What to expect from our Google My Business optimization service

If you are reading this, you have either signed up for our Google My Business optimization service, or you are seriously considering it.

With this post, I hope to give you some insights into what goes into this process, so that you better understand what to expect from us.

Firstly, it is super important to mention a few things:

• Google My Business is like going to the gym. There is hard work to be done, and results are not seen overnight. If you appoint us to optimize your GMB listing, we are really going to the gym on your behalf. Just because we are going, doesn’t mean the phone is going to ring overnight.
• Just like going to the gym, there aren’t any shortcuts. The key is to be consistent, and that is why our clients choose to work with us. We do the consistent work on their behalf, while they do the important work in their business.
• Google My Business is not a silver bullet, but it absolutely is a slow and steady marketing strategy that can make a massive difference for your business in the long run.
• During the first three months, we focus on your 5 x Quick Win keywords.
• After the first three months, we can focus on specific products/services that you want to promote. NOTE: For each product/service you want to promote, we will have to do a check if Google shows a map pack.

Month 1 – Onboarding

When we get started with your listing, there are a number of tasks we need to perform.

These include:

• Gathering information & content
  • You will complete a GMB listing information spreadsheet that we will use as the master record for your business information.
  • We will also send you requests for content (images, FAQ’s, products, services)
• Listing audit
  • We go through your listing, and audit the profile information to see where potential gaps are
  • Once we have completed the listing audit, we will make the necessary changes
  • These changes can include the following:
    • Optimizing your business description
    • Choosing categories based on your competitor’s categories
    • Adding images to all the relevant categories
    • Adding products/services
    • Adding/updating business information like contact details, address, office hours
• Keyword Research
  • This is one of the most critical steps of any SEO or Google My Business campaign
  • If you target the wrong keywords, you will not see the necessary results
  • During this process, we review your current keywords from Google My Business, Google Search Console (if you have this setup on your website), as well as from keyword research tools
  • Once this process has been completed, we have identified your 5 Quick Win Keywords. These are keywords where you are already getting impressions. By focusing on these keywords, we hope to get you some quick results.
• Initial geo-grid scans
  • After deciding on your 5 Quick Win Keywords, we perform the initial scans. This will highlight your current performance (almost like talking a BEFORE picture when you start with a new personal trainer)
• Competitor Research
  • SEO or Google My Business optimization really is like a race. With Google My Business we want to run faster and farther than our competitors, but to do so, we need to know fit they are, and we need to know how much training they are doing.
  • Once we have a good idea of who our competitors are, we can keep a close eye on them, and we can make sure we are doing the same amount of training than they are, so that we beat them over the long term.
• Citation Audit
  • We perform a citation audit where we scan through the internet to find any mentions of your NAP (name, address & phone number details)
• Citation Clean-up
  • For those citations that have incorrect information, we reach out to those sites to rectify this information
  • NOTE: not all websites allow us to update this information, so we don’t always get to 100% accuracy
• Citation Building
  • After your existing citations have been cleaned, we proceed to build more citations for your business.
  • What is a citation? Think of it as a listing in a business directory website (just keep in mind not all directories are created equal)
• Monthly activities
  • As part of the monthly ongoing activities, we do the following:
    • Content creation (images & text)
    • Create 2 x weekly posts (keyword-optimized & geo-tagged)
    • Add 1 x image per week (keyword-optimized & geo-tagged)
    • Add a question & answer to your profile

Month 2 & 3 – Foundation

During this phase our main goal is to improve your rankings and visibility for your 5 main keywords. You should start seeing improvements in your geo-grid scans (slowly turning green).

We do this by doing the following:

• Monthly activities
  • As part of the monthly ongoing activities, we do the following:
    • Content creation (images & text)
    • Create 2 x weekly posts (keyword-optimized & geo-tagged)
    • Add 1 x image per week (keyword-optimized & geo-tagged)
    • Add a question & answer to your profile
  • Competitor Research
  • Keyword Research

Month 4 onwards – Expansion

Once we have laid the foundation, you should start seeing an uptick in your Customer Actions graphs (website visits, phone calls, and direction requests). From month 4 onwards, it becomes a strategy with three parts:

• Part 1: Monitor the foundation
  • We keep a close eye on your foundation setup
  • We monitor your scans and rankings for your main keywords
• Part 2: Quarterly strategy checks
  • Every 3 months we look at your keywords, scans and rankings, and we determine the keyword focus for the next 3 months
• Part 3: Monthly activities
  • As part of the monthly ongoing activities, we do the following:
    • Content creation (images & text)
    • Create 2 x weekly posts (keyword-optimized & geo-tagged)
    • Add 1 x image per week (keyword-optimized & geo-tagged)
    • Add a question & answer to your profile
    • Perform geo-grid scans for main keywords
    • Perform geo-grid scans for extra keywords

How do I measure what is happening and if this is working for my business?

During the first month, it takes patience. We have alot of foundation work to get through, and you will hear from us.

During the 1st month:

• you will provide us with information (as we request it)
• we will send you the initial scans for your 5 Quick Win keywords
• we will send you a report at the end of the month that shows you graphs and scans to indicate the performance up until this point
• we will start creating and posting content to your Google My Business profile to increase your visibility
• results will be measured in terms of:
  • the work performed on our side

During the 2nd and 3rd month:

• we will send you the initial scans for your 5 Quick Win keywords
• we will send you a report at the end of the month that shows you graphs and scans to indicate the performance up until this point
• we will start creating and posting content to your Google My Business profile to increase your visibility
• results will be measured in terms of:
  • the improvement in your geo-grid scans (they should go from red/orange and start turning green in certain spots)

From month 4 onwards:

• we will send you scans and graphs for your Quick Win keywords as well as any other keywords we start targeting
• results will be measured in terms of:
  • geo-grid scans that are turning green
  • website visits
  • phone calls
  • driving directions (if applicable to your business)