Google My Business is rebranding to Google Business Profile and what local businesses need to know about optimizing their profiles.
According to Google, the most recent buzz around the water cooler is that the Google My Business (GMB) platform is being rebranded and will soon be known as Google Business Profile (GBP) to “keep things simple” for local businesses to create and manage their profiles.
The biggest changes, other than the name, include allowing smaller businesses to claim only one location, verify, add/edit information, and even resolve specific support issues, like suspensions, from the Search or Maps area when they are logged into their business’s Gmail account. According to Google, once the rollout is complete, the Google Business Profile (GBP) website and the app will no longer be necessary for single-location businesses.
However, the GMB dashboard will still be available for larger businesses with multiple locations and agencies managing multiple businesses and will eventually be renamed to Business Profile Manager.
How Does This Affect A Business’s Local SEO Marketing?
As a local business, Google makes it more user-friendly to create or claim and verify a GBP listing with instructional blocks right in the Search or Maps area, including everything from verifying a profile to adding hours, photos, and lifting suspensions. But what happens after the profile is set up?
The term “set it and forget it” doesn’t apply to GBP profiles as business owners need to keep optimizing their listings in order to compete with other businesses in their markets. When a customer types in keywords related to a specific market, all business owners want their Knowledge Panel to be the one that shows up (or the first one in the Google 3-pack).
It’s important to keep adding information with keywords to appease the Google algorithm Gods so they’ll keep granting you visibility. It’s also important to keep business information like hours of operation, addresses, phone numbers, and website URLs up-to-date to maintain credibility with customers. That’s just the tip of the Local SEO iceberg.
Other areas of the GBP that business owners need to manage include responding to reviews and answering questions from the public in a timely manner.
So, while Google soon will save small businesses time with verification, support, and setup, it still takes a considerable amount of time and expertise to properly optimize and maintain a profile to compete with other businesses.
Having an agency like V Digital Services to manage their Local SEO marketing ensures a business owner’s GBP will align with Google best practices and maintain high visibility to customers so that they can get back to managing their businesses. Contact us today for more information or call (602) 900-9059!
Business Profile, Google Business Profile, Local SEO Marketing