LEVERAGE YOUR GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE FOR LOCAL SUCCESS

Start Winning and Get Your GBP Setup Today

By claiming your spot on Google Maps, you connect directly with customers searching for your services, capturing local SEO opportunities. Add compelling photos, detailed services, and glowing reviews to build trust and drive clicks in Google Maps. Engage users with posts and directions to strengthen your business visibility, turning searches into loyal customers. This free tool puts your brand front and center in local searches, fueling growth. From coffee shops to plumbers, this strategy drives revenue by showcasing your business on Google Maps. Start your Google Business Profile now and ignite your local success!

EPISODE NOTES & RESOURCES:

• Free SEO Audit Tool: Evaluate your website’s SEO performance with our free tool
• Google Business Profile https://www.google.com/business/

Episode Transcript – How To Create A Google Business Profile Page

Jesse Dolan (00:19)
Hey everyone, welcome back to Luminate Local. I’m your host, Jesse Dolan, and today we’re going to tackle something that is incredibly important for any small business or any growing brand out there: how to create a Google Business Profile page. We’re going to walk through this step by step, even if you’re totally new to digital marketing, you’re going to be able to follow this. I’m not going to screen share every step along the way. We’re going to talk through it and walk through it. But I promise you this will make sense and it’s going to be a big impact on your business. If you do not already have one, definitely pay attention here to this episode.

So if you’re a small business owner or a marketing manager wearing too many hats and you’ve been managing your marketing and all kinds of other things, maybe meaning to get on Google Maps for a while, but just haven’t figured it out. This episode is for you. By the time we’re done, you’ll not only understand how to create your Google Business Profile or your GBP as I’ll call it probably through the rest of the episode here. You’ll also know exactly what to do with it. Once it’s verified, how to start showing up in the searches and getting in front of the customers who are already looking for the products and services that you sell.

Right? And that’s what we’re talking about here is we want to increase our visibility. We want to get found by the ideal prospects who are looking for what it is that we’re selling. So let’s talk about who this is for. Really short answer is that’s for every business. If you’re trying to be found locally in search, and if you have products and services to offer, quite frankly, you need to be in Google Maps. You need to have a GBP, but maybe you’re just launching your business. Maybe you’re not sure if it’s too early. It’s never too early.

If you exist and you’re in business, I would 100% say let’s get you set up with a GBP, but maybe this has been a side hustle for a while. You’ve had a website or maybe just some online presence with social media. And now you’re going all in. Maybe you’re part of a small marketing team with no SEO experience. Hasn’t been something on your radar for business. Either way, whatever your reason for not having a GBP Google Business Profile set up yet. We’re going to get this taken care of for you.

You’re obviously, if you’re listening to this or watching this, you’re ambitious, you’re committed, you want to grow, you want to do this. Maybe just having some gaps in your technical knowledge. Let’s take care of that. So your current problem, I’d say to frame it up is pretty simple. Your business is not showing up in local search, right? In the Google Maps results. That’s a massive opportunity that you’re missing. If you’re not in there right now, that can be a little frustrating, maybe internally, maybe even a little embarrassing.

If you’ve been expected to have this set up, or as a person or maybe as an entity, but nobody in your team has to know how to do this or to set it up, things like that. It just kind of stays in the back burner, right? But it’s time to bring it forward onto the front burner and gain some visibility. If your business is starting up or maybe getting serious or maybe you’ve been around for a while, you just haven’t tackled this. You deserve to be visible.

If you want to get in the game, if you want to be found locally, you have to be visible. And you put the work in to build this business, right? So we want to get you out there. We want visibility, which means growth, which means revenue, which means success. And that’s what I think we’re all hoping for right in business.

So why? Okay. If you’re watching or listening to this, you’ve sought this information out. You know, you need to set up a Google Business Profile, but let’s just talk real quick about what it is and why you need it. So a lot of people don’t know, but there’s technically two different brains or two different search engines within Google. If we do a search right now, you’re going to see the very first thing on the screen is going to be some ads right at the top, some kind of paid ads, paid Google ads, but then directly underneath that, you’re going to get what we’ll call the map pack or the local pack or the three pack.

