5 Reasons why you need Google My Business?
5 Reasons why you need Google My Business?
Did you know, the average local business gets 1,260 monthly views? That’s 943 average views on search results and 317 average views on Google Maps as per an insightful study by Bright Local. If you’ve ever wondered what the benefits of Google My Business accounts are, then look no further. Check out these 5 reasons why you should maximise this essential free online tool for your business…
1) Keeps Your Audience Informed
From displaying your opening hours, social media links, and location to your business phone number and the services you offer, your Google My Business account is your key to keeping your audience in the know. Google is a lot of people’s go-to when looking for answers about a certain company or when searching for a particular service. If your business is helpful online, they’ll appreciate it!
Edit this information by logging into your business’ Google account, clicking on the grid of nine grey dots in the top corner, and selecting ‘My Business’ from the dropdown icons. Next, select the ‘Info’ tab in the side menu and click the pencil icon to edit each section.
Don’t have a Google My Business account? It’s quick and easy to create one. Alternatively, you can claim and manage an existing Google My Business listing.
2) Gets You Found
Having a verified and optimised Google My Business account increases the likelihood of your profile appearing in the desirable local 3-pack (see example below). This propels your business name and information to the top of search results. It can indirectly help your website to rank highly too.
How?
It drives traffic to your website, as your Google My Business listing links to your website. (According to the 2019 study by BrightLocal that analysed the Google My Business listings of 45,000 anonymous local businesses, 5% of all Google My Business listing views lead to a website click, call, or request for directions).
It supplies social proof in Google reviews (more on those later!)
These both help Google as the search engine bases which results it displays on:
Relevance – how well the listing matches the searcher’s intent.
Distance – the search giant shows searchers the Google My Business listings of verified businesses that are located nearby the searcher.
Prominence – how well known your business is.
So, your business must be “in it to win it” to stand a chance at ranking in the local 3-pack. You also need to fill out your Google My Business profile, including your address, so Google knows what you offer and what geographic area you serve in order to match your business to searchers’ queries.
3) Secures You Valuable Google Search Real-Estate
Following on from the above benefit, if you have a completed and up-to-date Google My Business profile it can help you influence what information is displayed in Google’s coveted Knowledge Panel. As Google says:
“Knowledge panels are information boxes that appear on Google when you search for entities (people, places, organisations, things) that are in the Knowledge Graph. They are meant to help you get a quick snapshot of information on a topic based on Google’s understanding of available content on the web.”
Google’s Knowledge Graph is the search engine’s database of billions of faces about people, places, and things.
Since Google’s Knowledge Panel appears at the top, to the side of search engine results, and is highlighted in its own box, drawing the eye to it, they are valuable areas in Google’s search results! Knowledge Panels are automatically created based on information from various sources on the internet. Google takes into account changes to a Knowledge Panel in two main ways:
Directly from entities shown in the Knowledge Panel – making sure your Google My Business listing has all the correct details helps with this!
General user feedback
4) Helps You Engage with Customers
Your Google My Business account gives you the opportunity to respond to Google Reviews left by your customers. Good or bad, we always recommend you respond in some way to reviews. Doing so publicly demonstrates that your business is actively involved with engaging with customers and prioritises their needs.
Got a bad review?
Don’t worry it happens! We advise thanking the person for taking the time to leave a review. State that your business takes all feedback onboard. Then invite the reviewer to contact the relevant member of staff (perhaps the one who managed their project) so your business can work to resolve their issue. This shows you’ve acknowledged the review but encourages it to be taken offline.
Go to the ‘Reviews’ tab in the side menu when on Google My Business to respond to reviews. You will also get an email to the Gmail account linked to your Google My Business profile each time someone leaves you a review.
5) Ensures Your Audience Keeps Up to Date with Your Business
Did you know Google now gives you the opportunity to publish posts? Similar to social media posts, these updates could be announcements about a special offer or event you’re running or a new product you’re offering. You could also utilise posts to showcase your latest case study, staff news, or sale.
They appear towards the bottom of your business’ Knowledge Panel.
Posts enable you to directly communicate with local customers, keeping them engaged with photos and videos. This improves your customers’ online experience with your brand through the supply of timely information.
Add posts via Google My Business, by visiting the ‘home’ tab in the side menu when logged into your Google My Business account. Then click the ‘Create post’ button at the bottom of the ‘Your latest post’ section. Follow the steps in the window that appears. Scroll through the tab options at the top to find the type of post you wish to publish.
Note: Posts only remain visible in the Knowledge Panel in search results up until six months following their publication. This is unless a date range is specified.
What benefits have we missed about Google My Business? How has it helped your business?
5 Questions to ask yourself when preparing for a website redesign or revamp
5 Questions to ask yourself when preparing for a website redesign or revamp
In today’s digital world, getting your website re-designed and/or re-developed is just as exciting as re-decorating your office or shop premises. Sprucing up your website can boost your team’s morale, create a better impression for your prospective customers when they visit your online ‘shop window’ and be a great chance to improve your website’s images, content, SEO and User Experience of your website.
Treating your business to a new website design is also a brilliant opportunity to modernise the design and make sure it’s mobile-friendly, interactive and up to industry standards in terms of security. In fact, we recommend that you give your website a refresh every 6 months to keep up with the latest trends and maintain your site properly.
But what does a professional website developer need to know before they create your new website design?
