The Secret to Optimising Your Google Business Profile

The Help Me Grow My Business Podcast is back with season 2 with a crucial episode for Australian businesses.

In the first few months of 2022, there have been big changes to the Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) platform.

Localsearch's very own Google My Business Specialist, Bee Alogogiannis joins us to reveal the secrets to using these changes to your advantage, growing your online presence and business in 2022.

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Credits
Hosts: Sarah Russo & Katrina Stapleton
Guest speaker: Bee Alogogiannis 

Transcript

Sarah: We are back with GMB Specialist Bee Alogogiannis who is here to give us the lowdown on the new Google My Business updates in 2022.

Katrina: If you’re someone trying to put yourself in front of locals searching online, this is something you will want to hear.

Sarah: Let’s jump into it.

Sarah: We are back in 2022 with The Help Me Grow My Business Podcast with returning guest and GMB Specialist Bee Alogogiannis.

Katrina: Today, she is going to take us through the exciting new features coming to GMB this year and how your business can start reaping the benefits now.

Sarah: And welcome back, Bee! Thank you so much for joining us once more.

Bee: Thanks so much for having me. I loved doing the last one, so hopefully, this one will be as informative as the other one and people will get something to take home with them.

Katrina: Oh, I am sure it will be and we’re so glad to have you back.

Sarah: Alright, so we are going to jump straight into this. So, obviously, when we left off in 2021, the news had only just dropped that Google was rebranding the Google My Business product into Google Business Profile. Can you tell us a little bit about why Google has actually done this?

Bee: Ok, so what Google is looking for is that you actually have a business profile. So, it is absolutely important about the way you present yourself out on the web and how your clients can then interact with you and get excited about what you’ve got to offer. Why Google changed it from Google My Business was everyone was Googling my business but in this case now they want to have a business profile. With a bigger picture in mind of what they are going to be doing which is something to do with Google Guarantee, but that is also going to be moving forward as well. Google Guarantee has kind of gone over overseas already, and they’re testing it and that is something in the bigger picture that will come over to Australia over time once they get it right over there.

Katrina: You’re already optimising profiles for some of these new features. How are some of those features going to impact people’s rankings?

Bee: NAP — N. A. P. NAP is name, address, phone number. Really super important to get right. Extremely important if you want to rank well on Google, What does that mean? That means having everything right. Don’t have one lot of information talking about you, that doesn’t have your address on it and doesn’t have any other information. Your phone number is wrong, everything is not actually matching up with your Google Business Profile, and that is something we are all going to have to get used to saying. Anyway, so, what you need to do is make sure your NAP, name, address, phone number, matches that Google My Business box on that, you have all that space there about service area, are you using them? Are you actually saying, this is where I can travel from here to whoa to go, and again we talked about it last time and that’s about being local but if you offer a service, in your services, in your business information you can actually say I have a local shop at Robina, and I offer ladies clothing, but I also send all over Australia? Where you can add that, is you can add that in your products, in your services and your business information. So, you are looking at that going, Ok, Google bots run over that, they look at your GMB they go OK that information I can see there, now I am going to run over all of this information about this dress shop out on Google. Hang on a minute, this doesn’t match, so if it doesn’t match, the Google bots will not put you in a search, it’s pretty simple. Now every image should have an alt tag on it, when you are alt tagging you should talk about what the product is, where you are and the name of your business. If you do not put that in and you have got exactly the same name as someone in Europe as someone in America, then Google bots kind of get confused and go, hmm, hang on a minute here, This doesn’t, I don’t know where this matches to right now, I am not going to put you in a search.

Sarah: So, something that is probably important to note as well going back with one of the episodes we did with Mike Andrew, is while all of this information helps increase or better the chances of a better ranking. Mike also noted that all of this and having good NAP and making sure everything is consistent across all of your profiles is good for your website and SEO as well. So, it is not GMB, this is important across the board, isn’t it?

Bee: Absolutely, one hundred per cent. Absolutely correct. It is all connected together and remember Google sees it all and knows it all. If you want to be successful, you really have to take some time to look at that nana NAP.

Sarah: Yeh exactly, you can’t nap on your NAP.

[laughing]

Katrina: Bee’s favourite saying.

