Google My Business - Optimise Your Listing and Getting Reviews (2020)

Welcome back. This next thing is probably one of the most underrated things out there in terms of marketing for a business. Now I know that I said this little mini-series wouldn't be about marketing. However, this is still quite important. It's not really a marketing thing. This is actually also around getting case studies, testimonials, and reviews. So this is like a super important part of social proof. And if anybody ever kind of questions your authority or your ability to deliver, well, you can always point them across to what I'm about to show you because it's a really nice, quick, and easy way of building up social proof for your business. And it's relevant to absolutely any business. I don't care what industry you're in, how big or small your business in, what I'm about to show you is probably one of the most, probably underrated, but most used tools out there. So I'm gonna flick across onto my other screen in a second and show you what I'm talking about. But basically what I'm alluding to is something called Google My Business or Google Places. It's the first thing that when somebody types in a local search and you see the little map pop up, and I'm gonna show you in a second, with some, like what we call the big three underneath it, underneath the map, and you'll see why it's so important as I go through this. So if I were just to type in business coach Stroud, for example, what you'll see for me is obviously on the right-hand side here, because I've got my Google My Business listing absolutely nailed. So you'll see that it's got Robin Waite, business coach, author, speaker. It's got a picture of where my old office, I've still got the office, but where my old office used to be. Opening hours, telephone numbers, ability to book, and obviously further down you'll see, or just here, 76 Google reviews and various other things. So the other thing which, obviously, because I'm probably the most highest profile business coach in Stroud, so that's probably not a really fair representation. Let's just open it up to Gloucestershire and see what happens. If my internet's going to work. That'd be a disaster, wouldn't it, if I was doing a live video and then my internet didn't work. Here we go. So this is what I really wanted to show you. So, obviously, it picked me up because I was obviously the most highest profile person in Stroud. I'm also logged in as myself, so this is a little bit biased. But what you'll see underneath here is, first of all, this map here, and then what we call the big three, and a link through to more places. Now, as you've noticed, there are some other coaches in here, but because I've got 76 reviews, I'm kind of fairly high profile up there, and then, obviously, I've got my organic website and then the organic listings down here. But you can see how much real estate Google My Business shows you on the actual search results. So if somebody's doing what we call a local search, if they're looking for a service or a product locally, for a specific geographical location, then we want to make sure that your business is found in this area here, this Google My Business listing. And, obviously, what you can do is you can dig into the maps a little bit more. You can see all of what your competition are doing, and actually, so Jackie's got six, Pullum, and so, oh, this is a bus service. That's quite funny. They got 35 reviews there, unsurprisingly. But, yeah, there we go. So my competition with the most number of reviews has got nine, and that's a life coach that's not really in my space. So you can see that, obviously, I'm doing all right so far as Google My Business is concerned. So what do we have to do in order to optimize your Google My Business listing? So, whoops, we need to get back to the normal search. So if you just go to Google, just click on the first link that pops up there, and it should, hopefully, here we go. So I'm just gonna hit Manage now. Normally, you'd have to, I'm already signed in anyway, so it will automatically go through. So you've got all of these different options here. Now, one of the cool things is that, I don't have it because I'm up to 100%, but what you will see, probably, is a little dial on this right-hand side over here, round about where my mouse is, that will show you how much of your profile has been completed. And ideally, what you want to do is to get your profile up to 100% complete. One of the first things that, if you know that there are specific keywords which you're gonna get found for more often than not, don't just be tempted just to pop your business name in there because it might not contain the right keywords. Do also put in some different keywords as well. So in terms of, now, I've obviously got business coach here because I want to be found for business coach locally. Make sure that you do put your address in there. Make sure that all of your other information is up-to-date. So if I go into Info, we'll see all of the various different bits of information. So the Info page is the bit which you want to really make sure that it's got 100% of the stuff in there. So make sure that you've got your location, specific service areas in there. So it might be that if you just serve Gloucestershire, Gloucestershire or Stroud or Gloucester or very specific locations, you can put them in service areas and leave your address out. Make sure that you do put your opening hours in there. I mean, I've just left it like nine to five, Monday to Friday, which is fairly typical, but I don't have necessarily a physical office. You've got space to put a telephone number in there. You've got a space to put what we call a shortened URL in there now, which is quite a new thing. What else have we got? Now, I could add in specific services and I should do that at some point, but then obviously one of the most important things is you want to make sure that you put in a description about what you do. Also, the first thing that you want to do when you've got your Google My Business listing page up and you've got it 100%, all of the information up to 100%, is you want to get 10 reviews as quickly as you possibly can. I don't know why 10, I made that number up, but 10 is a nice round number and it's a nice specific goal to aim for. But basically you want to make sure that you get 10 reviews as quickly as possible. And when people do leave reviews, do make sure that you go in and reply to them because obviously all of these things just help with Google's algorithm and it shows that you're active on your Google My Business listing and it'll put you up to the top. Now, a little stat for you, it used to be way back when when I was building websites for clients that a website was unique and what would happen is about 90% of the traffic would go through Google's organic search before it would end up on your website. Now, something ridiculous like 60, 70, 80% of traffic goes through Google My Business, but before it goes to any other media. So actually websites are really not that, I guess not that important or as important as they were a while ago. Not to suggest that they're