008: How To Avoid Shady Tactics That Can Harm Your Google Profile!

In this episode of The Website Success Show, host Jules White shares a cautionary tale about a local locksmith who received misguided advice on optimizing his Google Business Profile. Learn why using shady tactics like buying a P.O. box in a different location can backfire and lead to re-verification, suspension, or even worse.

Discover legitimate strategies for boosting your Google Business Profile visibility, such as:

• Keeping your profile updated: Regularly add fresh photos and relevant information to showcase your business.
• Engaging with your audience: Utilize the Q&A section to answer common questions and interact with potential customers.
• Focusing on genuine reviews: Encourage customers to leave honest feedback, rather than resorting to questionable practices to boost ratings.

Jules emphasizes the importance of prioritizing ethical SEO practices and avoiding shortcuts that could jeopardize your online reputation. Tune in to learn how to optimize your Google Business Profile safely and effectively, ensuring long-term success for your business.

Links:

• Book a Power Hour with Jules White
• Find Jules on LinkedIn

Additional Content:

• Listen to Episode 23: Quick Website Wins For Local SEO

Transcript

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT - MAY CONTAIN ERRORS

Introduction and Context

I was talking to my husband's friend yesterday and I thought it would be a really good thing to come on and talk to you about.

So we were chatting. He'd had some advice about his Google business profile and he'd been told that So he's a local, he's a locksmith. My husband used to be a locksmith.  And he's one of his friends who used to work with and he,  I wanted to show up in the local town, so he lives just slightly outside of, outside of the main area of the town.

And he's not showing up in that central area where there's lots of businesses, lots of residential in that area.

Bad Advice: PO Box for Google Business Profile

And he'd had some advice from somebody to  buy a P. O. box, get a P. O. box in the centre of town, and register, and move his PIN basically from where he is at home.  into or from the area that he is actually, I don't think he's got a pin in the map, he said, to move his Google business profile essentially  to this PO box.

And I was immediately like, no, don't do that. It's against Google's guidelines.

Google's Verification Process

And just, The fact of  moving your address is enough to trigger a re verification from Google. You guarantee that you will have to re verify if you move locations. And they've made it so much more difficult now to Verify your account.

So you can't just get a postcard sent through the post as you used to get before. You have to do video verification. And it's really tricky to do. And especially if you are, if you're, , if you have a physical location where customers come and visit you, it's pretty simple. There's not too much that, that makes it difficult to do.

Unless the only thing that could be tricky is if you're in a business where like, , I've got some clients who, you know, are part of a salon. So maybe they rent a room in a salon or something like that. And if you're trying to register yourself as a separate profile, that's where it can be tricky, even if you've got the pin in the map.

Challenges for Service Area Businesses

But he isn't, he's a service area business. So basically he's not allowed a pin in the map because customers don't come to his place of work to visit him. He goes out to them.  So  he, so yeah, verification, if you have a service area business can be really tricky and even harder now than it used to be. And, , So if he then  moves his business to like moves the pin or moves his business, the, the, like the registered location of his business and then tries to verify it from there, it's going to be really hard to do.

Google is going to ask for videos and they, and want to see  why you should be located in that location. So if you, if he, if he was then doing that to show his office at home, like if it was a service area business where he's not saying that I work with customers here, but this is my home. This is the. My office, this is my, you know, logged into it and show a video of him logged into his website and showing that he's logged into the back end of it.

Sometimes that's been helpful for some clients in terms of getting their, their, their accounts verified.  You can't do that if you've got a P. O. box as well. So I think it, it sort of made me realize,  Sometimes people are given advice and  it's, it's, he's doing it to try and get his, get more people to, to show up his, get his profile showing up  to more people.

And it would have the absolute opposite effect because if you're, if you trigger verification, then, uh, your profile either shows up as unverified. So it's less likely to show up in the results. If it does show up, it will say unverified. And more often than not, it will also trigger a suspension where your profile doesn't show up at all.

He's got something like 300 five star reviews as well. And once you start going down that route of Google, like almost getting the eye of Google on you, really, , They might start thinking, okay, well, why have you got all these five star reviews? And nobody has given you a review under five star. And it's great for him because they are genuine reviews and they trickle in regularly.

So, you know, they are genuine,  but that's not to say that Google doesn't then treat, start treating the whole of your business is suspicious. Once you start doing some one thing that's a little bit shady, then Google might be thinking, actually, we'll keep an eye on this one.  And it's such a pain trying to, trying to sort it out is such a pain.

And then we started a conversation where, you know, we're talking a little bit more about it. And I said, well, what are you doing?

Optimizing Your Google Business Profile

Have you done all the other things to optimize your profile that you can do? Have you got plenty of photos on there? He said, yes. Have you got, you've got, got your reviews? Have you got, have you used the Q and A section on there?

And he said, Oh no, I've not done that. So that's one thing he could do. If he wants to show up in the center of town, then he could have some Q and A's in there of asking, you know, which areas do you cover? Which areas of. This place where we live do cover so you there's easier ways to  try and bump yourself up the rankings without having to do resort to shady tactics I guess really.

So, ,  Then we started looking at the photos, and the last time he'd actually made any updates to his profile, other than responding to reviews, he gets lots of reviews still trickling in, but other than responding to reviews, the last time he'd updated a photo was three years ago, and he hadn't done any updates, you know, the section where you can actually Add updates to your profile if you've got things going on in your business, or if you just want to do a little shout out to say, yeah, I'm still here.

You know, hi, Google, I'm still here. I'm still actually operating.  Doing that first and focusing on those things. I think he still wasn't quite a hundred percent. Sure that,  I knew what I was talking about, which is fine. But I, I think he was maybe still a little bit sceptic. He'd had a sceptical rather.

He'd had this advice and had obviously gone and got the PO box and maybe paid for that. So I don't know whether he was then thinking, well, I'm going to do it anyway.

Avoiding Shady Tactics

But I said to him, even if you do decide to go down that route, make sure that you do the things that are within your control first and see if you can get your profile bumped up,  like naturally and genuinely before you resort to the shady tactics.

So hopefully he, hopefully he took it on board. Hopefully he did realize that I, Do you know what I'm talking about? And it's something that I've seen so many clients where they've come to me and said, Oh, what's happened to my Google profile? I don't know what I've done. I've tried to do this or I've changed something and the things that can can trigger Google to be then suddenly pay attention to you  is often where the things like if you change your address or if you change from a service area business to a pin in the map or vice versa.

that will trigger a re verification. If you change the, your primary category, that will generally trigger a re verification. If you change your business name even, and I don't mean change your business name as in completely change it, but I had something recently where Google, so my, I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but my, I had mine set up as Creativa Web and SEO  consultancy, I think it said.

And a few weeks ago, I got a notification to say Google has changed it back to Creativa. So I was like, Oh, okay. But if I'd have made that change myself, that may have been enough to trigger a verification.  And it's something that you want to try and avoid as much as possible because it is such a pain.

And I've, yeah, I've had so many clients who've come to me and said, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to get around this. I was on a message with one of my clients yesterday, and she was saying that she'd had to verify about 30 times before she actually managed to get her business verified.

And she's got a pin in the map as well. So it's one of those things that it's, If you can save yourself that headache of  trying to  use shady tactics to make changes to your profile, then definitely try and avoid that if you can. 

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

So that was a long ramble about, , a conversation yesterday, but hopefully it's saved, maybe saved him a little bit of hassle in his business. 

And I loved it. I loved, I love talking about stuff like that. I love, um, just.  Yeah, I do know what I'm talking about and you know, just  helping people and giving them tips really.