Today's discussion delves into the often overlooked yet powerful tool of Google Business Profiles, which can significantly enhance your local SEO and drive business growth. Marilyn Jenkins reveals how to claim, verify, and optimize your profile, ensuring you stand out in a competitive landscape. You'll learn advanced strategies for leveraging AI to boost your content and address common challenges like duplicate listings. With insights from her new book, Marilyn offers practical steps that both local business owners and digital enterprises can implement to maximize their online presence. Grab your coffee as we explore actionable advice that will help you thrive in Google's ecosystem!

Takeaways:

• Claim and verify your Google Business Profile to prevent competitors from taking it.
• Consistently add content, like photos and updates, to your Google Business Profile weekly.
• Utilize AI tools to generate FAQs and blog posts for your Google Business Profile.
• Engage with reviews professionally, responding to both positive and negative feedback.
• Regularly monitor insights in your Google Business Profile to understand customer interactions.
• Optimize your profile to enhance local SEO and increase visibility in Google search results.

Links referenced in this episode:

• maximizeyourgbp.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Google
• Starbucks
• Facebook
• Instagram
• YouTube
• Waze
• Etsy

💬 Want to get involved? Leave us a comment, give us a 'like,' and follow us for more insights. Join our Locals for lively discussions, and if you've got questions, email us at bdeister@digitalcafe.media!

👕 Check out our merch: www.digitalcafe.store

🌟 Review the Podcast if you loved this episode and share it with fellow marketers who could benefit from a treasure trove of podcasting wisdom. Tune in to "Digital Coffee: Marketing Brew" and let's brew up some success together!

Keep in mind that Google Business profile actually populates the Google Maps.

So by you being, having more reviews or having more information, and not necessarily the one with the top reviews is number one in the three pack.

So when you look at Google results, whenever you go into maps, there's three at the top.

Not always the first one has the most reviews.

That first one might be the one that has the most information on their Google Business profile.

Okay.

So think about that.

So it's.

It is an independent thing by itself.

What I suggest is those Google posts.

You make a blog post on your website.

Mmm.

That's good.

And welcome to a new episode of digital coffee marketing brew.

And I'm your host, Brett Deisser.

And quickly, if you want to, please subscribe to this podcast on all your favorite podcasting apps, leave a five star review.

It really does help.

But this week we're going to talk about Google Business profiles.

Oh, the funness of this.

Because people usually ignore it or don't know how to do it because let's be honest, Google really cares about their main thing, but they don't really talk about the Google Business hub or Google Business profiles as much.

But it's just as important as your main SEO.

But anyways, I have Miss Jenkins with me, and she has a proven track record of success and helped numerous businesses achieve significant growth through her strategic marketing programs.

And many of her clients have surpassed seven figure marks in sales, with some experiencing impressive returns.

So welcome to the show.

Thank you so much.

It's an honor to be here.

I'm excited.

I enjoy your podcast quite a lot, so I'm glad to be here.

Yes.

And the first question is all.

My guest is, are you a coffee or tea drinker?

Coffee.

Any specifics?

Any, like, light?

Any like, medium dark?

You just don't care.

Starbucks all the time.

Black mostly.

Mostly black.

Yeah.

I need to go straight for the caffeine.

Yeah, it's all right.

I do it as well.

Except for Starbucks.

I cannot do Starbucks black because it just.

It's.

No, that's a hard one.

I've tried.

Yeah, that's burnt.

You got it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

No offense to Starbucks, they, they do have impressive sugary drinks, but actually, surprisingly, their cold brew, nitro.

Cold brew from the can is actually surprisingly good.

Yeah, I'll have to try that.

But anyways, I gave a brief explanation of your expertise.

Can you give our listeners a little bit more about what you do?

Absolutely.

I've been in digital marketing for over 16 years.

I help my clients grow with Google Business, with paid ads, primarily, whether that's Facebook and Instagram or Google Ads.

And the Google Business profile is our search engine optimization program because it's so powerful.

And the more I, more people I talk to, the more I realize that they don't realize the power in it.

And recently I wrote a book to help that section of my clients, or potential clients.

So what we do is many of our clients on the paid side have reached over seven figures in sales and retainers.

I work with attorneys and home services mostly.

And the book I've recently written is for any local business owner that wants to dominate the local surgeons.

So what is the piece of the puzzle for Google Business profile?

Because you have the main thing, which is obviously the Google search, which everybody talks about and everybody knows is important.

But what is the, the piece of the puzzle for the Google Business profile?

I think the most important thing I've noticed is people think of the Google Business profile as a place to store reviews.