And I think we’re all familiar with this. If we’ve done any kind of a local search, it’s going to be the map listing and then usually three, maybe four or five businesses underneath it. And they’re all going to be represented with a little pin on that map. So the businesses that show up and the geographic representation of the map should be related to whatever it is somebody is searching in Google, right? And that’s pulled from the Google Maps search brain search algorithm, you know, that part of Google, so to speak.

And really all of those results that we’re seeing in that map pack in that first organic area underneath the ads within Google, those are all Google Business Profile listings. That’s how you get into those local map results. That’s how you get into that three pack. That local pack is by having a Google Business Profile. Now, just for full context, the results underneath that are the kind of more traditional web links, right? Just links to websites, not part of that map. That’s a different part of Google.

That’s there, if you will, the traditional regular Google search brain. And so if we do a local search, meaning, you know, something, you know, blank near me or you know, blank and then Minneapolis or whatever city you’re searching for. Whenever we do a local search that triggers that map pack, Google is going to take the Google Maps results and the Google web results, put them together on that search engine results page that we’re looking at and display that to us.

So again, that’s just a real quick context on what’s at play here, what we’re seeing when we do a Google search and how we can show up in the map pack in that local search with a GBP. It’s extremely important. People search locally on their mobile devices. And I think we’ve all been there. We know what this looks like. It’s so powerful. You get to see the reviews that a business has. You get to see their business hours, their phone number, their location, right?

It’s a very powerful spot to show up. It’s not just about being ranked in there. It really is a jump off point for people to patronize your business and get that lead that you’re looking for. So that’s the context of kind of what Google Business Profile is, how it exists and how it gets served up in search results. Now let’s walk through how we can get this set up for your business.

So personally, I’ve been doing this for 25 years now, not GBPs, because they haven’t been around that long, but digital marketing, SEO, getting found in search engines helped hundreds and hundreds of clients and businesses get set up with GBPs, optimize those GBPs, even recover some GBPs if they’ve gotten suspended or taken down by Google, if some things go sideways. So it can be frustrating to get it set up. There’s usually a lot of questions, but I’ve pretty much seen all of it and I’m here to walk you through it step by step.

So here’s the plan to get your Google Business Profile up and running. Really not a whole lot of crazy steps here, but some of it’s going to take some time. So the first thing is this is completely free. I don’t know if I mentioned that earlier and I should take a second here. This is a completely free listing that’s put out by Google for you to show up in Google Maps and in Google search, right?

So again, this is one of the most powerful free tools for local visibility. You definitely need to be taking advantage of this. Even if there’s a couple of hoops to jump through initially to get set up. Once you do get set up again, you’re communicating directly with Google here. They’re putting out this profile. They’re putting out all the fields, kind of the forms to fill out, if you will, to have you tell them more about your business so they can put you into those search results.

This is what we’re looking for. That way, when people search for what you do, the products you sell, the services you provide in your area, in your neighborhood, in your backyard, this is how you show up. So if you’re not in there, you’re invisible. Let’s get you set up. Go on out to google.com/business or just do a Google search for Google Business Profile. And you’re going to get to the spot that you need to within Google.

So first things first, you have to have a Google account. If you already have a website, maybe you’re set up with Google Search Console or maybe Google Analytics, or maybe you have a Gmail. Any of those would require you to have a Google account and you can just log in with the same thing, or you can create a new account. We’re not going to walk through that, but you do have to have a Google account. You also have to have a physical address.

So we’re going to have to verify this business and Google, this is free again, right? But Google still is going to protect to make sure that no malicious or fake spam businesses, right? They want to make sure you’re a real business before you are added into this directory and then can show up in search results. So you have to have a physical address that they can tie your business to. For a lot of businesses, this is no problem, right? You have a physical location that you’re operating out of, but maybe you’re just starting out a business.

The question we get asked all the time is, can I use my home address? Yes, 100% you can. There are three types of businesses you can set up within Google, or I should say three different designations on how you can say you want your business to be shown. One of them is called a storefront. And when you’re setting up your Google Business Profile, they’ll kind of walk you through this. You’ll enter in your business name, then the category, then your address, phone number, some of that contact information.

