There is no way you will talk about Local SEO without referring to GMB. This platform, Google My Business, is the bedrock of other local SEO strategies. Only few businesses create a profile on this platform and claim their businesses. Even fewer businesses optimized their profile so as to rank ahead of their competitors.

I already have a post on how to optimize your GMB profile to rank well, as a result, I felt the need to create this post so as to cater for people who have no idea on how to set up a profile and claim their business.

I have no offline business, hence, I am not eligible to use this service. But I created a profile for my cousin’s business even without her asking me to because I know what she, together with her business, tend to gain in the long run.


Google has its set guidelines for representing your business on GMB. Also, Google uses some simple rules to rank local search results. They are:

Relevance: This means the user search query must be relevant or related to that of your business. As expected, a user searching for the closest barbing salon should not be getting results of a spa. Unless, of course, the spa has a barbing salon.

Distance: Another factor is the closeness of your business to the user’s location. Even if your business is so relevant to the user’s search query, your business may not come up if it is too far away from the user’s location.

Prominence: Just like normal Google thing, bigger brands are often ranked higher for top, single-worded keywords. In like manner, Google has a soft spot for businesses that are quite popular offline. How do they know this? The customers’ reviews, discussions on social channels, etc. are means through which Google can gauge the prominence of a business offline.


BENEFITS OF SETTING UP A GMB PROFILE

There are juicy benefits your business stand to gain if you set up your GMB profile, some of which are:

Free Business Listing: There are so many places where people list their businesses online for a monthly or yearly fee, but in this case you are listing your business on Google, the biggest search engine in the world. Hence, when people search for businesses like your that are close to them, your business profiles pops up containing all the information needed by the user.

Opportunity of Being Included in Google’s Local Pack: You may be wondering, what is Local Pack? Well, simply put, this is seen when you run a search on a business near you. 3 of these businesses that meets the 3 ranking rules are placed on the map for you to see. The screenshot below shows the result I got when I searched the phrase ‘Food Canteen’. Can you see the Local Pack? Good!

It is only when you create a profile on Google My Business (GMB) that your business will be eligible for this. Google My Business now incorporates Google Places, Google Listings, and Google + Business Pages. It is the main place where you can manage and update your online business information and business Profile and optimize your business for search rank.


Enough of the benefits. Let’s go fully into the purpose of this piece, which is to guide you on how to create your Google My Business profile. Are you ready?

How To Set Up Your Google My Business (GMB) Profile.

Steps and screenshots can be found on the blog. Link below.

source: https://seojagaban.com/how-to-set-up-google-my-business-gmb-profile-guide/

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