Understanding How To Harness the Power Of Google For My Business (Learn More)

 Are you a small business owner who wants to reach more customers or clients organically in your locality or international market without having to use any paid advertisement? If yes, then you're in the right place. In this article you'll learn how to set up a business profile, how to optime your google my business profile, how to run paid ads for your google my business account, and how to verify your google my business account.

With this guide or article, you should be able to navigate around google my business, set up your google my business account, and optimize it to get more visibility, sales, or leads for your business all for free.

Without wasting much time let us dive into google my business. But before that, we need to know more about google my business and how it can benefit any business be it a big brand or just a small startup business.

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What Is Google My Business?

Google For My Business is an online profile for small businesses or existing businesses to establish an online presence for their business and the services they render. It is more like a business portfolio that is triggered by the search engine when google users make a search query. For example, when a user types in a query like where is the closest barbing saloon around me. Automatically google runs through billions of information on the internet and brings out a list of barbing saloons registered on google my business which is close to the user base on Google Maps and proximity.

A lot of SEO experts and search engine experts make use of the google my business profile to leverage on location-based strategy. This allows them to reach more customers by listing the kind of service they offer, their operation hours, and reviews which has to do with what customers think about them.

Why Should You Create Google My Business Account

As an existing or new business, it is very important to create a Google my business profile in other to reach more customers. This account will allow customers to reach you, and learn more about your business and the kind of services you render. These profiles build trust and create authenticity for your business which makes it stands out from any other competitor out there.

I have seen a lot of people who claim their business has been doing fine for decades and they have been making sales even before google became popular. The truth is the fact that the world has turned into a global village and everything is becoming digital. Almost everyone goes online to search for what they want. This search can just be the price of a particular product, and when they search for that query, google can recommend you as a seller of that product if you have a business listed on google my business.

Automatically, you'll be making more sales from google when buyers visit your online or offline store to get what they want.

When you don't have a google my business account, you might face things like 

Losing Your Customers

With you having a Google business profile, you might not be able to retain your old customers who will love to come back and patronize you. having your business card, flyer or sticker is not enough in this 21st century where every business is going digital. With a business profile, your customers can always check back and look up your business on their device and get the information they need such as an address, email, or phone number.

You'll Have a Poor Reputation as a Business

When google my business and google profile was created separately, as a business you might discover that it was kind of difficult to respond to your Google reviews, which is a mandatory section of your Business Profile. And with reviews being both a Google ranking factor and the number one influence on consumer buying, being able to manage them is a must.

But now that Google has moved to the business profile, you can now manage everything all in one place and monitor all reviews posted by customers.

Competitors Will Overtake You

Without having your business profile, other competitors in the same line of business can overtake you because a lot of customers will buy from them online or make inquiries before visiting their physical office. The more leads they get from their business profile, the more sales they are going to generate.

What Is The Difference Between Google My Business Account and Google Profile

Google My Business Account and Google Business Profile are all the same. The name Google My Business was what google was using until they announce the change of name to Google Business Profile. As of 2022, according to search engine land. Google is trying to make everything simple and all in one place such as managing and creating a business profile.

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Benefits Of Google My Business Profile

Google my business has different benefits to both the business owner and the customer who wants to patronize the business. If you look at the example I mentioned using a barbing saloon as an example, you'll notice that I made mention of users being directed to your business using Google Maps and proximity. With this, Google will be able to show important information to users such as;

• Business Description
• Business Address
• Business Operation Hours
• Business Categories
• Customer Reviews

See an example below

From the image above, you'll notice that I made a search on "Barbing Saloon" around me. So what google did is using my location and filter out results of saloons that are close to me based on my current location on Google Maps.

As a business, once you create a profile, Google will automatically create a Google Maps location for your business based on the address you provided and the information you entered. As soon as the profile is approved by Google, it will automatically be visible to users who searched for your business. This will then synchronizes with traditional Google Search for ease of access and searchability. 

How To Set Up Google My Business Profile

Setting up a google my business profile is pretty easy and straightforward. To do that, you'll need to follow these simple steps which I'll highlight below.

#Step1

Create a Gmail account By visiting https://www.gmail.com. After creating your Gmail account successfully then proceed to the next step.

#Step2

Visit https://business.google.com/

#Step3

Create a business name

#Step4

Select the industry where your business belongs

#Step 4

Choose If your Business has a physical location

#Step 5

Fill in all address information

#Step 6

Select your location on Google Maps after filling in the address information.

#Step7

Confirm Yes or No if you do home deliveries

#Step 8

Verify your phone number

#Step9

Complete your registration and fill in all necessary information

How To Verify Google My Business Profile Or Account

I'm very sure that by now you know the importance of having a google my business account and why it is very important to verify your Google business profile.

Before we go ahead with the verification step, I want you to understand that you need to have two things in other to verify your account.

• You need a Google Account (Gmail)
• You Need a Google Business Profile

Google Account (Gmail)

Gmail is a Google product that allows you to have access to different google products in one place. This account is a way in which google identifies you across all of its platforms such as Gmail, Google Drive, Youtube, Youtube Music, Google sheet, Google Docs, and many more

Google Business Profile

Google business profile is a business listing platform where business owners can list their business and create a unique identity that google can use to identify their business across the internet.

To start your verification process, you must ensure you have done the following

• Ensure you have your google account ready
• Make sure you create your business profile
• Ensure you request a claim of the business profile
• Ensure you verify the ownership of your business

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To read more about the step-by-step process using image description, visit Word Stream. They wrote a well-detailed article on this with image illustrations of how to do that.

Conclusion

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