Google My Business for Small Business

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What is Google My Business?

According to Google itself: Google My Business is a free and easy-to-use tool for businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps. By verifying and editing your business information, you can both help customers find you and tell them the story of your business.

• Manage how your business information appears across Google, including Search and Maps, using Google My Business.
• Interact with customers new and old and tell them the story of your business.

Despite Google's ability to regularly revolutionize online search and influence how we continue to operate in our everyday lives, countless references to the economic foundation of India built on the support of small businesses, have all pushed the small business into the spotlight and raised awareness of how important it is to the Indian economy.

Add my business to Google

Google won't ever be left behind if trends are up and running, so Google's online search capabilities for small companies with Google My Business are no surprise. These changes take local small business marketing to an unprecedented level.

Google Neighborhood

Google recently changed the way local listings are shown in the search results so that small companies can find it much easier via the search engine. Google is using the concept of hyper-localization to help online searchers by locating and depicting small companies in a very small range in the recent tests on local targeting.

The Google local listing algorithm for searching has never previously recognized neighborhoods, so small businesses based on a neighborhood search query could not easily be found there. But now, Google can connect your location with certain neighborhoods by testing these neighborhood-specific search capabilities or using geotargeting.

Basically, you can now use a neighborhood (e.g. we searched in google, schools) for your search query. Google will also use geospecification to find out what neighborhood you are in and to modify its results.

You should have heard that Google is only able to identify well-known neighborhoods such as the few above, but you can rest assured that this identification process is expanding. If you were ever a victim of the ruthless process of selecting a food restaurant at dining, it should be great news.

Google My Business

For the small business owner, what does hyperlocal search mean? In fact, quite a bit. Recall that the ultimate goal was to reach the perfect SEO strategy in order to find your business in your quest for companies such as yours? Google's good people have made things easier for the little business owner, without extending the limit of the search, SEO and maintenance capabilities of your online platform. Imagine that.

Google+ business pages and Google Map listings have been consolidated into one solution that is easy to use: Google My Business. This new platform makes it very easy to update and change information on Google and Google+ for your small business listing, which saves time and allows you to work more on your business, not in your business.

Google My Business now offers updates on your profile by updating your listing of maps with information on your company, the products and services offered and your neighborhood name. The Google Carousel, which is at the top of the search results, will get updated with the map listing. When you want to be found online, the interconnections between Google Platforms can be a small business ally.

Plus you get a whole host of cool features like:

• A dashboard with all your business information in one place
• The ability to add photos of your business
• A singular place to stay on top of reviews of your business, including responding to reviews
• Insights into search traffic for your business, including calls and clicks, views, and directions

All this can be updated on both your desktop and your mobile phone too.

Google listing savvy

Google My Business is simple to go and to make your small business more noticed online if you follow these tips and reasons why you should join Google My Business?

Update your Google My Business listing in order to get the right information updated in Google’s database.

In Google's Knowledge Graph the information contained in my listing is included. The information in the Knowledge Graph on the right side of the screen is previously reserved for large companies with Wikipedia pages. This includes the name of a company, Google+ activity, CEO, stock price, reviews, etc. For small businesses, the address, phone number, hours of operation, directions, and reviews will show up instead. This allows valuable contact information to appear before a searcher even clicks on your website.

Don’t forget the power of mobile

By using Google My Business, you dramatically increase your ability to be found by people near you while searching on their mobile devices. The geolocation of the device and your business’ physical location becomes more important to Google as it searches specific neighborhoods for the business a mobile user asks for.

Optimize for Google Neighborhood

If your neighborhood has a commonly used name or title (give examples)—even if it’s not as well known as those in large cities—be sure to include that name in the description on your various business’ listings. Make sure your neighborhood name is included on your website, as well, because Google will pick up on those keywords when indexing your website.

With these changes in the way Google locates and displays small businesses, it’s important your small business updates its website and listings accordingly. While small businesses are taking centre stage, many small business owners still need all the optimized power they can get. Google can put your business at the top of neighborhood search results as user-friendly as possible for Google local search algorithm.