If you’re a business owner, whether large or small, you’re likely aware of Google My Business (GMB) and the role it can play for your business. If not, here’s what you need to know about not only this great service from Google, but it’s recent update.
- Background on GMB
- Recent changes to service areas in GMB
- What you need to do to update your service area in GMB
- What else could you do with GMB?
Background on Google My Business
For those who aren’t in the know, Google My Business allows business owners and their representatives to manage the Google portion of their online presence including hours, holidays and contact information (phone, address and website). While there are a host of other options and settings available, suffice it to say, GRIT strongly recommends any business be listed in this service, especially since it has replaced the old system for submitting business information to Google Maps. GMB is now a one-stop-shop for business contact information.
GMB can also be connected to other Google platforms like Google Analytics and YouTube, allowing deeper insights into how people find your business and engage with the information. In fact, Google My Business will email statistics on this information on a monthly basis.
Recent Changes with Service Areas in Google My Business
For businesses that provide services to customers from their location, Google My Business used to leverage a radius targeting option where users could set a mile-distance where their ideal customers might reside within. Set it and forget it, right? Wrong.
Google recently shifted to a region and locality-focused service area targeting system that will better enhance local search. One of the primary reasons behind the change was to help Google provide better, more relevant search results to people searching for goods and services. For example, a search may previously have served results for a business much farther away than a closer, similar business because of that business’ service area settings and better search engine optimization (SEO).
Given Google’s love for local SEO and their constant effort to improve search results, the decision was made to shift to region-based service areas. You can now choose from:
- State
- County
- Individual Metro such as city or town, if available
- Township or borough
This means Google will not only be able to provide far more relevant results, but it also means a little bit of work for business owners.
What You Need to Do in Google My Business
This is actually pretty simple. When accessing the Google My Business profile, look for a notification of the change (if you had a defined service area already). If not, simply navigate to “Info” in the left-hand menu, and when the content loads in the main area, simply select and edit the service area. All you have to do is type the areas where you serve customers from your business and then save your work. Google will handle the rest.
What Else Could You Do with Google My Business?
GMB offers a lot of options for businesses to provide information to existing and potential clients and customers but not all of them are straight forward. If you would like some help with Google My Business to realize new traffic and client sources, reach out to GRIT Marketing Group today. Not only can we help you optimize your online presence to do better in local search, but we can help you optimize your website experience as well. Contact us today!