They don't realize that is a free website that Google has put out there.

So think of taking the old yellow pages and digitizing it and doing it for free.

Now, the thing is that if you don't claim your Google Business profile, your competition can.

So what you want to do is you need to go in, search your company name and claim that when it says manage your listing, do that.

The big difference is Google gives you the opportunity to list very clearly your building name, your address, your phone number, and then up to three categories that you service.

You can do questions and answers.

You can do something as simple as blog posts, photos, videos.

Build it up like you would a website because Google will give you more weight if you have more information on your Google Business profile than your competition down the street.

And again, most people don't realize the power of Google Business profile.

So, you know, there's so many underutilized features because people just don't know about it.

Google doesn't make money by you optimizing your Google Business profile.

You have to know to do it yourself or do the research and get it done.

So is this just for like physical locations or is this for like digital or only online businesses too?

Because there's two different ones.

And we got to make sure that if it's not for digital, the businesses aren't going to be like, I really want to do this and be like, it's not really for me.

Yes.

So you can go into your Google business profile and you can put in your address and say, I don't want my address visible.

So say you work from home, you can say, I don't want my address visible and that's fine.

You can do that.

The kicker is the thing you have to do is be able to verify your business.

Okay?

So when you take that Google Business profile and you say it's mine, then you have to verify it in some way.

If it's a physical address, they're going to mail you a postcard.

If you don't have a physical address to list, there's other ways, such as doing videos if you do in your work, and other things that they put up together.

Because being a remote business is so popular, Google doesn't want to eliminate those people.

So they do have other verification ways of verifying that you are a business and this is you, and then claiming your Google Business profile.

And does the Google Business profile help with doing advertisements?

Maybe through Waze or like Google Maps?

Or is that something totally different they.

Do, you would see a pin.

So if you've claimed it and you have an address or say it's a mailbox, etcetera or something like that, if you have a pin and someone just happens to be on waze or on maps and they're looking for something and they zoom in, they can see your pin.

Got you.

Also, for those that don't know, Google owns Waze and obviously Google Maps because they bought them, I want to say like over a decade ago, but they bought them a while ago.

But just so for users that are confused, Google does both of these, obviously Google Maps, but also waze as well.

But anyway, so how do you optimize it?

Because you could start it up, you could do everything in the beginning, which we all do.

We always do the, like the good push and then we forget about it.

So how do we optimize that exactly?

What I suggest in the book into my clients is I suggest that you put something up once a week.

At least.

One of the things is to say that you have a car that has a decal on it or something.

Go to local areas and take a selfie with your car, take a selfie with a monument or something in your area, or upload a picture of something that you do, any type of upload.

Update your services.

You can add a special product, so you could add an image of a product.

The thing is, activity once a week makes a big difference.

The question and answer, they call it a q and a function.

I suggest making an faq, the same questions everybody asks.

So put one up every week.

If someone leaves you a review, reply to it, whether it's a positive or negative.

Be professional.

We can all read reviews and if you see one out of ten as bad, you can think that person's probably having a bad day and it really didn't relate to the business.

But reply to it.

You know, I've got clients that have negative reviews of client of people that never came in their business.

So we don't discount it.

You can't take it away.

You could complain to Google, but most of the time they're going to leave it up.

But by replying to that.

So any one of those things do something once a week at least.

And that shows Google that you're attentive to your Google Business profile.

And if you're running ads, you can connect the two and you'll tend to see better cost per click and cost per lead because you are taking advantage of the Google what sphere universe.

How should they respond?

Maybe it is one of those weird, like I call them the Amazon reviews because a lot of Amazon reviews, I read them and I'm like, that has nothing to, or you have no idea what you're talking about type of thing.

How should you respond to those?

Because you're gonna get both.

You're gonna get actual bad reviews that maybe one of your employees had a bad day, you had a bad day, they had a bad day.

It happens to everybody.

Or it's so completely off the wall that does.

That's not even what I do.

Exactly.

And in those instances, I just replied, we checked our records.

Unfortunately we don't.

Clearly this is not meant for us.

Just be don't be.

I guess the thing is, don't be argumentative.

Right?

Reply to it nicely, professionally so that people see how you reply.

And then of course if it's like that, then I would complain to Google and see if you can have what sometimes they are removed.

So I would reply to it so that you can, there is feedback to anybody else looking at your reviews and then of course complain and see if you can get it removed.

And so for the content wise, or maybe just filling it out should, it's always the elephant in the room.

Could they use AI to actually help them with that?

Because we're talking about, some of them are just small businesses and maybe just them.

