In today’s digital landscape, a Google Business Profile (GBP) is vital for attracting and engaging with local customers. To ensure that GBP is not just a placeholder but a powerful tool, you can turn to BrightLocal to help you supercharge your online presence.
The Power of Google Business Profile
First, it’s important to emphasize why GBP matters. It’s often the first point of contact for potential customers, providing essential information about a local business, including location, hours, reviews, and photos. A well-optimized GBP can significantly impact local search visibility and customer trust.
A study found it’s the top factor for ranking in the local pack on Google. Our research in 2020 also showed that 82% of local marketing experts agree that tweaking a GBP is a super effective way to improve your local search rankings.
So, how can BrightLocal help you supercharge your or your client’s GBP? Let’s dive into the strategies and tools available:
1. Auditing for Optimization
As well as being aware of what a critical tool Google Business Profile is, you’re probably also aware that Google doesn’t give away any competitor insights.
For example, let’s imagine that you’ve just started work on local SEO for a dental practice in New York. You want to know why a specific competitor ranks above them in local search and what they need to do to outrank them. You head over to Google and search, but this is all you see:
Without an intelligent tool, figuring out how to beat the competition and get into the top local results is challenging. That’s why we made our Google Business Profile Audit tool and Local Search Grid. They do all the checking and analysis you need.
Once you’ve set up a Google Business Profile Audit report, you can ensure the accuracy of your listing and understand your performance.
Ensuring Accuracy and Health of Your Listing
Once set up, the ‘Summary’ page of a Google Business Profile Audit serves as your primary dashboard for evaluating the overall health and accuracy of your GBP listing.
Here, you can identify and eliminate any duplicate GBP listings associated with your business, scrutinize the consistency of Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) information, and identify and address essential local ranking factors.
Embarking on these steps within the GBP Audit report not only ensures the accuracy of your listing but also lays the foundation for a robust and trustworthy online representation of your business.
Understand Your GBP Performance
You can thoroughly understand your GBP performance by incorporating Insights into the GBP Audit’s report.
Unlike Google Business Profile Insights, which only offers six months of data, GBP Audit extends its horizon to 18 months, providing a comprehensive and extended view of your listing’s performance.
You can:
-
Analyze the discovery points on Google through search or Google Maps to strategically optimize your online presence.
-
Extract valuable data on customer actions, unraveling users’ common behaviors on your GBP, from visiting your website to requesting directions or making calls.
-
Delve into phone call trends, pinpointing peak days and times and aiding in meticulous staff availability planning.
By utilizing the Google Business Profile Audit tool, you ensure the accuracy of your listing and gain in-depth insights into your GBP’s performance, enabling informed decisions for optimization and growth.
Competitor Insights
Local Search Grid provides essential data from Google Local Finder, offering insights into your competitors’ performance.
For example, once you’ve set up a Local Search Grid report , you can see what primary and secondary categories your competitors are using. This allows you to ensure that you select categories that align with high-performing keywords and match those used by successful competitors.
Learn more: Using Local Search Grid Reports to Get Ahead
2. Taking Action
Customer reviews and GBP posts are crucial elements that significantly contribute to the credibility and utility of your GBP. Two BrightLocal tools can help you with these.
Manage Your Reviews
Reputation Manager enables you to monitor reviews, gather feedback, and address negative comments promptly. Helping you to cultivate a positive online reputation and attract more customers.
Once you’ve created a Reputation Manager report, you’ll be able to keep tabs on all reviews from essential review sites, allowing you to observe the growth of reviews over time.
If you also link your business’s Google Business Profile and Facebook accounts to the report, BrightLocal will automatically check for new reviews daily and notify you of any arrivals. With your report connected to your GBP and Facebook, you can conveniently respond to reviews directly from this report, streamlining the process and helping you stay on top of your reputation more efficiently.
Managing your reviews is just the start. If you need help getting them in the first place, a tool like BrightLocal’s Get Reviews is key. It will help you grow your reviews and increase your star ratings.
Schedule Google Posts
GBP Post Scheduler makes managing your GBP much easier and simpler. It offers effortless scheduling, multi-location distribution, and AI content generation.
Effortless Scheduling
You can set the perfect time for each post and decide when it should expire, ensuring a steady flow of content for potential customers. You can also monitor everything from one dashboard to keep an eye on what’s live, what’s scheduled, and what’s expired.
Multi-location Distribution
When dealing with a multi-location brand, there might be times when you want to share the latest national promotions with all locations at once. Instead of doing it individually, you can publish a post to multiple locations simultaneously, saving you hours of effort. It’s a quick and easy way to ensure consistent content across your entire network of locations.
Craft Posts with AI-Powered Content Generation
Input a brief description of the message you want to convey, and within seconds, our AI writing assistant will provide you with creative content ideas to work with and enhance.
Our Help Center has more information on how our GBP AI works.
3. Active Sync
Active Sync helps you care for your GBP and other vital listings like Facebook, Apple Maps, and Bing, ensuring they’re accurate and up-to-date.
Once you’ve connected your GBP to your BrightLocal account, you can set up additional categories, opening hours, the business description, and additional data, such as Google Business Profile Attributes, from your BrightLocal account and push them out to those listings.
Once you’ve set Active Sync up, it will send you alerts when external changes are published to a listing. For example, if Google publishes a suggested edit, you’ll be notified rather than having to log in.
You can accept or reject the changes suggested within the BrightLocal platform, which allows you to shield the listings from external edits and ensure their accuracy.
Your Google Business Profile is a powerful tool for local business success, and when combined with the comprehensive suite of BrightLocal tools, it becomes an unstoppable force. By conducting regular audits, managing your reputation, and optimizing your online presence, you can stand out in local searches, attract more customers, and drive business growth.
Contents
