Once you have completed the creation of your listing in Google My Business, regardless of whether you decided to fill in your main information at the time or not, you will find the following interface:
This section is your main page of My Business, in it you will find the essential information of your business, suggestions to optimize your file, statistics and more. You can access all these features in detail with the menu on the left, but it is a quick way to see the general status of the account.
Until your account is verified by email, many of the features will display a warning, and others will not be usable. This is why it is CRITICAL that you provide your real address in the previous step!
Publications
This function is, for Xavier Sánchez, the most remarkable and powerful of the platform. Its key point is to redirect users to an external website, in your business listing or from Google Maps, accompanied by images and text. But posts are not of a single type, and more features are added depending on which one you choose.
These are the types of publications that we can make this 2023:
Update on Covid-19
Inform customers of the changes that are implemented in your company due to the coronavirus. It allows you to enter:
A status update, in plain text.
An optional call to action button, with several options, how to order online, call now, more information, among others
Offer
Create for a limited time, a promotion where you can enter:
10 photos or videos.
Offer title.
Start and end date (you can include the time)
Offer details in text.
Discount coupon code.
Link to redeem offer.
Terms and Conditions.
Creating offers will attract a lot of attention from Internet users, since they stand out from other publications. Don’t create offers that don’t exist just to get attention! You will annoy users and that is never a good thing.
News
This category is displayed with priority and is for announcing changes or important measures to our clients, which do not match the other types of publication. You could use it for a change of address, a new website, or the incorporation of new products and services. Offers to show:
Up to 10 photos or videos.
A text about the publication.
A call-to-action button, such as ”register” or ”book”, among others.
Event
If your business usually organizes events, this option is the right one to show it to Google users. It integrates perfectly with virtual and in-person events (try to avoid the latter 😷). In them, you can indicate:
Up to 10 photos or videos.
Event title.
Start and end date and time.
Event details.
Call-to-action button, such as ”register” or ”book”.
Use publications correctly, and regularly. In this way, your customers will always be well informed, and Google will reward you by giving you more visibility.
Information
This section allows you to complete your file in its entirety, with detailed information about your business. In detail:
public name
Categories
Address
Service area
Schedule
special hours
Phone
Social networks
Web page
Products
Accessibility
service options
Payments
Planning.
Health and security
Services
Description
Opening date
Photos
We recommend that you take the time to complete all the fields, in the most specific way and always with true data. Google and its users will appreciate it.
In the information section you can also perform actions such as:
See the business as a user in Search or Maps
Share your business profile
Advertise your profile
Close the company temporarily, or permanently.
Accept or reject calls from the Google assistant (the assistant could make reservations at your company)
Statistics
Analyzing the performance of your profile in My Business is very easy from this section, which through graphs shows you specific account metrics, with very high-quality data.
Through the statistics, you can discover how people search for your business, what actions they take on your file, the busiest hours, among many more.
Opinions
Along with the publications, the reviews section seems to us to be the most interesting within the Google business platform. Your company can be qualified by Google users, positively or negatively in a star system, leave a comment and even upload photos.
These opinions are essential to attract customers, since it has been proven that Internet users take other people’s reviews into account when consuming products or services. In this section you can:
View all responses, answered and unanswered. You can sort them by score or date.
Reply, edit responses or delete reviews.
Report inappropriate reviews.
Always respond to reviews, and have a contingency plan in case you receive a negative review, how to offer to contact privately to solve the problem. Never mention in public that you will give him a discount or the like!
Messages
In this section you will be able to view the messages that users send you directly to your Google My Business profile, through the platform’s own messaging system. By default, this option is disabled, and you must take into account that your attention to messages must be fast (less than 24 hours), otherwise Google will automatically disable the function.
Photos
Here you can upload all the photos and videos you want from your company, in defined categories so that your audiovisual content is organized. These categories are:
From the owner ( all your photos )
From the client (the photos uploaded by them and in the comments)
360º (Street View)
Video
Inside the company
outside of the company
Products
Equipment
Identity (logo and cover)
Do not be shy! Show the world everything you can about your business.
Products
You have already seen in the post that this functionality is ideal when you have an e-commerce and want to increase the reach of your products, it allows you to show:
1 photo.
Product name.
Category (you create them)
Price in local currency (allow price ranges)
Product description of up to 1000 characters.
Call-to-action button, such as ”request online” ”more information”, among others.
Website
This option is interesting if you are just starting and you need a ‘web” in a fast, free and otherwise simple way. This tool allows you to create a small page with information and photos of your business, to display it in your business listing.
Mano Digital recommends that you use this tool as your website when you are just starting out, but as your project grows, invest in a site with your own domain where you can include more information about your company.
Pick a topic
Enter a descriptive text and the information you want to display
Add photos
Publish your website
The great disadvantage of this website is that you cannot apply SEO techniques, you will not have your own domain, and it will be practically the same as that of your competition. If you want to be serious, you must differentiate yourself!
users
Add collaborators who help you manage your Google My Business profile, with different privileges depending on the hierarchy assigned to them. The account creator will be the primary owner, who has full control of the account and can assign the following roles:
Owners: Can perform all of the primary owner’s actions except removing the primary owner from the business. To do this, the primary owner must transfer ownership to the new owner.
Administrators: Can perform almost any function that an owner can, except manage users and remove the business profile.
Venue administrators: they can perform almost any administrator task, except editing sensitive data such as the website, phone, address, among others.
By completing all these sections completely, you will have a quality company profile and a good chance of appearing in the first results both in searches and in Maps. Stay consistent with your content, post regularly on the platform, and your profile will bring you many new customers!
