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Why Growth for Local Businesses Will Be Dominated by GMB (Google My Business)
By Sarah Giometti | Local SEO
By Sarah Giometti | Local SEO
Hi everyone, Sarah Giometti here. And in today’s video, I want to talk about why growth for local businesses will be dominated by Google My Business or GMB.
Google, obviously, has a vested interest in keeping people on their assets. The more time people spend on google.com or Google Maps, the more money that Google makes. Google is a business like the rest of us and they want to make money. I can’t fault them for that. They do offer a lot of free services that help local businesses. Google is putting a lot of time and effort investment into the Google My Business, which is Google Maps listings, and they’re expanding upon it and playing with it, and with the Google Maps 3-Pack and if they should add ads to the Maps 3-Pack or not. They’re also experimenting with Google Home Service ads in some markets. Those would be like contractors, housekeepers, things like that, they’re only in a few markets. But they’re putting a lot of effort and time and energy into Google Local listings. This is good and maybe not so great for local businesses. If you’ve been doing nothing about your local strategy, your local SEO, the more effort they put into it, the less likely you are to show up if you are not having a concerted effort and strategy in ranking for local keyword phrases up against your competition.
So the key for local businesses is to get in that Google Maps 3-Pack. Do a local search right now and you’ll see, usually for a local search, for whatever your services near me or your service in your city, you’ll get the Map 3-Pack where it’s a box with a map, three listings, and those three businesses. That’s where you want to be as a local business owner, for as many keyword phrases tied to your city, in your region as possible to bring the clients to you. So Google is putting a lot of effort into this and they’re expanding on what you can and cannot put in your Google Maps listing. They ditched Google Plus and I think they’re moving their effort here for local businesses. And that is why the growth is going to be dominated by the Google My Business listings and your profiles there.
The other thing is the reviews. Reviews are tied into this Google My Business listing, and over 90% of people searching online for a business believe online reviews as much, if not more, than a personal recommendation. And in the Google Maps 3-Pack, those reviews are prominent. The star count and the quantity of reviews is prominent as part of your listing. So if you’re in there and you have one review that’s anywhere from three to five stars, but your two competitors have four-and-a-half to five stars, they have 10 reviews, they’re going to get most of the traffic over you, especially if somebody is coldly looking for a business they don’t know anything about the three of you. Those stars are what are going to push them over the top of which of the three businesses they pick.
So those are the two reasons why growth for local businesses is going to be dominated by Google My Business strategy. So you’ve gotta make sure, and now is the time to start looking at that and creating a strategy and making sure that all of the digital marketing you’re doing is a local Google-My-Business-focused strategy.
I hope you found this video useful. If you’ve got any questions on this or anything else digital marketing, feel free to drop a blow and I’ll get back to you. And if you’d like this video and you’d love more from me, feel free to subscribe to my channel. I would absolutely love that. And if you know a business owner that would find this video useful, feel free to share with them. I definitely wouldn’t complain there. Thank you again for watching my video, and I hope to see in the next one. Bye.
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