Why You Should Be Adding Content to Google My Business

Google My Business (GMB), also known as Google Business, is the search engine giant’s answer to professional social media sites like LinkedIn. Anyone with a legitimate business or nonprofit organization can establish a Google profile. It goes without saying that not taking advantage of this free resource is wasting something extremely valuable.

Once you have a Google business profile, what do you do with it? You treat it like any other digital marketing resource. That means adding content on a regular basis. Populating your GMB profile with regular content gives Google yet more information it can present to its customers. That is good for them, which is ultimately good for you.

Not Your Main Website

Your GMB profile should not be used as your main website. That’s not its intention. Rather, it simply acts as a placeholder on Google with key information about your business. Google uses the information to expose your business to potential customers. Think of GMB in those terms and you will have a better idea of how to use the opportunity to post content.

Content posted to your profile should be short, sweet, and targeted. It should serve a specific purpose other than keyword promotion. Obviously, keywords are important. In their recent post on how to optimize your Google My Business Profile, Salt Lake City’s Webtek Digital Marketing lists maximizing keywords as one of the most important element for GMB content, but that it shouldn’t outweigh other relevant information.

What Google Is Looking For

Google is looking for specific types of content for GMB. They post details on their website, which you can find here. But in a nutshell, this is what they are looking for with GMB profiles:

• Text – Obviously, text-based content works very well for GMB. Text is still the core of online searches, so Google will never turn it down. Your text can contain links – no phone numbers, please.
• Photos and Videos – In addition to text, GMB is open to photo and video content. Just know that Google will not let you populate your profile with endless photos and videos that are years old. All posts are archived after six months unless you specify a date range.

Also note Google’s guidelines for what the posts should accomplish. The point of adding content to your GMB profile is to let your customers know important things about your business. Post a video to introduce a new product. Create a text announcement to tell customers of changing hours.

Google is looking for informative posts that keep customers up to date about your business. They are looking for COVID information, offers and sales, what’s new, etc. If you post content that seems irrelevant or meaningless, Google may take it down.

How It Helps

Okay, knowing the types of content you can produce and what Google is looking for is enough to get you started. But why should you post to your GMB profile? How does it help?

Never forget that Google is the world’s most popular search engine. Its competitors are not even close. When people are looking for your business, they will look on Google first. For that reason alone, you should have a Google business profile. But secondly, Google values the information in their business profiles. They constantly scan the information and add it to their algorithmic database for use in ranking your pages.

Simply put, adding content will help your search rankings down the road. The more often you post and the better the content, the greater the chances that your pages will rank higher than the competition. That’s what you want. It is what Google wants, and they are willing to reward business owners who put the time into GMB.