I do want people. I do want people to definitely engage those. We probably a ton of questions. No, this is all going into our outline. This is just another video that we’re creating in our sequence of videos that we’re w we’re, we’re following our outline and just going through this step by step so you haven’t seen her outline what we’re talking about. Um, just know that we’re just going from top to bottom and um, we’re just relaying the information that we’ve learned over the past years and that we know we’re going to be really beneficial to businesses in order to help you guys understand, you know, how to really know how to really compete in this digital age. Um, you know, with, uh, with your, what’s your business. So I’m definitely a go to [inaudible] dot forward slash accelerate marketing. That’s ACC e l e r a t e accelerate marketing. And uh, we’ll send you case studies. We’ve got a few case studies that we can send you of exactly what happened with the different cases as I was mentioning earlier with Kevin Knight and Rosenberg and how they grew to $200 for the property management company, one of them to 800 doors in the last three years, just primarily from really what we did with optimizing them them locally and now they’re getting 100 inbound phone calls monthly, um, month after month.

Crystal Horton: 15:48 Yeah, I’ll definitely include that link here in, um, in, in the comments and then Monday through Friday where live sharing some successful strategies with you on how to become the go-to business in your niche. This week is all about google. My business. Next week is about reviews and your online reputation. And then the week after that is local Seo. So my homework for you today is to type in your business name and the city and take a look and see what your google my business page looks like. Tomorrow we’ll be talking more about google my business. So create a great rest of your day everyone.

Ryan Steinolfson: 16:25 Thanks.