Through that process, they’re going to ask you, do you want to be a storefront? And what a storefront is, it’s kind of like it sounds, it’s a business where clients and patrons will come into your store to engage and transact with you. Right? So it’d be a flower shop, coffee shop, things like that, where your customers come to you to do business and then that is going to be showing your address, your physical address.

That’s gonna be showing your address to people once your listing is up online. So you show up in that map pack, boom, here’s your business. Here’s the little map icon pin for where your business is located and then they can see your address, drive to it, click for directions, things like that. So that’s called a storefront business. The other option is called a service area business. And that is where you go to the client or go to the customer to do the business, right?

Think of it like a plumber, maybe leaky pipes at your house or at your office. And the plumber comes to you to do the business. So in that example, you would still need the physical address, wherever your headquarters is, could be your house, could be the shop that you’re operating out of. You’d still need that physical address to get set up on. But then when you choose your business as a service area, you can hide your address, right?

So if you’re starting this business up from home, and if you do most of your service at client locations or maybe virtual, if you just do consultations over Zoom, things like that. And if you want to protect your address, you don’t want to show it. Then you’d set your business up as a service area business. And also when you do that, you’re going to be presented with the option to choose your service area. You can pick the towns or the counties around you that you serve, basically kind of show your service area on that map.

That’s going to show that to human beings. That’s also going to show to Google and kind of give them that information of where are you relevant? Where will you go? And then you have the opportunity to show up in search results there. Third option for setting up your business is going to be a hybrid where it’s both. It will show your address online. People can come to your store and that’s just public information, but you’re also saying to Google that I will go into the field to my client’s location to do business.

Again, sometimes plumbers, as the same example, will fit this mold because people can come to them to maybe buy some parts and various things like that. And then also, of course, they’ll go on location to provide the service. So that’s kind of the three options that you do have for setting up your business in GBP and what the distinction between the three of them are. Couple of the quick things that people ask often is if you have a business with multiple locations, this is a location by location setup.

So you’re not just setting up a GBP for the business as a brand or as an entity, but you’re setting it up for each location. And so you’re going to have to go through this process for each location to get verified in that same vein. If you are the owner of the business and are operating out of your house, but you also have a second location. You cannot use your home address as a location. So if it’s your only location, you can. If you have multiple locations, you cannot use a home for that.

Right? So just a little bit of a quirk there. And if anybody has questions on this kind of stuff, you know, please reach out to us either directly through our website, Luminate Local, or you can submit a question that we can answer on the show and help everybody out. If you have that question about this really or anything else, we’re happy to answer that. So if you do need a little deeper insight, maybe on those options, showing your address, what’s viable, what’s not, we can help you out. Just reach out to us.

And the last bit on address and verification is what types of offices work. So people will ask a lot, can I use a PO box or maybe like a UPS, you know, mailbox, things like this virtual office, coworking space, shared space, things like that. Those are usually not gonna work. It’s not impossible. There are some people that can get verified using those, but we don’t recommend it and you’re just asking for trouble.

If you can even get it verified, you’re probably not building on a very solid foundation because these Google Business Profile listings can get suspended. There are quality guidelines that you need to adhere to. And if Google finds out that you’re using a PO box as your business address, they will probably suspend it. The reason for that is because of the authenticity to verify that business.

So if you think about yourself being a user of Google and doing a search for a product or service near me, you would probably prefer a business that’s a legitimate business. That’s an established business with some kind of physical location to be tied into, right? Anybody can rent a PO box or a UPS box or spend a few bucks to do a coworking space. A more legitimate business that can afford the investment into an actual space or a retail storefront and things like that.

You know, if I’m choosing between one or the other to provide me some service, I’m probably going to pick the more established business. That’s the same logic Google is using here when they restrict what you can use because of those. I hope that makes sense. Again, if you have questions on that, reach out. This is all free. This is all put out by Google to show up in Google. So we do have to play by their guidelines to win the game. That’s just the way it is.

