8 Effective Ways to Optimize Your Google My Business Account for SEO

So as a local business, you obviously need a Google My Business profile. But beyond that, you need to take steps to optimize your Google My Business profile to rank higher in local searches and show up in the local pack.

So how can you optimize your Google My Business listing to earn higher rankings for local searches—or for a chance to appear in the local pack?

We asked our respondents to share the best practices they follow when optimizing their own listings and/or their clients’ listings.

Here are the eight Google My Business SEO tips they recommended.

Verify Your Business
Fill Out Your Profile Completely
Make Sure Your Profile Information Is (and Stays) Accurate
Ensure NAP Consistency Across the Web
Pick the Most Relevant Categories
Include Semi-Professional Pictures
Get More Reviews
Take Advantage of Posts on Google
Pro Tip: Here Is a Go-To Dashboard For Monitoring Local Business Performance
If you own and operate a small, local business, you are probably monitoring performance on a daily basis and looking for ways to improve. Many owners use Google My Business to do that, and now they can get actionable data in one convenient dashboard showing key business metrics including:

Views of your business listing. The daily number of times people saw your Google My Business listing.
Searches that found your listing. The number of times your listing came up in a Google search.
Sources for searchers finding your listing. Where did those searchers come from? View the number of direct, discovery, and branded searches, and understand how your visitors find you.
Actions taken on your listing. When they arrived on your listing, what did visitors do? Click on your website link? Click to call? Click for directions? Get a summary of each.
Calls received. How many calls did you receive from your listing in any month or other time period?
Total number of actions taken. Overall, how effective was your listing this week or this month? Can you do more to improve activity and response?
Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google My Business experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template that contains all the essential metrics for monitoring and analyzing your business listing. It’s simple to implement and start using, and best of all, it’s free!
ou can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template

Step 2: Connect your Google my Business account with Databox.

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

1. Verify Your Business
“The first thing you need to do is verify your business with Google,” says Steve Yanor of Sky Alphabet Social Media.

“Google will send you a four-digit PIN in the mail that takes 14 days to arrive. Once you receive your PIN, go to the link provided and enter the PIN so that Google knows your business is legitimate.”

2. Fill Out Your Profile Completely
After you’ve verified your business, it’s time to fill out your profile. And while many of the fields are optional, several of our respondents said that you need to provide every relevant detail.

“Fill out all the information Google asks for,” says Azuga’s Garret Seevers. “It sounds simple, but it’s often overlooked. If you don’t fill it out, Google gives the option for others—like your competitors—to fill it out for you.”

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“Every extra box you can tick and fill in is extra information that helps prospective customers and tells Google you’re the real deal,” says Commusoft’s Cristina Maria. “In addition to name, phone number, and address, add your operating hours, multiple photos of your products/services, the areas you cover, etc.”

“Google can index details provided under different fields of a Google My Business profile,” says Right Solution’s Ayesha Ambreen. “So if you want to improve the ranking of your profile, start with the basics. Populate all the fields with relevant and accurate information, write keyword-rich descriptions, and add visuals.”

“Google rewards businesses who take the time to complete their profiles,” says Kenny Lange of Web Canopy Studio. “A complete profile is the baseline upon which all other recommendations (reviews, Google Posts, answering questions, etc.) are built.”

Use Your Correct Business Name
When filling out your profile, Always Evolving SEO’s Paul Lovell says to “use your correct business name. Do not stuff it with keywords!”

“Stuffing your name with keywords looks spammy, and the people who have heard of your business from a friend may not even recognize it as your listing and call one of your competitors instead.”

“A clear business name is your brand,” Lovell says.

Add Your Products and Services
“An important aspect of optimizing your listing is including your products and services,” says Cheyenne Schueman of Page 1 Solutions.

“Google My Business offers a handy feature called ‘services’ that’s easily accessible from the info panel. Filling out your products and services will not only tell potential consumers what you offer, but it will also keep them on your profile longer, making Google see your profile as more important than that of your competitors.”