Day 16

PUTTING YOUR BUSINESS ON GOOGLE

Skip To The Key Takeaways & Action Items

When someone Googles your business by name, you want to make sure that your company looks legitimate in the search results. (Thanks to the SBDC Counseling For This Tip) You can do this by creating a Business Profile on Google.

The process to create your business profile is pretty easy. You simply go to this link and then create your Google My Business account. It will add your business to the right of the google search when people specifically search for your business.

After entering in all the important information, Google needs to verify that you are actually the business owner. In order to prove your ownership, Google will send you a postcard with a code on it to the business address. Until you get that code entered, your business will not show up.

I have gone through this process a few times with different businesses. The post card takes a while to get there. Once it never showed up. The next 2 times it took about a week or more to get it. However, I finally did get it in the mail, I entered the code, and my business went live.

One of the things that is important on your Google My Business is the reviews. You want to make sure your satisfied clients leave you a review. I haven’t exactly figured out how to balance out Facebook, Google and Yelp reviews, but I know I will need a few good ones on Google to make my business stand out as reliable.

The other thing I LOVE is that due to the locations I selected, my map shows my whole territory and not just a few of the cities. I actually will go out farther than the map shows, but I love how it shows a great base radius for my services.

Here is my key takeaway & action item:

Key Takeaways: Google My Business Is Essential

I kind of knew this after hearing it for the first time, but seeing my business show up on that right side of Google makes me feel great about my company and the future it has. Hopefully this will let the customers know that I’m running a real business here that has the skill and resources to help them. After looking around the interface, I see there are some other things that I can use/manage including posts and ads.

Action Item:

Explore all the features of Google My Business

Now that my business shows up on Google with an awesome territory map, I feel a lot better about showing my clients that my small business is a legitimate full time company. I’m working 7 days a week, some days the whole day & night, so I’m glad my presence on Google is now right there. I’m excited to see where this leads.