Google Blog & Marketing Tips

• Your local Business needs 3 elements online. Nr 1  You need a well designed website to be found online with Google Search. Nr 2  You need to claim your  Google Business Profile (GBP)  that appears on  Google Maps  and in Google Search.  Nr 3  You need a social media account like Facebook or Instagram where customers can follow you. 

• The Google Business profile (GBP) is a free product, offered by Google. Because it's free, there is no customer service.😯 There is no contract. You don't own it (Google does), but you are given the possibility to manage it. It's the backbone of your marketing in your area.

• Find out where your potential customers hang out. On which platforms are they spending their time ? Hint: it's where you'll find your competitors too. Which competitors are in the top 5 ? They are at the top because the algorithms of that platform like what they currently do online. Observe and study what your higher ranking competitors do and do just 10 times better in order to beat them.

• Test, test, test. Keep in mind that what works now 📈 could not work tomorrow and vice versa. 📉. You don't know what your competitors are testing.

• To rank high in local Search (opposed to pure e-commerce businesses that is not focusing on a local audience), Google uses 3 known criteria: 1/ relevance, 2/ distance and 3/ prominence. It is known that posting relevant articles on your traditional website has also an impact on the ranking of your GBP. Many forget that your ranking also depends on something beyond your control: the amount of competitors that are present in your area and their active efforts to rank also higher.

• Algorithms are constantly being updated, day in, day out. In general, Google does not inform anybody in advance, except for some core updates that may or may not affect you. Don't focus too much on that because this is beyond your control and it will never stop. It's Google's secret sauce. 

• Make sure that you also exist outside of the Google-ecosystem. What if Google suddenly decided to stop the GBPs ? What if they decided to make it a paid product ? How does Google make money ? What's their most profitable division ? It's ads. That means that they would like you to place ads and pay for each click. Keep that in mind whatever you do ...🤔

• Four factors have an impact in (local) Search results. 1/ Your business presence online, 2/ your potential new customers' behavior, 3/ your competitors who are aiming at the same customers and finally, 4/ is Google, the system, the algorithms. Your profile can rank lower or higher, thanks to what you do, or, what your competitors do or don't do. If your competitor is getting 5 new reviews over 5 weeks, and you don't, that may change your ranking. 😏. Indeed, it's not always about what you do. ☝️. It can be you, it can be Google's update or it can be your competitor who started paying for ads or started getting results with improvements on their GBP or website. In reality, it is  a never-ending combination of all those factors. 

• Use the Performance tab of your GBP to find out how people find your profile. If they find you as you wanted, continue doing what you did. If not, think about ways how to improve your GBP.  What would make your profile more attractive ?

• Reviews and ratings are your sales people, they do the job, even when you sleep.

• What you see on the app is not the same what you see on the web on the mobile. What you see on desktop is also different from what you see on a mobile because the space available is much larger. 

• Many features that you fill out on your profile,  are most of the time  visible,  but not all the time.  It doesn't mean there is a bug (it could be), but it is this way because Google is constantly testing. All the time. 24/24. ⏲️

• The profile features available to you are determined by the type of your business. Not all features are accessible to all types of business. What is displayed on your mobile using Google Search, may not be the same as what is displayed when using desktop or Google Maps and vice versa. In short, what Google displays depends on your device, the program (Google search vs Google Maps) and the category of business. Above that you have the algorithms and Google's secret sauce that stays confidential. What is called local search has its own ranking system.

• Results are very different when performing a brand search compared to a non-brand search. Your goal is to show up for both, but you will find your competition (based on Google's algorithms) mainly when performing  a non-brand search. 

• Your business needs 3 presences on the internet : you need a traditional, normal website, then, a Google Business Profile on Maps and social media accounts where people (customers) can follow you and where you can showcase happy customers. Each of these presences can be either basic or optimised, depending on the resources you have available: specific skills and knowledge, amount of energy and time.

• If you depend on your website (instead of your physical store) to make sales 💲, you should link it to the Google Search Console &/or Google Analytics to get data of how well your website is performing online. Be prepared to spend hours on learning, analysing and testing out.

• The larger the business, the more detailed the marketing plan has to be.

• Everything you do has the goal of building lasting local business relationships with real people.

• No agency should ever promise you to rank on nr 1 . They don't own the search engines, do they ? 😏

• Depending on the industry your business is in, leads will come from your GBP, or from your website. 

• All information ( articles, videos, ...) you publish on your website, social media accounts or GBP, should have a purpose. You can compare it to the different goals/objectives you set when you would use an ad campaign. You wouldn't spend your advertising budget on just a random publication, you would only publish something that is beneficial for your business. It's the same principle, first fix what you want to attain, then decide what & where. 

• Many businesses make a (huge) mistake when choosing their business name. They often name it after themselves, excepet that potential customers don't know your name 🫨.It should imply a keyword that describes your service or product and possibly mention in which area you are located or where you intervene. When people look for something online, they most often include the type of service or product and their physical area.

• Sterling Sky explains how to interpret the Insights tab on your GBP.

• Reviews and ratings can help consumers choose a business for their needs. That’s why Google takes fake and/or incentivized reviews and ratings on businesses very seriously and  restricts actions of business profiles that violate their guidelines.

• Top management discussions are top top secret & confidential.  The implementation & application of their decisions are sometimes in some countries visible for a certain period, just before they decide to change their first decisions. Take-away : nothing is guaranteed. Whatever agencies may promise you. What you observe today may be completely different within one week. Or not. That's the game.

Five Reasons why every Local Business needs a GBP profile

1. You'll have a GBP whether you want to or not. Google collects automatically data from web sources.

2. Boost your visibility in Google Search and Maps. Do more & better than your competitors. 

3. Show off and grow your business' reputation. It's about the reviews and how you reply.

4. Engage more with customers thanks to the Posts and Q&As.

5. Learn valuable insights about your customers who visit your GBP thanks to the monthly Insights report you'll receive.