Would it be a good idea to use like chat GPT or something like that to fill out some things or maybe do an faq, maybe you don't really know your faqs or you, yeah.

You could easily use chat GBC to create content and then you would copy and paste it into the appropriate fields.

But when it comes to your name, address and phone number, those need to be absolutely identical everywhere in the world that you have your business listed.

Right.

And then when you choose your categories, there's certain things that you just need to pick.

But when it comes to the blog posts, they're called Google posts.

But the same thing is if you have chat GPT or Gemini or Bart or whatever, write a short article every week, have them write it right, have the AI write it, skim over it, make sure it sounds like a real person, and post that.

I mean, that would take you five minutes, maybe ten minutes while you're having lunch.

But yeah, I mean, that's, you can use AI for the content part of it, the faqs.

I feel like a business owner would know what's the top like three questions every client or prospective client has for them.

And then you could go to chat GPT and say, my clients all ask these three things.

What other questions should I be answering for them?

And do you have ten?

I say a lot of times the questions you hate to answer now.

Cause you get them so often.

Exactly.

And then there's a place for products and services as well on there.

If you're a digital salesperson, you can always have that.

If you are a, say an Etsy seller or something like that, you can have your products on there.

There's so much you can do and go and add something new and then link it to your store.

So there's so much you can do with it.

And this would help with just the SEO but also your website to bridge the gap as well.

Because SEO's like, your website's part of it.

Because everybody obviously needs a website, but also Google Business profile for just people just randomly searching.

Because not everybody searches on the open web.

A lot of times, especially if you're like a restaurant, they'll search Google Maps instead.

So it is that one piece of the puzzle for those quick searches that they won't just go on.

Let's go on Google and find some restaurants.

No one does that anymore.

You go on your phone, you go to Google Maps, obviously, and keep in.

Mind that Google Business profile actually populates the Google Maps.

So by you being, having more reviews or having more information and not necessarily the one with the top reviews, it's number one in three pack.

So when you look at Google results, whenever you go into maps, there's three at the top.

Not always the first one has the most reviews.

That first one might be the one that has the most information on their Google Business profile.

Okay, so think about that.

So it's, it is an independent thing by itself.

What I suggest is those Google posts.

You make a blog post on your website and you can have your website click linking to your Google Business profile.

So they both work hand in hand.

But keep in mind also what a lot of people don't realize is Google now has a, it's nothing very new, but it's not been recognized as zero click search.

So they want you to, if you come and you ask a question, they want to give you that information without having to leave.

So think about any Wikipedia as the answer, right?

It always comes up.

If there's also, if there's a YouTube video that has the answer to your question, they show you that video with a timestamp before the answer to your question is.

So imagine you've been doing your faqs on your Google Business profile, you've been doing blog posts that answer the questions or call or educate on your business and someone comes and asks a question.

You might be that zero click search.

Imagine how much more traffic you got because you took five or ten minutes out of each week to put something new up there.

Gotcha.

Talking about content wise, you said blog posts, but should they put pictures or videos as well up there?

I know videos, more of an intensive thing to do, but you could still use your phone and quick video.

Absolutely.

Videos, pictures, all of that.

It's in essence, it is a website that has sections for everything.

The beauty is it's also got insights on the back of it.

So when you go into your management portal, you can look at insight to see how many people are clicking on your directions, how many people are clicking on your website and how many people are clicking to call.

And you can even set it up that it will text message you.

There's so many ways to see how are people reacting to it.

If you find more people are clicking to call, you might want to do more calls to action to make a phone call.

It's just the power of Google Business profile is just, it's untapped at this moment.

And have you seen like any issues with like duplicate businesses or someone to impersonate you as well?

And how do you eliminate that issue?

Because I'm pretty sure especially if you're an online business, it's probably a lot easier to actually like fake or mimic your own business.

So how do you deal with that issue?

You need to, you go, you can go and look your dial in your business or type in your business and then choose manage this business or I own this business, and then go through that.

If a competitor has taken over the business or the listing, you can actually go and actually through that, actually report to Google that you own the business, prove that it's your business.

Now, say just in the opposite of that, or along those lines, say you were suspended for something that Google went, oh, we don't believe you're who you are and you got to suspend it.

So don't ever delete the account, especially if it's been there for any period of time and you've done any work on it.

You can simply work with a professional that can work with the right people at Google and get it unlocked instead of erasing all of your past history and having to start over again.

So Google is actually attainable.

You can actually reach them.

It's not like Facebook.

You can actually find people in certain category or departments that you can reach and have someone, a professional help you.

