In this eighth episode of Found Bytes, David Mihm chats with Mary Bowling and Carrie Hill, co-founders of Ignitor Digital, about Google My Business for service-based businesses.
PS- We had a few technical troubles with this recording, so there are a few minor glitches and skips. You can rest assured there’s nothing wrong with your podcast player or audio devices!
What This Episode Covers
- Why service-based businesses have a disadvantage in Google My Business (but also how to overcome it)
- Local service ads: how they work, why they work, how they compare to Google Ads
- How location-targeted website pages help your visibility and what to put on them
- Photos: Google’s growing photo identification capabilities and why to abandon stock photos
- The importance of filling out your whole Google My Business profile
- Will Google put SEOs out of work?
- What Mary and Carrie think should Google My Business should tackle in 2020
- The best tool for Google search is Google search
Episode Recap
Note: Found Bytes is produced for the ear and designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio above 🙂
Carrie and Mary point out that the Google My Business platform was designed only with brick-and-mortar businesess in mind, which has put service area businesses at a disadvantage. However, Google has been working on making up for that, and there are things you can do as a service-based business to improve your visibility.
Google’s current solution is Local Service ads, which are similar to traditional Google Ads but you bid on services rather than keywords. These are the “Google guarantee” results that appear at the very top of Google search, and are a powerful lead gen opportunity.
Carrie, Mary, and David all encourage service businesses to create website pages dedicated to the specific locations they want to rank for in local search. Include pertinent information about that subdivision, descriptions and photos of projects done there, and testimonials from customers in that location.
Speaking of photos, Google’s photo detection capabilities are growing. Carrie and Mary explain that Google is starting to match images to queries, so it is hugely important to upload and label photos of specific services to your Google listing and main website—that is, original photos of your actual employees and not stock photos.
One last tip emphasized by Carrie and Mary is that of filling out your entire Google My Business profile, and not just your business name and zip code. The more information you can provide to Google, the better it can match your business with appropriate searches.
The episode concludes with David’s lightning round questions:
- Will Google replace SEO professionals (No! Google will only continue to get more complex)
- What is your favorite tool for Google SEO? (Plain and simple: Google search)
- What would you like to see Google My Business improve in 2020? (Improving accuracy for urgent care-related businesses and putting a stop to review spam)
Huge thank you to these two search aficionados for offering their valuable insights and tangible suggestions! You can learn more about Carrie, Mary and their local SEO expertise at Ignitordigital.com.
For more Found Bytes episodes, visit the Found Bytes homepage.
