Many digital marketing agencies suffer from shiny object syndrome when it comes to the latest and greatest search engine tactics. Many SEOs take a shotgun approach rather than a strategic approach to their clients' SEO campaigns. Implementing the latest tactics is not necessarily a bad thing as long as there is discernment involved. As an SEO professional, you need to ask yourself, "Why am I making these changes? What is the goal I'm trying to accomplish for the client? Is what I'm doing likely to accomplish my goal?"
With that out of the way, it is important not to spend too much time doing research on which tactics are the most important. Many SEO agencies spend countless hours reading numerous articles and then implementing few or none of their recommendations. This article is designed to help SEO agencies who want to help their local SEO clients improve their search visibility in the local map pack. We reviewed volumes of information on Google My Business's most recent updates to provide you with the two most important new features that you need to properly leverage for your clients. Let's start with tip number one.
Google Services
This is our favorite Google My Business (GMB) enhancement to come out in the last several years. The Google Services section of your client's Google My Business listing acts as a products and services page on their website. Google now provides you with the ability to list each service and/or product your client offers directly on their GMB listing. If you are as nerdy as I am, you are giddy right now.
SEO veterans understand that up until the advent of Google Services, we were limited to selecting from three categories that described your client's services. Choosing from Google's predetermined categories was limiting as the categories were not always a perfect fit for individual clients. That limitation no longer exists, so we encourage you to follow the steps below to maximize the impact on your client's search campaign.
Step 1: Log in to your client's GMB listing, click on the info tab, and then click on services.
Step 2: Begin inputting your services. Enter each product/service individually. Continue to enter your products/services until your Google Services listing includes every product or service on your client's website.
Google Posts
Google Posts is an absolute must-do for your local SEO clients. The great news for you is that this tip will be incredibly easy to implement if you are already blogging for your client. That is because Google Posts is essentially a blog feature that allows you to post blogs directly to your client's GMB listing.
While this may not seem all that groundbreaking at first blush, we assure you that this feature will help you generate the results you're looking for for your clients. Here's why:
- GMB accounts for 25% of a website's rankings, and Google Posts is a big way to give you the edge over other companies not blogging on Google My Business.
- Google Posts rewards bloggers who include local events and landmarks in their posts with higher search rankings.
Our advice is to simply divert half of the blogs you would normally post on your client's website to your clients GMB listing. That split will help you achieve maximum impact for your client. Posting once per week is optimal; however, even twice a month will do.
We outlined a simple three-step process you need to follow to begin posting on GMB right away.
- Log in to your client's Google My Business account
- Jump over to the left-hand navigation area, then click on "posts"
- Select "write your post"
Putting These Tips into Action
We strongly encourage you to implement the two Google My Business tips outlined above. Simply follow the step-by-step instructions to begin optimizing your client's GMB listing today. Our goal is to save you time and keep you focused on what's most important, which is getting great results for clients. Another great way to save time if you feel you are not spending adequate time optimizing your clients' campaigns is to look into hiring a white label SEO service that can help you reliably implement not only this part of your client's campaign, but the entire set of deliverables for your clients local SEO campaign if needed.