[laughing]

Katrina: In saying all this, are there any features you are really excited for that are coming to Google My Business, or Google Business Profile, in the coming months?

Bee: Ok, so, let’s talk about Google Business Profile and the Google Guarantee. So, they have something called a Google Guarantee tick, which is pretty exciting. But with Google, as you can imagine, there is plenty of things that Google has that they want you to live up to for one of a better word before they even consider you for a Green Tick Badge. So what they do is, they actually take you through, they have a look at your Google My Business and they look at what you have on Google straight up. So, they look at the information and they go, is this all the same. Are they giving customers and their clients peace of mind when they are going to use them. So, they will actually vet you and it has to be approved by Google, you will get a phone call from Google, they will then take you through everything and they will screen to make sure you are legitimate. Because they are giving you a tick that says, “Hey everybody, look at this company. They are pretty special they are very good.” They give people what they want.

Sarah: Something I am interested to see whether they do or not and this is probably not even on their radar right now, is whether they actually start integrating this into something like this into Google Ads as an extension, which, for those who aren’t used to the lingo, is basically if you have a Google Ad pop up and it has call me here and the phone number that’s an extension that you can add onto the ad, so whether they start integrating that like they have reviews, you can see star ratings in Google Ads now. Whether they can start being able to integrate that green tick, and people can be like look, Google’s verified me, I’m legit. Do you think that could be something they might look at?

Bee: Something they may look at, I really do think that at this moment it is a growing thing for them overseas and making sure they get it all right before they bring it to Australia, we’re not around the corner.

Sarah: Something that we drone on about and I think is in every single blog Katrina and I have ever written about Google. Google is a business, to keep operating they need to be serving the people who are searching for businesses and products and services and whatever else. They need to be serving what they are actually looking for, So if you are what people want to look for and you’re legit and if you are putting all of that information out there and it is all correct, they are going to do right by you. So there is no harm in, you know, getting up there and updating everything.

Bee: Absolutely, I totally would do that, that would be one of the things I would do as soon as I got off this podcast. I am not kidding; I would go and look at myself and maybe do it in incognito, you don’t want to keep looking at yourself all the time and have a look at it and go, does everything match. If it doesn’t, most companies allow you to click on the business on the website and there is a login somewhere, or someone you can click onto with a chat and say hey, I need to update this information that is not anywhere close to what I am having right now. While I am speaking about that, I just want to let you know too a few people are selling businesses and buying businesses at the moment, there is an opportunity for you when you are actually buying a business that is already out there is to actually say to the person can I either be given the Google My Business, or obviously if it is a uber-successful Google My Business or Google Business Profile and you are looking at, you know, some Business Profiles have seven, eight hundred reviews on them, it might be something to do with the deal, the way you work through the business end of it. But what I am saying is that all that person has to do is go into the users, and invite you over and once you’re in there, you take ownership of it, against an email address that you’ll want to use going forward on that Google My Business. So you wouldn’t just use your personal email address, you’d use the business email address that you are invited to once you are in there you can go in, make yourself a primary owner and take the other person out. And that makes your life easier, that’s as simple as it gets for changing over a Google My Business.

Katrina: Gone are the days when you buy a brick-and-mortar store.

Bee: Absolutely.

Katrina: You have to buy your online presence as well.

Sarah: I suppose on the flip side, if you are actually thinking about selling your business or if you have had someone approach you about buying your business that could be a part of your package, look at my great online presence, you get all of this with you, you might get, a little bit extra.

[laughing]

Bee: One hundred per cent. I like that idea!

[laughing]

Katrina: Ok, so Bee, you have spoken about the importance of the NAP for everybody with a Google My Business, but what do people do if that information is wrong? How can they actually update that?

Bee: So what you need to do is you need to, in all honesty, get everything the same. So what I want to say to you is this. You have two opportunities, and one is that you bring up your information on your phone of your Google My Business, so you are looking at your Google My Business on your phone then again on your laptop or desktop, any of this kind of updating, is better by Google’s rules and regulations on a desktop or laptop because you can see it clearer and also you are going to spell it right. So you go and click on the first one, which could be anything, search.com or whatever it might be and you go onto it and then you might be able to click up there and go log in and login or a login is sent to you and then you can change the information. So you must look at that Google my business and you are going to have everything the same, so you are going to enter complete data. So if your name is Mary’s with an apostrophe Ironing and Cleaning then you need to put into that, on that other website Mary’s with an apostrophe Ironing and Cleaning.

