Google My Business and Beyond

Looking to make an impact on your search presence today? Here are three Google features you should take advantage of.

Google My Business

A Google My Business listing is a content section that appears to the right of the search results in Google. These listings are created by Google, so your business may have one even if you don’t know it or aren’t actively managing it. Google My Business listings are essential to maintain because they are often referenced in voice searches and appear in Google Maps searches. It contains a lot of information about your business, such as your hours, phone number and address.

It’s valuable to claim your Google My Business listing so that you can ensure this crucial information is accurate. After all, it is easy to frustrate and potentially lose customers. Especially if this listing is directing them to an out-of-date address or the wrong phone number.

By claiming your listing, you are able to edit this information and ensure that other elements, like the featured image, are favorable. Your Google My Business listing also pulls in reviews. You want to ensure that you monitor these reviews and respond as necessary. If you find yourself lacking reviews or needing more positive reviews. We recommend to build a strategy around collecting more positive reviews.

Google Posts

Google Posts are short blurbs of content that appear within your Google My Business listing. They can be related to events, sales, products or services that you want to emphasize. It features about 100-300 characters of copy, an image and a call-to-action.

Here are a few things to know before your first Google Post:

• Google Posts are only shown for seven days, at which point they will expire. Event posts are the only exception to this, as they can last longer and will expire once the event date has passed.
• Unfortunately, Google Posts cannot be scheduled or cross-posted to multiple locations.
• A business can have up to ten posts running simultaneously. However, a user will only be able to see about 2.5 Google Posts without scrolling, after which they are able to see the full ten in a carousel format from the listing. To see more information and past posts, the user has to click on the listing.

Creating Google Posts is beneficial in many ways. Adding a Google Post can make your Google My Business listing appear more prominent and take up more space on the search results page. This can help take away attention and space from your competitors. Also, clicks on your Google Post count as organic clicks. This can help increase your page rankings.

Google Knowledge Panel

The Google Knowledge Panel is a section that shows up to the right of search results that was created to help searchers discover businesses. It’s similar in placement to a Google My Business listing and even pulls some of the information it displays from your listing. Some business categories also have unique information pulling in, such as amenities appearing for hotels.

Whether or not a Google Knowledge Panel displays depends on Google’s search algorithms, so you may or may not see one when searching for your business name.  If there is a Google Knowledge Panel associated with your business, you will want to claim it. Unclaimed panels will display a “Claim this knowledge panel” prompt. Once the listing has been claimed, this prompt disappears.

The benefit to claiming your listing is that it enables you to suggest edits, such as correcting false information or providing a better feature image. Claiming your Google Knowledge Panel is quite easy, as you just need to verify that you are associated with another account for the same business. To claim the panel, follow these steps.

Moving Forward with Google

With more than 4.46 billion searches per day, it’s impossible to refute the fact that Google is a valuable resource for many customers. By fully leveraging these free features, you can maximize your visibility on Google and enhance your search presence.

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