So I’m gonna take a quick pause here in the episode. I wanna read a review that we received on Google from Anthony Ford. Anthony took one of our webinars where we talked about local SEO and he left us a great five-star review saying, thank you, Jesse. I learned a lot from this webinar, exclamation mark. And Anthony, we really appreciate that. And for everybody else reading this, because we like to share a review on every episode to communicate what other people are thinking about us and then also to ask you to leave us a review.

It helps us out on the show from the algorithms, from ranking and exposure, and just also for other human beings to read it and know that we are doing a good job and this might be the show for you, right? So if you are tuning into these episodes and if you are enjoying the content that we provide and the things that we’re teaching and getting some value, then we would ask you for a trade.

If you could go on out to luminatelocal.com, click on the link for reviews. There, you’re going to see a button for Google, for Apple, for Facebook, wherever you’d like to leave us a review. We would love to get one from you. Like I said, it helps us out on multiple levels and we really appreciate it. And then of course we’re going to read it and give you a shout out. So if you’re so inclined, we’d really like to get a review from you. Check us out, luminatelocal.com and click on the button for reviews.

Okay. So back to our topic at hand. So now you’re verified, right? You’re going through the process of getting verified and what happens next is once you submit your kind of core business information, name, address, phone number, category, things like that, Google will now verify you. Typically what’s going to happen is you’re going to get a postcard sent in the mail to that address that you entered in, but sometimes a phone call maybe will be initiated to the phone number that you put in.

Or if there’s a lot of trust, if Google just thinks all the information you put in there is trustworthy and they have maybe some other record of your business. Sometimes you can just get instantly verified if everything cooperates. But, and I should say sometimes they’ll send you an email also that you’d put in for the account setup, but more than likely, what we usually see right now is a postcard.

So look for that postcard, look for that email, look for that phone call, whatever it is, it’s going to give you a PIN, a personal identification number. And Google sends you that. So then you take that PIN, you log back into your Google Business Profile account. You verify that you’ve received that communication and that closes the loop to Google. Now they say, okay, all this information was set up. All this information was entered.

We sent something to verify that this exists, you know, kind of like a two-factor authentication type of a process. And now you’re verified. This is where the fun starts. Now you can build out your profile. One of the first things you’re going to want to do is list your products or your services. So just like on your website, you probably have a page for your services and you’re talking about those services. Maybe you have individual pages for kind of niched down services.

Same thing here. You’re going to want to list your services and or your products that you’re selling. Use SEO keywords, right? Kind of craft these the right way. You got to be talking about the things you want to be found for. You’re going to have the opportunity to share photos of your business, of your team, of your products, your services, inside, outside, all that. That’s great. That shows up in search, kind of representing your brand.

And then these images themselves, people will click through them. They like to look at them a lot. So it’s a good opportunity to kind of engage with everybody and showcase your business. There’s also the big one everybody’s familiar with, which is getting Google reviews. A big part of the ranking within the map pack is getting reviews and a big part of the conversion of us as human beings, choosing which one we’re going to click on and potentially patronize is the reviews, right?

So setting up your GBP allows you to get reviews. It’s then on you to go get them from your clients. And that’s going to help your exposure, your visibility, your ranking as well. In addition to those reviews are little mini testimonials. There’s great repurposing for those in the rest of your marketing. Maybe you share a great five-star review on social media. Maybe you have a product or service page on your website and even maybe like a PDF where a review aligns exactly with the product or service you’re selling.

And you want to include that as a quick testimonial. Lot of great things that you’re going to get from those reviews. In addition to some other things on your GBP as well, there’s a spot for your business description. You input your hours, some other attributes, things like that. So a lot of really good features to fill out. Once your business is verified in your GBP and I would close this section by saying, take advantage of all of it, fill it out completely, fill it out with SEO in mind and your kind of SEO writing, things like that.

Because like I said earlier, this is a product, I should say more of a portal or a listing put out by Google for free in order for you to communicate to Google who you are, what you do, and then show up in the ranks, right? When people search for these things. So fill it out completely. Don’t take the easy road because what you put in here is extremely relevant for what you’re going to be showing up and your visibility in Google.

