A Google My Business profile is essential for local online business. It's free and will enable you to appear in local search results for queries specific to your products or services. Without local SEO, you will not be appearing on any local map listings in which Google displays search results for the vast majority of local queries. When it comes to choosing your categories be specific. You have a much better chance to rank for "New Jersey Local SEO" or "New York SEO" than for generic terms like "Local SEO" or "SEO".
Local search results appear for people who search for products and services near their location. They are shown a few number of places across Maps and Search. For example, you will see local results if you search for "new jersey web design" from your mobile device. Google will show you the kind of matching nearby web design firm that you'd like to visit.
Local SEO starts with NAP (name, address, phone) and then creating citations (listings) on each other local listing sites like yelp, foursquare, yellowpages, hotfrog etc. Having same NAP information on your website is absolutely critical and essential. Adding accurate and complete information about your business always helps you with click through rate. Its essential to get the website updated with accurate and complete NAP and other business related information like description, hours, menu, photos etc and then copy all the information into GMB.
To really improve your local rankings you will need to build citations for your local business website, these can be on local business listing website (LBLs) like yelp, foursquare, yellowpages, hotfrog etc. The building, maintaining and data cleansing of local citations is an important part of local SEO. This enables you to not only showcase your services in search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing but also, more importantly, help your customers find you easily.
Another big ranking factor for local SEO is to encourage customers to leave positive reviews on your GMB listing. Your star rating is also displayed on the Google map to searches so a high rating can also improve your click through rate from the SERPs too. Google wants to translate your offline popularity into online. Having gotten positive reviews from your clients and customers is critical these days, so it's an essential business owners, managers or concerned executives communicate with their best clients and customers to get positive reviews from them which mention their products and services.
Reviews are always a subject of scrutiny, whether it be positive or negative. With Google My Business, it can come from anyone, from field experts, regular customers or clients, and anyone else. Reviews are one way that helps your customers and clients get their concerns straight to you, that is why it's important to respond back. For every negative reviews, proper response with your clarification is essential to convert their impact positive.
Google My Business shows customer data through their insights. By using insights, you will be able to see and analyze how people came across your website for more information about your products and services, and what they are looking for. You can also see how many customers visit your website, and how many times they have viewed your products and services related informations and from where they exit your website. This is very important data for your local SEO strategy, as you can instantly see how well you are performing, and see which new strategies and techniques you can use to further improve your business volumes.
Having an online business in today's world is a challenge, as you are always facing a lot of competitors in your niche. It is always important to find ways to stand out, and optimize your Google My business account will do just that. Using this tool GMB, you would be able to give your online business the visibility it needs, and help potential customers find you easily.