Google My Business / Local SEO

Google My Business (GMB) is a free business directory and much more. It's a place to list your company contact details and your services. It can also be a simple blogging platform.

GMB is all about local business. If you are a local business that appeals to local people, by making the most of GMB, you can leapfrog to the top of page one of Google search results. Something many pay a fortune for.

Imagine that? If you're a local plumber, aerial installer, or even website designer, if you catered to a local market, how much more business would you get it, you were listed at the top of page one of a Google search?

The image above explains what GMB is, and where the search results appear on page one.

• At the top, you have the paid-for adverts.
• Directly below these, you have the GMB results.
• At the bottom, you have the organic results.

The GMB section on page one of any search result normally display only the top four or five businesses, this is often called the "golden four". This is where you want your business to be. Users can access more local results by clicking the little "More Places" link. But really, you want to be in that top four.

From this single image, you can see just how powerful and potentially business-changing this service is. It really can get you at the top of the homepage, for free.

Do I need to use an agency to get the most from GMB?

The quick answer is no. Anyone can set up a GMB listing.

But, Google has a knack for making even the most simple tasks seem complicated (if Google gave cooking lessons making toast would be a four-hour "how-to" video!). To get the most from G<B and get your business on page one you do need to understand how Google do things, how to put the right bit of information in the right place, how to produce good copy and great look images. And above all else: How to do all this in the way that gets the best results.

And that is where we, or an agency that offers this service, comes in. We know our way around Google. We know what they like and how they like data presented.

And then there is the upkeep: For long-term results, your GMB profile needs to be monitored and tweaked. It needs to be regularly updated and maintained so that Google doesn't think it's a dead business and drop it down the rankings.

This case studies looks two recent Google My Business clients. and how we helped them get to the top of local search results.

Case Study One: Truly Nolen Northern Ireland

Truly Nolen is a global pest control business. Their Northern Ireland branch is headquartered close the where Caffeine Injection is located in a place. We worked on two of their locations; Lisburn and Ballynahinch.

Working with Truly Nolen was a little more complex than usual. They had two locations but wanted to get good results for three, which is quite challenging for Google My Business, as it's always tied to a physical location. We were tasked with working on the results for the search terms...

• Pest Control Lisburn
• Pest Control Downpatrick
• Pest Control Ballynahinch.

The company had already set up GMB profiles for the Lisburn and Ballynahinch location, but both were incomplete with inaccurate and out of date information. So the first thing we did was update both profiles with new data. Ensuring all aspects of the profiles were utilised to get the maximum benefit.

After cleaning up the listing and maintaining them for two months, we achieved the following results.

As you can see, Truly Nolen is now in the top "golden four" GMB search results for all three search results, and so on the first page of their key search term. We even achieved this for the term "Pest Control Downpatrick", even though they don't have a location in Downpatrick. This resulted in a substantial bump in their online inquiries and ultimately an increase in new business.

Case Study Two: Adrian Mooy Accountants

As the name suggests, Adrian Mooy is a firm of accountants based in Derby. Like Truly Nolen, they already had a GMB profile, and it was even reasonably well set up and maintained, but in their key search term of "Accountant Derby", they never made it past page four of GMB local search results. So in effect, were invisible!

We took over management of the GMB profile and immediately tweaked and tuned it, and added newly updated content. We also posted new articles initially weekly and then monthly. This one took a bit longer than usual, but they were right on the first page as number 2 in the local search results after five months. Their website got a nice bump to the top of the organic search results!

Conclusion

As mentioned in a previous blog post, getting your Google My Business profile managed by a team who truly understand what they are doing and how GMB works can have huge benefits for your business.