Factors to Get You Onto the TOP 3 in Google Maps

Hi, it’s Mike here from M Business and Marketing Solutions and Tradie Directory Australia. Today, on Mike’s Marketing Minutes, we’ll talk about Google My Business. 

Now if you don’t know what Google My Business is, that’s your Google Maps and your position. I’m talking about how to increase your position and how to get on that first three blocks of Google My Business. Here we go. 

 

CONTENT

 

Google Maps!

 

You know it’s all about the top three when I talk about Google Maps. You know when we go to Google, there are three main sections in Google. 

 

 

The first part is your ads. The second part is your Google Maps. And the third part is your organic results. 

 

Now we’ve talked a little bit about the organic and today what we’re going to do is we’re going to talk a little more about how to get onto Google Maps. What is it all about? 

 

Well, first of all, the number one thing that you really need to do is to update your Google Maps. But you don’t know how to update your Google Maps?

 

If you don’t know how to access it. It’s really easy. You just go to business.google.com and you’re putting your details. There are other ways. Sometimes it’s better for you to go to your actual listing on Google Maps and it’ll  normally say something like, are you the business owner? Are you the owner? And you just click that. 

 

You have to make sure that you’re in the right company. But the most important thing is that you’ve logged in as you on Google. Because you don’t want to get this Google Map, the Google My Business account and then go, “Oh, hang on a minute. This isn’t my account.” That’s not good. So it normally takes about up to six, seven days or even up to two weeks to get the verification code for you to be able to get a hold of it. But once you’ve done it, there is so much that you can do within Google My Business. 

 

How to fix your Google My Business Page

 

So first of all, the main thing is to get the content. Right now, the reason why content is so important is because that’s where your services are. So it allows you to say what services these are. It’s a bit like keywords. 

 

Your keywords, like say for instance if you do air conditioning, so there might be three services. It might be air conditioning service, air conditioning repair and air conditioning sales. Then you want to be able to put in, which is most important, where you service,

 

It’s really important for you to really get these areas down the path. That’s the first area that you can get. 

 

Adding your logo

 

Now you’ve got to get your logo up. There are a few things that you need to work out with the logo. You need to make sure that the logo is square. You can use a program, you can use paint if you want. Put it in a square and then drag your logo in.  Canva is also a really good option to manipulate your logo and make sure it’s nice and square to upload in. 

 

So that’s the first thing. You can add content and all those sorts of things. 

 

Linking Citations

 

The second area is really linking citations. Now when we talk about citations, I’m talking about it’s really important that you have the same details in Google My Business that you have on your website. It should be the same contact details, the same email address, the same things. Because what Google does is to search across other areas. 

 

Citations are things like directories such as Yelp, Yellow Pages and those sorts of things. It can also be Facebook and those areas that you can think of. You can Google “Citations Australia”, which will give you a list of all the different citations that you should be on. 

 

But there’s a really good tip.  Search for yourself in Google. So I’m talking about your keywords. 

 

So you might say a builder. So you might go,  builder Toowoomba.  Let’s just say builder Ipswich, builder Brisbane or builder Sunshine Coast. And then what you do is then look at those types of directories that are on that first page. 

 

It’s a real good thing to have. Make sure that your details are in those directories. Those things that can really, really help with not only your SEO but also your Google maps. 

 

Do Regular Updates

 

Third thing: you have to update this regularly. So what’s wonderful about Google, Google My Business or Google Maps, is it allows you to add videos. If you’ve got a video that you’ve just done or even this video, I can post this across into Google My Business. It constantly changes it. 

 

You can also do SPECIALS there. Now what’s great about these sorts of posts is they do expire. So you want to keep doing posts in Google My Business and it actually will come up on the right hand side. So if you put in your details into  Google, your listing should come up directly in Google on the right hand side. 

 

Once you’ve done that, you just have to keep on posting. It’s really important that you’re constantly showing value and you’re posting across into Google My Business, which helps with your position. So the more that you do, again, it’s exactly the same with social media. It’s exactly the same with your website, too. Google gives you a tick of approval. 

 

SUMMARY of WHAT TO DO with your GOOGLE MY BUSINESS PAGE

 

So let me go back over that again. 

 

Number one was optimization. It was filling in your details, getting everything right, getting all your details right, exactly the same as you were. 

 

Number two was linking to citations. Make sure that the information on your Google My Business Page is exactly the same information you’ve got on your Facebook Page, on your website, on One Flare, or HiPages. Let’s say all those sorts of things. 

We need to make sure that it’s all the way through because when it comes to your reviews, did you know that Google will pull reviews from other places?Google can pull reviews from Facebook. It can pull reviews from other areas. So Google needs to know whether or not you’re the right person that’s actually there. So that’s the reason why it’s really, really important to get the same information as all those other places. 

 

Now if you’ve got testimonials, if you’ve got reviews in other places like Facebook, like One Flare, like HiPages, like the Yellow Pages, like all those sorts of things; it’s really, really important that they’re all picked up by Google and Google can read these based on all your contact details. 

 

Get REVIEWS

 

The fourth is to get more reviews. 

 

Reviews are like one of the best things that you can do in regards to Google Maps. Google wants to know that you are the best at what you do in the area. And so the best way to do that is to get Google Reviews. 

 

Now what you can do within Google My Business is this. There is actually a link. Well actually you can, you can do two things. 

 

You can create what’s called a short name within Google my business. So you want to make it easier to be able to post, but you can go into Google my business and you can actually do your short name. And then after you do the short name, you then can get the link for your review. 

 

So then guess what? You can put it at the bottom of your website. You can put it at the bottom of your emails. You can add it on a message that you can send out to customers. So that’s how you can really start to get those positions on Google Maps.