Want to learn how to keep repeat customers engaged and attract new customers through your Google My Business listing?
On October 28th, I moderated the Search Engine Journal webinar sponsored by SEMrush and presented by Ross Tavendale, Managing Director of Type A Media.
He shared some simple workflows small business owners can start today to work smarter with their Google My Business (GMB) listings.
Here is a summary of the presentation.
Running a small business is tough.
Small business owners are often responsible for many things, including human resources, finance, operations, sales, and marketing.
In today’s fast-paced environment, standing still and maintaining the status quo will cause your business to dwindle and start falling behind over time.
So, if you want to rank high on Google, you need smart workflows that save you time, grow your business, and keep your customers happy.
what to measure and what to manage
To make better business decisions, you need to understand what you’re looking at.
Have you ever asked yourself the following questions?
- Where did that new customer come from?
- Where did that new sale come from?
- Why are you so busy today?
- Why are you so quiet today?
- How did our customers find out about us?
If you answered “internet” to these questions, you have a problem.
The first way to deal with this is to keep the “direct” traffic as close to zero as possible.
Direct is the default if no other information is passed to Google Analytics.
To avoid this, you should:
Implement UTM tracking for all external links
Apply UTM tracking:
- google my business.
- Facebook.
- twitter.
- Instagram.
- email signature.
- All!
You can use Google’s Campaign URL Builder to add UTM parameters to your links.
Then you can view the segmented traffic event Section of Google Analytics.
Using Dynamic Tracking Phone Numbers Based on Referrers
It’s also a good idea to change your site’s phone number depending on where your customers come from.
You can use a service such as Call Tracking Metrics to do this.
Having a call whisper for each number is also helpful, as you can get information immediately from each call without resorting to analytics.
Connect this directly to Google Analytics to understand your conversions.
If you have time, it would also help to listen to the calls and train your staff on how best to handle such inbound calls.
Create custom landing pages
Another best practice is to create a custom landing page on your Google My Business, Facebook, or Twitter profile.
Don’t send them to your home page. Instead, submit to our dedicated service page.
This is because users who click on this page do not want to know your contact information.
Either way, the GMB listing already has a phone number and address.
Even if they want your contact information, they won’t click on it.
What they most want is for them to understand your service and be able to make a buying decision from you.
Fighting “Dark Social” by Tracking Open Graph URLs
Open Graph (OG) is meta data used when sharing to social sites.
When people share (via WhatsApp, Messenger, etc.) Google Analytics records it as a No Referrer.
To work around this, add a UTM parameter to your OG tag.
Note that this is not 100% foolproof, but it is a workaround that you can test.
Manage one-time and recurring tasks
You can also set up workflows to manage one-off, recurring local SEO tasks.
One-time tasks include:
- Set up your Google My Business listing.
- Create listings in third-party directories.
There are also periodic tasks such as:
- Manage your GMB listings.
- Create a GMB post.
- Respond to reviews and mentions on the web.
Setting up a GMB listing
GMB listings must be complete and fully optimized.
- Primary category.
- secondary category.
- attribute.
You can also use tools such as:
- Use Pleper to get a complete list of categories.
- GMB Spy Chrome Plugin lets you see what other users are using.
Another overlooked optimization tactic is the EXIF data contained in images.
Intentionally take images using your phone’s camera while GPS is on and upload them directly.
The more location-based signals, the better.
Tools such as GPiSync can be used to add GPS data to the image.
GMB list update
Find time to update the GMB list regularly.
Don’t forget to change the categories according to the seasons.
for example:
- If you’re a baker, change the category to “wedding cake” in the spring.
- For the butcher, change the category to “Christmas baskets” in November.
Use SEMrush’s Keyword Magic tool to see trends associated with your keywords.
Google My Business Post
A GMB post is like a social media update for your business in your profile.
Use them regularly to communicate with your customers and promote new products and services.
Regular activity helps with rankings and boosts conversions.
Plan your posts ahead of time and automate the process with SEMrush Social Media Posters.
mentions on the web
Set up Google Alerts to receive email notifications when your business name or keywords related to your business are mentioned on the web.
You can also use SEMrush to track brand mentions and subscribe to relevant news articles on Google News.
Also, always remember to look for links and reply to reviews.
set up your business on the web
If you need to bulk upload and control your data across various platforms, the SEMrush Listing Management tool can help.
You can also spot check discrepancies in name, address and phone number (NAP) data that are negatively impacting your rankings.
Respond to all reviews in one place
The SEMrush Listing Management tool also lets you collect all your reviews in one place, so you don’t have to monitor dozens of websites.
Reply within the interface and set up one-to-many communication so you don’t have to repeat yourself over and over again.
Analyzing large reviews
There is a lot of insight that comes from reading and understanding customer reviews.
If you’re getting a ton of reviews, you need to be able to mine that information to understand what’s going on.
This is also essential if you have a business in multiple locations or have multiple services running all the time.
Get deep insights from reviews with NLP
A scalable way to analyze reviews is to use natural language processing (NLP).
NLP is a type of AI that understands emotions and entities in text.
At Google, NLP is free to use.
If you don’t have time to do all your review using NLP, you can use Coda.io which has Google NLP built in.
Check sentiment, product categories, and entities within reviews for aggregated insights
Here’s an example using Trustpilot’s SEMrush review:
Automatically push reviews to Coda Doc using Zapier
Every time we receive a new review, SEMrush will let you know you can respond to it.
Coda collects it and analyzes it on the fly so you can get an idea of how your customers find your experience.
Set custom emails when specific words are mentioned or when specific sentiment scores occur.
[Slides] Local SEO workflows for growing your business on Google
Check out SlideShare below.
Other resources:
image credit
All screenshots taken by the author in October 2020
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