I would say you can reach Facebook if you pay for their subscription plan.

Now that is true.

That is true.

Next for like this because we have the business profile and everything.

How is the future going to trend for this?

Because we're, we're seeing like just all compassing thing about SEO.

Google keeps on changing their SEO.

Not as big as it usually is, but still, it's like content is better and like authentic content is the new thing for their SEO because they're afraid of AI, even though they're making their own AI, even though their own AI is in a bit of hot water right now because it wouldn't actually correctly for the picture generator, it wouldn't actually correctly generate the right picture if you were a white person.

Oh, my gosh.

Okay.

Yeah.

I think that you're continually to get, you'll continue to get better weighted if you optimize your Google Business profile and you're consistently adding to it.

I think if you ignore it, if you don't do anything with it, and independent of SEO on your website, which obviously you should be doing, it's going to come down to the search.

There's always going to be people that are paying for ads.

But if you'll look at the state of Google search now, the very top was paid, then you have the maps.

The maps is not paid.

Right.

Some of them are sponsored in there, but the maps are organic and that's what you want to go for.

That's where the money is.

80% of the people that surf Google stop at the maps.

True.

Especially if it's like a physical location because you're like, oh, where is this actual place?

Because it's a visual guide for people going, how far away are you?

Okay, you're this far away.

Yeah.

And 80% of the people are going to stop there.

And how many times do you search on go to page two.

Right.

No one else does either.

So if you're not in the top three, they'll change their search.

So that's why those three categories come in into play.

Got you.

So how do people keep on doing this?

Because it is a habit of.

Okay, how do I keep on optimizing this thing?

You don't have to, pretty sure you don't have to do it every single day, but maybe a once a month check or something like that to make sure that it's optimized because like I said, google changes their SEO and probably their business profile every once in a while to either combat spam or combat something or combat AI or whatever they're trying to change.

Yeah.

What I suggest to my clients to do is they pick their management day.

So almost every business owner has some time block in the week.

That is paperwork or something like that.

And when I say block off 20 minutes and put something new on your Google Business profile, if you just make some, it's just a simple little habit that if you start doing it, it'll pay off in great rewards soon.

So just once a week, do something and put it on your day that you always do paperwork.

And then grab a photo off your camera roll that you took this past week that has to do with work.

Post it, think of it.

You can't, you don't have to think about it as another social media platform because it's so much more important than that.

But make it once a week that you do something small.

And it could be small, it could be just like posting a picture that you may actually have specials or whatever.

Yeah.

And you might want to just go outside.

Say you are in local business.

Go outside and take a picture of the front of your building, take a picture of the entryway.

Take a picture of something in your town that is, I don't know, that would be interesting.

But isn't within a mile of your office or your location.

That'll tell Google you're relevant further away from your office than 1 mile.

So there's a lot of different things when it comes to photos.

If you have a store, take pictures of the products that you're doing that you're selling.

Make images of the services that you're selling.

Something, just something small added every week.

And it'll show.

It gives Google the impression that you are optimizing.

You are working it, you are doing something.

So it's almost trying to put it in your calendar to schedule something, schedule yourself to understand, to do maintenance or maintain the Google business profile.

And if you think about the faq, assume you have ten faqs, right?

You can make that in five weeks.

Say, I'm going to do two questions this week.

I'm going to do two questions next week.

So you're adding little bits of information that's helpful to your user.

It's all about the user experience for Google.

So we want to give them slowly dole out information so you're getting updates consistently.

Got you.

So people are like, man, I really need help on this or I need more advice.

Where can people find you online?

You can find me on LinkedIn is where I'm quite active.

I also on Facebook and Instagram, but LinkedIn you'll find me under Marilyn Jenkins and then my book.

I do have a special offer for my book for your viewers.

The book is the Google Business profile training guide and it walks you through it's 120 pages to walk you through what you need to do to verify it, claim and verify it and then optimize it.

Okay.

In the book we have a coupon called coffee five that allow you to get the book for $5.

And it's at maximize your GBP.com.

All right, any final thoughts for listeners?

Please, if you haven't claimed your Google Business profile, do it before someone else takes it from you.

It's super important.

Thank you for joining digital coffee marketing brew and sharing your knowledge on the Google Business profile.

Thank you so much and thank you.

As always, please subscribe to this podcast and all your favorite podcasting apps.

Five star review really does help.

And join us next week as we talk to you in a great thought leader in the PR marketing industry.

All right, guys, stay safe.

Get to claiming your business profile and then maintaining your business pro business profile.

And see you next week.

Later.