not important, but actually what it tells me is that you're much better off, especially if you're a local business, getting Google My Business set up ASAP and get some reviews on there. The other cool thing which you can do is, and I'm going to show you a tool a bit later on called Zapier because I automate this, but you can now put posts up on your Google My Business listing. So again, this is a Google tool. It's free to use. I haven't got many views on there, but then probably the quality of the content's not great, but I put videos, podcasts, and all sorts of fun stuff up there just so I've got a regular amount of content. I'm telling Google I'm updating this fairly regularly. I could probably do a little bit of work in there just to kind of maybe make some of this content a bit better. That's going to take time or I'll get my VA to do it, but for now I've got some content up there which is better than nothing. The other thing which you want to do as well is quite often when Google chooses, let's see, does it have, not on this page, but when Google chooses your picture, so if we just go to here, so you've got these pictures here. So Google will pick, and if you've got your home address, it'll actually put your home address up as this Google Street View picture which isn't necessarily great because you might not, A, might not want people to know where you live or see where you live. The second thing really though is that you can upload your own photos into here. So I've just put one of me speaking just adds to my kind of credibility. So I probably could, I probably got my logo up there and various other things like that as well. Me holding books. So you can see all of these are like really highly curated images and photos and videos. So if somebody does come in and kind of have a quick look around like what I've been getting up to, they can see that there is a certain amount of authority and credibility in here. So yeah, so I guess my challenge for you is to go and make sure you're going, get your Google My Business listing set up. Verify it. They have two or three different ways of verifying it. So one is they send you out a postcard to your registered address. It takes a couple of weeks. It's a bit clunky. It doesn't always work. You can also do it by telephone nowadays or you can find a Google My Business accredited expert who can actually take care of that verification process for you. Like I said, then the next thing is to make sure your profile has 100% in terms of the information completed in it. And the third thing is to then go out and get as many reviews as you possibly can, at least 10 in a short timeframe as possible just to show Google that you're a credible business owner. One of the easiest ways to get reviews, so if you go to Google Review URL Generator, and then I think I used Whitespark last time, so we'll just check that. So basically, if you just send somebody to your Google My Business page, they've got to hunt around for the button to click and leave a review, which isn't terribly helpful. So actually what you want is so that when somebody clicks on the link to leave a review, it automatically goes to the Google My Business page and pops up with the review link. So I'll just type in Robin Waite in here into Whitespark. And now you see it's automatically given me a link. So I'm just going to copy that and then share it into here. And you'll see what should happen. Here you go. And it will pop up, there we go, with the actual review link. We could get people to upload a photo there as well. And that's just a really great way, a really simple way, because it means that it just takes the effort out. If you're trying to get reviews, it takes the effort out of it for people to actually go and leave a review. So you literally click on a link, goes to your Google My Business listing, pops up with the review link. And all they've got to do then is type in a review into here. So that was whitespark.ca. And maybe I'll try and cut and paste the link somewhere for this into the notes. But whitespark.ca forward slash Google hyphen review hyphen link hyphen generator. Or you can just go to, in the Google search, Google URL, Google review URL generator, and it will pop up with this. What I would also recommend you do, because I don't know if you spotted, but that link is quite long. So you may actually choose to go to Bitly, which is what we call a URL shortener. And then, so here we go. Create, paste a long URL, and create. And then it'll automatically create this really short URL for you, which is quite handy. And in my case, I could do Google review link. And save that. Hit share. So what you could then do is, you could actually find a way of automatically, maybe using something like text magic. And if you, in the previous video, I talked about setting up a Q and T calendar, or something like that. So you could actually send out via text message this link to people saying, hey, hope you enjoyed your visit, or enjoyed the meeting. Please click here to leave a review. And then you type in that review link, and it's not a nice short URL, which would take them straight through to that page, to that pop-up to leave a review. So there you go. So I would be all over Google, my business, and make sure that you are getting at least 10 reviews for your business, using the tips and tools which I've just shown you. And you will be well away. I hope you enjoyed that video. I'm gonna be producing more videos in this little series of the 10 things that every business needs. So do check out the links in the notes to see the other videos. Obviously, the previous video I did was around automatic diary booking, so that you don't have to faff around with your diary. These are gonna be at least 10 productivity hacks that are gonna save you time, and hopefully make your customer journey a little bit easier, and make your business more productive. So I would recommend that you do do all 10 things that I'm gonna show you, because they're just basic fundamental things I believe every business needs in this day and age. It's a complicated world of internet marketing, and these aren't even really marketing tips. They're just things that are gonna make your life that little bit easier. With this Google My Business thing, so I helped a client out. I spent half an hour during one of his coaching sessions helping him to optimise his Google My Business listing. He did life insurance, and within a week of us updating his Google My Business listing, and getting it up to 100%, and getting him 10 reviews, he got a new prospect who had searched for Life Insurance Bristol. And that prospect went through the process, and he created a two and a half thousand pound commission within the space of I think it was eight days. Which is pretty cool, basically because it cost him nothing, bar just a bit of our time just optimising his Google My Business listing. So super important, do go and do it. And if you've got any questions, you know where to find me. Email me robin at robinwaite.com, or jump on to fearless.biz, or go into the Coaching Consultant Handbook Facebook group and ask me there. Ta-ta for now.