If your agency provides GMB optimization services, this SOP will completely streamline the process of taking a business listing from mediocre to world-class.
Goal: Optimize a Google Business Profile listing.
Ideal Outcome: Your Google Business Profile listing contains all the information necessary for potential customers to find you through search engines.
Why this is important: An optimized Google Business Profile listing is a fundamental element of local SEO. It allows businesses with physical presence to acquire new customers through Google.
Where this is done In Google Business Profile.
When this is done: Optimization of your Google Business Profile will be done once only when there are changes to your business profile that needs to be reviewed.
Who does this: The business owner or the person/agency local digital marketing/SEO.
Prerequisites or requirements: You need to have a Google Business Profile account already set up for this business. If you don’t have one already, follow SOP 100 (web version) to Set up a new Google Business Profile account to do that. If a Google Business Profile account already exists, you need to have access to manage it.
Optimizing the business info
01▸ Visit the Google Business Profile site and click “Manage now”
02▸ Sign into your Google Account you use to manage this business
03▸ You will be directed to your Google page. Click on the “Edit profile”
Under “About”, make sure your business name is entered correctly
Select the primary category that best describes your business. If you’re not sure what to pick, try searching for your main competitors in Google and see what they selected as their primary category. Remember to click “Save”.
[Optional] If there are other services or products that you offer that don’t fit the primary category, you can include it as an additional category.
Important: Don’t attempt to stuff your listing with loosely related additional categories. You want to select only those that are super relevant to your business. If you select unrelated categories, it can result in a high bounce rate (from users searching for a product or service, viewing your listing, realizing you don’t offer what they were looking for, and going back to the search results), which can end up hurting your search rankings.
[Optional] You can add business descriptions such as CEO messages or an About Us summary as well as the opening date.
Make sure your contact details are up to date. You have the option to add your website link as well.
Make sure the business address is written correctly. Update it if necessary:
[Optional] If your business offers products or services outside of the business location (e.g. product deliveries, on-site services, etc), you can add a service area to specify the entire geographic location of the business services
If that’s the case you can just type out the area you want to add to your listing
04▸ Next, edit the business opening hours by selecting the relevant main business hours.
Click “Open with main hours”, scroll down and toggle the days when the business is open, and input the specific opening and closing hours
[Optional] If you have specific services that have specific hours within opening times (e.g. delivery times, happy hour, etc), you can add “More hours”
Select the special services or offer from the list
Define the day and hours for each of them
Scroll down and confirm your holiday opening hours.
[Optional] You may add more about your business such as “From the business”, “Planning”, and “Service options”
[Optional] Go back to your google page and click on “Edit services”
Services are specific to the business categories you previously selected for your business. If you select more than one category, you’ll be able to add relevant services for each of them separately.
For some categories, Google will provide you with predefined services you can pick from.
In other categories in which Google doesn’t provide predefined services, or if you want to add a service that’s not listed, you can add custom services yourself.
[Optional] Once you’ve selected your services, you can add pricing information and descriptions to each of them. Make sure to click on the arrow on your right side.
[Optional] If you have a booking link for appointments, you may add it by clicking on “booking” from your google page and inserting the link in the pop-up.
To engage with your customers, it is recommended to add any available offers, updates, and events to your Google Business Profile. Proceed by clicking on “Add updates” on your google page and add all the details you have, including photos. The pop-up is shown below.
Finally, an important element of optimizing your listing is to add photos. It’s a good idea to add as many types of photos as possible. Go back to your Google page and select “Add photo”
The recommended dimensions for all Google Business Profile images are 720px wide by 720px tall (except for cover photos which are 1024 x 576), between 10 KB and 5 MB, and in JPG or PNG formats.
Logo: this is the image that will be used when you post updates or reply to questions or reviews.
Cover: this is one of the most important photos because it will be featured prominently on your business profile page, search results, and Google Maps.
Product: include photos of the products that are for sale in your store
Interior: if relevant, you can include photos of the interior of your business (this is usually a great addition for businesses like restaurants, bars, cafes, coworking spaces, etc)
Exterior: if Google already has Street View images of the area where your business is located, this image will already be available. This helps users find or identify your business when they’re nearby.
Other: you can also add other types of assets like videos, or photos of your team, showcasing the work.
Managing reviews
Note: the first time you optimize this listing, you’ll need to try to reply to all the unanswered reviews the business currently has (if any). After this first round of replies is done, it’s recommended that you reply to new reviews as they come in (check out the section on “managing Google Business Profile settings” to set up notifications for new reviews.)
01▸ On your Google page, click “Read reviews”
Click on “Unreplied”
Reply to all of the recent reviews for this listing — it’s a good idea to answer as many as possible.
It’s imperative to reply to negative reviews. Don’t try to pick a fight with the reviewer. Instead, provide an answer that would be satisfying to another person viewing your business listing and browsing through 1- and 2-star reviews — these are the people you are writing for.
Managing the question & answers section
Note: the first time you optimize this listing, you’ll need to reply to all the unanswered questions the business has, if any. After this first round of replies is done, it’s recommended that you reply to new questions as they come in (check out the section on managing Google Business Profile settings to set up notifications for new questions.)
01▸ On your Google page, click “Q&A”.
02▸ Click on “See all questions”
For any questions that don’t have an answer from the business, click on the “Answer button” to reply.
Before posting, make sure you’re replying as the business account owner.
Turn On Google Business Profile Notifications
To make sure you can provide timely replies to new reviews and questions, it’s recommended that you have notifications enabled.
01▸ On your Google page, click on the three dots and select “notifications”
02▸ Make sure notifications are enabled for “customer reviews”, “customer messages” and “questions and answers” (and any other alerts that are relevant to this business)
