When someone searches for your business on Google, there are three places on the results page where they can find you. We all know about the main search results, but not everyone's aware of the other two listings: one to the right of the main results and the other on Google Maps (see below). Today I’ll be explaining the real value of these two additional listings.
Local business listings appear on the right of the search results
Local business listings on Google Maps.
Introducing Google My Business
Google My Business (GMB) is a powerful tool used to manage your business listings on Google. Every business, with or without a website, should add their listing to GMB ensure maximum visibility when a user makes a search. And it's FREE to use!
Once created (or 'claimed', in Googlespeak), you can complete your listing with opening hours, address, photos, contact details, review comments, links and more. We strongly recommend you add your business to GMB and keep your information regularly updated. Google statistics show that, on average, a business with a well-maintained GMB listing gets five times more views than those without.
Any questions? Our marketing experts at Webreality are here to help, so please get in touch.
Tracking the value of GMB
Once you have created your GMB listing, you will want to know how many people have clicked on it. A recent update to GMB provides us with really useful, detailed insights for listings:
Search page VS Google Maps
Previously, it was a struggle to identify whether traffic was arriving from the search page or Google Map listing. Now we can see a useful graph that shows us exactly how people found a business:
Source: smallbusiness.googleblog.com
How people find your business
The new insights also show us the difference between people making a brand search (e.g. ‘Webreality’) against non-branded searches (e.g. ‘web agency jersey’). This information can be really useful - for example, if a business receives a high number of non-brand searches, we may be able to make SEO improvements to to increase the search success rate.
Other insights
We can track views, phone calls, posts, new visitors, user demographics (age, gender and country) and more. This data is indispensable to any business: it can all be used to better understand your customers, and to create effective marketing campaigns. So head over to your GMB insights and learn more about your Googlers!
What’s next?
If you have any questions, would like to set up a GMB listing or check if your account is fully optimised, contact Mark Evans for more information.