Google My Business (GMB) is one of the most valuable ways to improve your local search engine optimization efforts. Local businesses should claim their Google my business profile as one of the first steps to strengthen their online presence. After all, it helps give your company free exposure on Google’s search engine, which is the most popular search engine online today.
How Do I Post to Google My Business?
From your computer:
- Sign in to Google My Business. Choose the location you’d like to manage if you manage multiple locations.
- Click Posts from the menu. Choose the type of post you want to create. You’ll be able to add photos, text, offers, events, and a button to your post.
- Add the relevant information to each field.
- Click Preview to see what your post will look like. Then, if you’re happy with it, click Publish. If not, click the Back arrow to edit until it’s ready to publish.
From a mobile device:
- Open the Google My Business app. (Also available for iOS devices.)
- Tap Home
- Tap Post
- Tap on the type of post you’d like to create.
- Create your post, filling in the relevant information in each field.
- Tap Preview to see a preview of your post. If you’re happy with it, tap Publish.
- If you need to make changes, tap the Back arrow on the top left. Edit the draft until you’re happy with it and tap Publish.
Can Google My Business Help My Site’s Traffic?
Yes! An optimized Google My Business listing helps your business appear in the local map pack for relevant searches, which drives traffic to your website and helps bring more customers to you. The key is to make sure your profile is complete. Do this by:
- Ensuring information is accurate, up-to-date, and as comprehensive as possible. Include your name, address, phone number, website, and keyword-rich description. Make sure your name, address, and phone number are entered exactly as they’re on other local directory listings.
- Add business hours, service area, etc.
- Assign your listing to the most relevant GMB categories, being as specific as possible. There are over 2,000 categories to choose from.
- Assign the relevant attributes. These are things like: free wi-fi, outdoor seating, women-led, etc.
- Add photos and videos to showcase your business. If you have user-generated content, such as a photo of a dish a customer took, you can also choose to highlight that.
- Respond to all user reviews, even negative ones. Offer to take the discussion to email in the case of negative reviews. Always sympathize with the reviewer, never pointing fingers or placing blame on them.
- Use Google My Business Posts to keep your listing active and engaging.
Making the Most of Google My Business Posts
Google provides business owners with a variety of post options to promote their businesses. Let’s take a closer look at each one and what you can do with it.
- What’s New: This post format allows you to provide general information about your business. Include a photo or a video, a link, a call to action button, and additional information. For instance, restaurants could use this to promote a new menu item.
- Event: This type of post promotes an event that your business is involved with or otherwise supports. Event posts require a title, start and end dates, and times. They may also include photos and videos, a call to action button, and other information. For instance, the local library may advertise a book signing or book club meeting.
- Offer: This post format provides a promotional sale for an offer from your business. They require a title along with start and end dates and times. The review offer call to action button is automatically added to the post. Including a photo or video, coupon code, bleach, and terms and conditions within the post is possible. For instance, a restaurant may advertise a 20% discount on dinner entrees for a week.
- Product: This post emphasizes a specific product your business sells. These posts require a title and a photo or video. You have the option to include a call to action button and other information. For example, your pet store may promote a new or other product.
To simplify things for you, here’s a list of the recommended creatives for all post types:
- Photo (.jpg format) – 814 px X 610 px
- Will display as 187px X 140px in Business Profile
- Will display as 365px X 106px in Expanded View
- Video (AVI, MP4, MOV, FLV, WMV, MPG, M4V, MKV, M2TS, MTS formats)
- 100 MB Maximum File Size
Titles are limited to 58 characters, though 35 characters are ideal. Descriptions are limited to 1,500 characters, though 100 characters are ideal.
Posts also make it easy for you to include a call to action (CTA) to better control what the visitor does after they look at your post to create a stronger marketing experience. The current available CTAs are:
- Book
- Order Online
- Buy
- Learn More
- Sign Up
- Get Offer
- Call Now
Before you get too excited, the strongest way to leverage Google my business post is to plan in advance and ensure they are high quality. You want that to be grammatically correct and free of errors. They should use a combination of images and text along with the CTA to showcase your brand message to potential customers.
One of the biggest benefits of Google Posts is the ability to feature timely and actionable content that can improve engagement with your audience. Planning in advance allows you to use Google Posts to highlight any special promotions, open positions, new product arrivals and launches, same-day flash sales, seasonal offers, and more. Consider creating custom landing pages to match the post content to improve the customer experience.
Other Important Tips for Google My Business Posts
Posts show in your GMB profile when someone searches for your business’s name on Google or views your GMB profile on Google Maps. In September 2018, Google moved the posts to the bottom of the Business Profile, where they had previously been displayed at the top. Though this caused some drop in engagement, it’s still worth using because click-through rates are still higher than the average click-through rate for a Google Display ad campaign.
After you create a post, you can share it on your social media channels to boost exposure. You can share it on Facebook, Twitter, or via email.
Even though the name may lead you to think otherwise, Google My Business Posts are not actual social media posts. The most important words are the first 100 characters of the post or what shows up on the screen. Don’t use hashtags because they don’t work on the platform.
Do you need to create a new Google My Business post every day? No, but creating a new post once a week or so is a great way to keep your GMB listing fresh and active. Unless you have an event post with a start and end date, your post will go dark every 7 business days, so it’s recommended to update it weekly.
Google My Business Posts are a great way to show off your business online in a unique way at the exact time a searcher is looking at your business online. As a form of advertising, they remain highly effective.
We have been recommending to clients install Post to Google My Business Premium. It’s a great tool to use via WordPress. Every time to create and publish a new blog post, you can configure Post to Google My Business to publish your post on your GMB account.
Use the Auto-post feature to instantly publish your latest WordPress post to Google My Business based on a preset template and the posts’ featured image. Visit the Post To Google My Business website or directly to the WP Plugin Page to download.
The Post to Google My Business plugin utilizes the official Google My Business API with secure OAuth authentication to ensure your Google account is safe.
