Google Business Profile Optimization: What Should You Focus On?
Video Transcript:
Jason: [00:00:00] Hey, what’s up everybody? This is Jason from Home Care Marketing Pros, and today we’re talking about how to optimize your Google Business profile. Now, you might be wondering, why do you need to optimize it? Can’t you just create your profile and be done with it? Well, if you in your home care business, serve a local service area and you’re trying to get more phone calls and more website, There’s really no better way than to rank in that local map pack.
And if you’re not sure what that looks like, this is it. I did a quick search for senior home care. Bradenton Florida, and here’s the results in that Local pack home instead. First in Care Visiting Angels. So today we’ll talk about how to optimize your Google business profile to increase the likelihood that you show up in those coveted spots, those first three listings on the Google business profile or the local.
Ranking pack. So [00:01:00] here’s our quick checklist and you watch this video. At the end, you can find a a link to download this so you can keep it and work your way through the list. We’re gonna talk about setting your primary category, your business name, your secondary category. Getting reviews and responding to them.
Photo optimization, easily overlooked. Oftentimes description services, hours of operation opened on date and posts, which a lot of people don’t know that they can actually post articles and updates to their Google Business profile. So let’s get started. First. Setting your primary category. Now, it’s important to note that Google does not actually offer a home care services or senior home care option for category, and I’ll show you what I mean.
If we go here and we were just starting a new Google business profile and we could type in our name, if we put in business category, you’ll notice if I start to type home care, there’s nothing available. Or if I [00:02:00] type in the word senior, The closest thing would be Senior Citizen Center, but I’m guessing you’re not a senior citizen center, but there is Home Healthcare Service now.
Is that the right one? Well, there’s two ways that you could find out. Uh, one, you could do a search like this and see what your competition is listing themselves, as you’ll see here, Home instead, Home healthcare service, first in care, home, healthcare, service, visiting Angels. You get the point. So that’s the best way to find out.
We also monitor hundreds of these Google Business profiles. So we look at who is your competition, and guess what? They all list the same thing. Home healthcare service. So when you’re doing your primary business category, Look at your competition. Google does not have a home care category, so you can select Home Healthcare service Now.
Second, your business name. Why do we even mention this? Isn’t it a no brainer? You just put in your business name? Well, there’s something to watch out for. Don’t do what Google would [00:03:00] call keyword stuffing. So I’ll give you an example. If you, the name of your business was Care at Home. You would put care at home.
You would not put care at home. Senior Home Care, or Care at Home. Home Care, or Care at home Elderly care. You get the point. You don’t want to add words to it. And you can see an example of this home instead. Do you think they might have wanted to say Home instead Senior Home Care or Visiting Angels Home Care?
But they know better. Google would count that against them if that was not their legal name. So just make sure when you put in your business name, you put in your legal business name. secondary category. Now let’s take a look at where you can put that in. Uh, we talked about primary category, but notice this, there’s another category, additional categories.
Now you can put more than one, uh, but the one that we recommend is using aged care because there’s just not that many options for home care. So home healthcare. And then aged [00:04:00] care, that could be your secondary category. Now, I’m sure that all of you are familiar with reviews. The importance of getting reviews, and the more reviews and consistent reviews, the more likely it is that you’re gonna show up in those first three spots on Google.
And the answer is simple. Google is trying to give the searcher the best results. And what better way does Google have to know that it’s the best? Then if it’s a popular business that’s well rated and well reported on that has a good reputation. So make sure that you are getting reviews. Put a plan in place of your business to get, not only get positive reviews, but get them consistently over time.
You don’t want to say, Well, I have 30 reviews and we, we reached a point. We can stop now and then years go by. No new reviews. That’s a negative. Make sure that it’s not only good reviews, but consistent reviews. . The other thing that we wanna make sure to mention about reviews is respond to all of them.
Now, some owners have a tendency to respond if they get a negative review for [00:05:00] obvious reasons, but you wanna respond to all reviews, thank positive reviewers for their feedback, and talk to negative reviews, asking them if they can take it offline and talk to you and let them know that you, you want to help and you strive for for.
Uh, customer satisfaction. Now, let’s go on to the fifth one. Photos. This is one that I think takes a little more work, but you want to do your best to put photos in because they really build trust. This is your opportunity to set yourself apart. Show some familiarity and it’s not a place to use stock photos.
That just does not do when, when we’re talking about your Google business profile. So you see some examples down below of, uh, some nice photos of logos, even some videos or placements in magazines. And then we have this client that has a beautiful office. So they took some pictures of their interior, and you’ll notice they categorized them as interior photos.
So this is an opportunity to make your brand stand. [00:06:00] Build trust in somebody that’s examining your business and thinking about giving you a call. Uh, next, your description. So we talked about your limitation, um, and we’ll get into this a bit more in the services, but your limitation as far as choosing a category and a secondary category, here’s an opportunity to describe what your business does.
Now, Google makes the recommendation that. Talk about what you offer, what sets you apart, your history, and anything else that you’d like to share Here, it is limited to 750 characters, so you want to use your words wisely, but here’s an example. Seventh services. So like I said, your primary and secondary categories, you’re locked into what Google allows.
But for services, you can uh, list anything that you think is relevant to your clients so you can start to optimize those, not only listing the services you see here, but you can actually put in short descriptions about those services. And [00:07:00] here’s a tip for you. Google can even scan your website and make recommendations of the services that you should list.
So I definitely re. Taking advantage of that feature. Now, hours of operation seems like a no-brainer. Make sure it’s accurate though. Uh, if you put that you’re open 24 hours a day, make sure you really are, or you could get dinged. For instance, if Google calls your business and your receptionist or schedule says, Yeah, we’re, we’re in the office nine to five.
Well, then you could get dinged because you’re not actually open 24 7. So just make sure that’s accurate. But you will notice, like even here on this search open 24 hours across the board, That’s pretty common. But just a tip, make sure that it is accurate and that your competitors aren’t trying to, uh, check up on you and get you listed.
Now, ninth opened on date. This is kind of a minor one, but this is your chance to shine if you’ve been in business 10 or 20. You can add your opened on date, and I’ll show you where that is on your Google business profile. If you [00:08:00] are on your info section, it’s all the way down at the bottom. Add an opening date, and this isn’t the opening of that particular office or how long you’ve been at that address.
This should be, when was your business established? So like I said, if you’ve been in business tw uh, 10 years, 20 years, you want it listed there. And finally posts. Now, if you do a branded search, like let’s say we did a first search for First in Care, Bradenton, Florida. Florida, and here on the right side is the Google business.
And down at the bottom we see posts. So they’re actually utilizing this feature, posting blog updates that link back to their site. So this just is a great opportunity for you if you were doing a, uh, job fair for caregivers, or you were doing an event at a local, um, nursing home and you were trying to, uh, publicize that and invite people.
This is a great place to do. So there’s [00:09:00] definitely a good call to action by utilizing posts. Now, I know, uh, I said we, we had 10 at the beginning, but I thought of this an 11th, one kind of a bonus idea. More and more popular on mobile search is this section here, chat. So customers traditionally could either call you, visit your website and fill out a form.
Now they have the ability to chat if you turn this on. So if you do turn it on, make sure somebody’s there and available to actually communicate two ways through. Um, messaging option. So that’s it. I hope this helps you to optimize your Google business profile and helps you on your way to getting those coveted one, two, and three spots on the local search pack.
