Steps To Cement Your Local Business On Google

Cement Your Local Business On Google To Ensure Profit

The local search visibility matters a lot to a business specially a business that doesn't operate online. Here is a simple method to ensure your solid foundation for local search visibility of your business.

The importance of local listing is growing at a very fast rate. May be your future customers are searching for your business at home on their desktops, tablets or mobile phones. According to Google, Mobile searches has overtaken desktop searches officially.

In other words, people are using search engine to find your business. So you must ensure that your business would show up on the search engine and your site should be number one.
For this you should register you business on Google My Business.
Here is the method to ensure that your business appears in search engine results consistently and completely. 

1. First you have to figure out where you stand : 

In the beginning of a local SEO campaign your first task is

• To check whether your business is listed or not?
• To make sure that it shows up in a way that best represents your company.

So go to Google and do a quick search for your business name. If your site is already in the listing that doesn't mean that your job is done. Google customize its search results on regular basis to enhance the search experience for each person. Factors that affect the personalized search are :

1. Location
2. Device you are using
3. Past searches
4. Social media connections

Search results of others may be different from yours.

When people review your business on various websites like Yelp or submit your business information to online business directories then the information entered by them may be all that's available to Google about your business if you are not doing anything to correct it. So in that case, other people are controlling the appearance of your business to the world instead of you.

If someone enters wrong information like wrong address or phone number of your business then even if all the reviews are perfect still you are losing some business because of that incorrect information.

You can change these results by using Google My Business by verifying your ownership of your business and prevent others from giving information about your business.

2. Claim Your Local Listing In Google My Business : 

If your business is already listed but not claimed by an official representative of your business then follow the direction from Google to claim and verify your business.

In this process you can verify the data they already have and make updates and corrections.If you have your business on multiple locations then you can manage all if them from single account.

3. Claiming other listings : 

Google doesn't just depends on the information verified by you on Google My Business. While searching your business on Google you may notice that there are also some listings which have links to reviews on other sites.
Many people are influenced by online reviews. You can't change the reviews of other people but on some sites like yelp you can respond to these reviews and that can leave a good impression. 
Rich snippets, local listings and check ins are also sources from which Google gets information about your business.

4. Find a way to manage local listing on a regular basis : 

Everything changes over time, your business details, data, format every thing. May be some secondary business listings which don't even exist today, become most important in future.
So it is very important to find a way to monitor and manage your Google My Business as well as other listings. You also need to know about new and relevant tools and how to use them for maximizing benefits to your business.
It is very crucial to find a solution i.e. a software tools to manage and monitor your business specially for local businesses.

5. Mobile friendly site :

You have to be certain that your site is mobile friendly. In 2015, Google gas released its mobile ranking algorithm according to which mobile friendly sites would have more visibility in mobile search engine. People who didn't take this seriously started to see negative effects on their search visibility.
Google has created a testing tool. This tools will tell you if any page of your website need to be updates to increase its mobile performance. You can use the Google search console to get full mobile usability report of your website.