How To Make The Most Of New Google My Business Features
2018-09-04 - 2 min read time - by Dan Taylor
In June 2017 Google rolled out Google Posts for all Google My Business users, enabling business owners to publish directly through their Google My Business listings and acquire even more real estate on the SERPs (search engine results pages).
However, despite it’s announcement this has widely been an under-utilised tool in the local marketing and local SEO arsenal. Posts is just one of a number of new features that aren’t being used to their full potential.
Through Posts, Google has given businesses the ability to post content for key events, offers and product updates directly into the knowledge graph (clickless search model).
Google Posts are designed to convey additional information to users already searching for your business on Google, increasing the user value factor of searches.
The four recommended categories for posts are:
Google Posts are accessible through your Google My Business page, and the option to post appears below your “basic business information” fields.
While the fields allow for more than 1,000 characters, it’s important to remember both how users search, and why they search.
Data suggests it’s highly likely they’ll be on their mobile phones and on the move.
Because of this the recommended post length is between 150 and 300 words, so provide value and additional information in a precise manner.
Post curation is extremely easy, and is as simple as choosing a post type, and entering standard post fields such as title, and body content (the details).
You then select a CTA relevant to the post type and the information provided.
Google said in their blog post that:
Posting through Google My Business lets you publish your events, products, and services directly to Google Search and Maps. By creating posts, you can place your timely text, video, or photo content in front of customers when they find your business listing on Google.
From experimenting with local clients already, I’ve found that:
Google lets you see how many times your post was viewed, and your button clicked in the GMB dashboard.
Services allow businesses in specific (service) industries to add those exact services into their Knowledge Graph panel.
These don’t currently show up on Desktop search, but they do on mobile (which for a lot of service businesses constitutes a high proportion of visibility and traffic). In order to access this feature, you need to login to your Google My Business listing;
One important thing here is that you don’t need to add a price, even though the field is visible. Other important considerations include:
Also from experience, I’ve used the top navigation menu for some clients to inform the parent/child structure of categories and items within the services setup.
This isn’t strictly a new feature, however Google did remove it in August 2016, but it now looks as though they’re brought it back and then some. Previously, businesses could add 100 to 300 words of brand copy to a GMB listing, but now with the reintroduction they can add up to 750 characters.
But the real benefit of business descriptions is for mobile users who aren’t likely to read your meta titles and meta descriptions if they come right from Google Maps or a Google Map Pack result. This makes business descriptions essential for those looking to improve their local visibility.
At the moment there is no data to suggest that adding a Business Description improves your local search/map pack performance.