So now you’ve learned what a GBP is. We walked through the basic process on how to get it set up and get it verified. And then after it’s verified, you’re going to fill that profile out completely and give yourself the best shot to start showing up. Now what you’re going to want to do is keep getting reviews. If people ever are asking for directions to your business, share them the link to that Google Business Profile and then they can use Google navigation for directions.

Basically want to encourage any user-generated behavior that you can to interact with that profile. If you think about this, you as the marketer or the owner have set up this GBP and you’ve optimized the listing. You’ve put your best foot forward. You’ve represented yourself as good as you can to Google. And they know that, right? We’re all doing the same thing. So Google is going to take all your information, but maybe with a grain of salt and compare that to user-generated content, right?

If you’ve got a hundred people that are raving about your business, leaving great reviews, if you’ve got a hundred people that are clicking the directions and navigating from wherever they’re at to your business, those signals for popularity, for trust, for credibility, those signals that the users will generate to Google on and kind of around your profile are extremely important and you just can’t manufacture that, right?

So, continually use your Google profile, promote your profile, get reviews on your profile, have it be frontal. Don’t just let it sit there after you enter in your information and die on the vine. You want to be active. You want to keep getting those signals and watch your rankings increase.

All right. So what is next? Well, I would interrupt this episode again for a little self-promotion. I would say go on out to luminatelocal.com and take our free SEO audit. If you haven’t used our free SEO audit tool yet, that’d be a great time. Look for the yellow button. It says free SEO audit. Actually, I don’t know if it says free. It might just say SEO audit. Either way it is free.

And it takes a couple seconds, just plug in your webpage and the keyword that you’re trying to either optimize that page for, or you want to see how it scores. Within seconds, it’s going to return a PDF to you, showing you those scores and the various areas that we have outlined. It’s going to give you a punch list of things to do, you know, what needs help, what’s looking good, things like that. It’s just a great tool for getting you started on implementing SEO on your website. Match that with what you’re doing in your Google Business Profile here, and you’re gonna give yourself a really good chance for some increased visibility.

So again, go out to luminatelocal.com, look for the yellow button for the free SEO audit, and you’ll be off to the races on that. So I hope this makes sense for everybody. You don’t have to have a Google Business Profile to show up in Google, but you do need to have a Google Business Profile to show up in Google Maps and in that map pack. If you don’t take action on this, you’re just gonna stay where you’re at, right? You’re going to be invisible in those local searches.

I should say too, this is from a few years ago, but there’s a study put out by BrightLocal, like an industry resource here. And I want to say it was just north of 30% of all clicks for a local search go into that map pack, right? At that minimum across all industries. So depending on like if you’re a coffee shop or phone repair, if you’re something that people are looking for locally and then just driving to, the number is going to be even higher, right?

So if you’re not in that map pack, you are invisible to a lot of business that’s happening. Your competitors are going to keep getting that business. Customers are going to keep searching. They’re not going to find you. You got to get in there. You want them to find you. You want that business or at least a chance at it, right? So don’t let that happen. This is free. It’s going to take a little bit of energy on your part, but not that much. Set up your Google Business Profile, get it optimized the way we’re talking and then keep using it.

And you’re going to give yourself a fighting chance. If you do this and you use it, keep getting those reviews. You’re going to not only give yourself a chance, you’re going to see that ranking go up. Probably going to see your website rankings go up as well. If you’re having some really good success, you’re going to start getting referrals, more reviews, right? You’re going to pump that flywheel. At minimum, you’re going to be growing your business. How much, you know, that’s all going to depend. I could only speculate, but

if you’re not set up on a Google Business Profile right now, you’ll definitely see a big difference. It might take a few weeks or a few months, but you’re going to see a big difference in what it’s going to do for you and the opportunities that are coming your way. There you go. I think that’s a good stopping point for this episode. Everyone, thanks for listening. If you found this episode helpful again, share it, leave us a review. We’d love to hear about it.

If you’ve got questions on this topic, if you want me to dive any further, reach out to us through the questions and submit that. If you do, by the way, submit a question that we use in the show here, we’ll send you a little swag bag with some Luminate Local gear and swag. So FYI, a little bonus there. And yeah, let us know how we can help until then. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll catch you in the next episode. Take care everyone.

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