There is information a web designer would really benefit from knowing about your existing website and hosting situation, which would really speed up the website creation process. Don’t worry, we don’t expect you to know the technical aspects, which is why we’ve put together this handy list of questions to think about…
Things to Ask Yourself When Preparing for a New Website redesign
1. Where Is Your Domain Name?
a. I own it and have login access to the domain name management of my domain
b. My original website developer bought my domain on my behalf and has access to it
c. I don’t know where my domain name is and cannot access or login to it
2. Where Is Your Current Website Hosted?
a. I have my own hosting account and have a login to access the administration of that
b. My current website provider is hosting my current website and I have no access
c. It doesn’t matter because I want to move my hosting when I get a new website
3. Do You Have FTP (File Transfer Protocol) Access To Your Current Website?
a. Yes, I have an FTP address and login details
b. No, I don’t have FTP access
4. Is Your Current Website A CMS Website (Content Managed Service) Such As WordPress Or Joomla?
a. Yes, it is, and I have an Administrative login for the website
b. Yes, it is but I don’t have any access
c. No, it is just a standard HTML website that I cannot amend myself
5. Is Your Website Linked To A Google Analytics Account That You Have Access To?
a. Yes, I have a Google Analytics account which tells me the visitor rates of my website
b. Yes, it has Google Analytics, but I rely on a third party to send the visitor reports to me
A Handy Glossary to Help You Prepare For a New Website
Domain Name
Your domain name is the unique part of your website address or URL that identifies the web address as belonging to a particular domain. Domains have basically become important real estate in today’s online world.
It’s important to know if you, or someone you know, has access to the ‘Control Panel’ of your domain name in case you ever need to change the address of your website hosting server or email mailbox provider on your domain name.
Even if you don’t intend to move the hosting server for your website, it’s still good practice to know where your domain name is and how to access it.The easiest way to find out where your domain name is registered is to search for the domain name on whois.co.za.
Website Hosting Information
Website hosting allows businesses like yours to ‘publish’ a website on the internet. A web host or web hosting provider is the business that supplies the technology and service required to facilitate the hosting of the website and thus enable it to be viewed on the internet. Websites are hosted or stored on a device called a server. When a visitor wants to visit your website, they type your website address/domain name into their website browser and your domain name will connect to the hosting server using what is called DNS (Domain Name Services) that converts your domain name to an IP address that is the digital address of a website hosting server that’s hosting your website ( a bit like a digital postcode).
Most website hosting companies ask that you own your domain name (see above) in order to host with them. If you own your own domain name, your website hosting company can provide email account features that can help you create professional and uniform looking domain email addresses and accounts such as yourname@yourwebsite.com. If you don’t have a domain name, website hosting providers can help you buy one.
It pays to know who hosts your website as your website hosting provider will have access to information like your FTP details (see below) that will help the website developer creating your new website design to upload new website files to the server that hosts your website.
FTP Details
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. Your FTP details are your file hostname, username, and password needed for FTP software such as FileZilla, which is free or SmartFTP to access your website files on the server that hosts your website.
Using your FTP details, like above, you’ll then be able to connect to the server and upload your local files on your computer to the server that your website is hosted on (and vice versa) to make changes to your website. For instance, once your new website developer has created all files that make up your new website, they can then upload these files from their computer to the server your website is hosted on, enabling your site to be viewed and accessed via the internet.
Your website developer only needs access to your current website’s FTP details if you are choosing to host your new website with the same website hosting company you are currently with. If you don’t know what your website’s FTP details are, you should be able to contact your website hosting provider (see above) and voila! You should have access to your website FTP details to pass on to your new website developer.
DNS Records
Each website has a unique IP address, which comes in the form of a series of numbers separated by full stops that identify each computer using the Internet Protocol to communicate over a network. The DNS records, or Domain Name System, matches a website’s server’s unique IP address to the domain name so your website visitors don’t have to remember the series of easily forgettable numbers that make up the IP address. The DNS records point an incoming domain name request towards the IP address of the server the website with that domain name is hosted on.
Hosting Control Panel
If you decide to seize the opportunity to take advantage of the user-friendly nature of WordPress and convert your existing website to a WordPress website whilst you are getting a new website design, your web developer would need to create a database as part of the website building process. In this case, they would need access to your hosting control panel.
Your hosting control panel is a tool that lets the user easily manage different elements of their website hosting, such as complex server migrations, with just a few clicks from a user-friendly admin interface.
Again, if you don’t have access to your hosting control panel, your current website hosting provider will do, so you or your website developer will just need to get in touch with them.
Google Analytics Tracking Code
We’re sure you’d agree, there’s no point investing in a new website if you’re not going to track its success. Success will mean different things to different people and businesses, but tools like Google Analytics offers a wealth of information about your website, such as how many visitors your site receives in a given time period, where they come from and how long they spend on your website.
Each website usually has a Google Tracking Code which comes in the form of ‘UA – [7 digits] – 1’. Although a new Google Analytics tracking code can be set up, it’s really helpful if you can pass on your existing website’s Google Analytics unique tracking code to your website developer as this means you won’t lose any valuable website data. For example, you may think getting 400 website visitors to your new website each month is brilliant, but your Google Analytics tracking code might reveal that your old website used to attract 1000 visitors a month, meaning the new 400 figure isn’t so great after all!
Still a bit confused? Don’t worry, any good professional website designer and developer will always be on-hand to answer any questions you have and explain any terms to you as your new website design project progresses.
Need a new website design built for your business? We bet we can help! Get in touch with us today!