Sarah: Just a question, If you have on your ABN say Mary’s Cleaning & Co but on your website you have got just Mary’s Cleaning and drop off the Co, is it important to match to the ABN?

Bee: When you have got ten things on the first page and they are all the same as Google My Business, Google will look at that and go well it’s consistent, it should match your ABN but as I said that is a little bit of a caveat that Google is allowing.

Sarah: The rule you pretty much want to go with is, if you pick a name, try and stick with it across the board, but worse comes to worst, you decide to tweak it a little bit just make sure all your marketing, all your branding is consistent across online and in person.

Bee: One hundred per cent.

Katrina: Consistency is key.

Bee: Ok, I am glad we actually talked about this, so what happens if people have addresses on their GMB or Google My Business or Google Business Profile is they often would say that they want a bigger area. So it might be 12 Louis Street and they write Gold Coast but they are actually 12 Louis Street Robina. Your mapping will never work, because it doesn’t match. It might be made red on your Google My Business and in other words this doesn’t match. They must, must, must, use where they are. They have got all of those big location areas they can put in there and they can write it down in their business information. So, we want it to match, cause otherwise again Google isn’t going to put you in any searches or put you lower than everybody else. If there is limited of what you offer, then you may go on the search but then you are not going to be up the top. It just is not going to balance out. And adding photos, I just want to say to you about photos is let me know who you are, cause if you are coming to my house as an electrician, I want to know who’s turning up. I might know your name is Jim, but there’s no pictures of Jim, there might be fourteen pictures of your car, but who are you, I want to know who you are. Because it is about a safety thing as well. But also too, let me know you are a part of your business. So photos of your team, photos of your business car, your outside of your business is going to be, should be out on Google, if you have got an address, if you have no address, I still want to know who you are, I still want to know who is going to turn up. Is it going to be Jim who I talk to on the phone or is it going to be Mick, his associate or Steve that’s the other associate, I don’t know right now. Let’s make it personal to the person you are interacting with. Does that make sense?

Katrina: It most definitely does, I mean I think everyone would like to know who they are inviting to their home before they go in.

Sarah: Yeh exactly, I know an issue that was popping up for a few businesses, probably a couple of years ago, was when they uploaded photos with people in them, they were taking over more precedence over photos with of the location itself. And they were saying they want photos of shop front to come up first. Is there any way to get around that, or how would you kind of deal with that problem if a business owner has it?

Bee: So, on your images, you’ve got cover, a cover image so you have also got your logo image. And then anything else you put in there moves along, right. So you don’t get to say to Google, I want my cat with three eyes as the first image all the time. What happens is, how many people look at your images of where Google puts it. Alright so if you really want to have this cat with the special looking eyes and everything else or coloured eyes or whatever you got, you put it in the cover, because the cover never moves. Can I also say something too which has just happened recently, and that is that, if you have two separate business models, so there the same type of business but their in two separate places, please make sure that your images belong to only Robina in say one case, and Sunshine Coast in the other please do not double up the images. The algorithms and bots do not understand it.

Katrina: Ok, well thank you so much Bee for coming along today, we really appreciate it and we are sure all of our listeners do as well.

Bee: Thank you so much for having me, I actually am enjoying it and it’s good because it gives an opportunity for businesses to see other ways to get themselves out there on Google and making more money.

Katrina: Exactly.

Sarah: Definitely, we have already logged Bee in for a couple of more episodes, which she is thrilled about.

[laughing]

Bee: Sure.

[laughing]

Katrina: She loves us.

Sarah: So, if you do have any questions for Bee, definitely reach out to us because she would be very keen to answer them.

Bee: Thank you, ladies. You’re always beautiful to work with and I feel blessed with spending my time with you.

Sarah: Thank you, Bee. We appreciate you.

Katrina: Thank you.

Bee: Just, slip me the 500 bucks later.