Google My Business Webinar

Foreign. Hello and welcome to the Google My Business webinar from maybe. I'm really delighted to be joined today by Matt Jones, who is a technical SEO consultant. My name is Polly Barnfield. I'm the CEO of maybe. Matt, tell me, what does a technical SEO consultant do?

That's a very good question. So technical SEO consultant such as myself will generally work with a range of different businesses, whether it's in house, agency side or freelance. And technical SEO itself is more focusing on what I'll call the behind the scenes part of SEO itself. So basically looking at the website, how it's built, how everything's reacting and kind of trying to get to grips with how Google's understanding that website and then obviously the consulting part of it is just helping those businesses overcome any issues and keep growing.

Brilliant. And today, Matt, we're going to focus very much on Google My business. So that's obviously very much part of SEO. But specifically what we're going to look at today is how you use the Google My Business platform to make your business visible, right?

Yeah, 100%. So Google my business has been around for years. It used to be called Google. Anyone's remembering that one from back in the day. But essentially it's one of the more underutilized tools, I think from an SEO perspective based, kind of based on how much effort needs to be put into it versus the output you'll get from that as well. But yeah, I suppose generally just to cover what Google My Business is used for, in case people kind of haven't heard of it before or haven't really had an experience, one of the core things it does is help you show up on Google Maps, which is obviously something people want to do. Helps in many different cases, which I'll probably touch on a little bit further down. You can have a profile show up for branded searches. So for example, if someone search maybe tech on the search results page, you get the kind of little knowledge panel.

They call it when you see the map on Google. So when you search something, you see the map come up as well. Is that because they've got their Google My business setting set up?

Yes, yeah, definitely. So it kind of puts it all together really. Google Maps itself has got many benefits. So does having the kind of profile show up in the knowledge panel. Within that knowledge panel you can see the information on your business, contact details, obviously the address part of the maps and any of the sort of, I suppose contact information can be really useful, especially people on mobile devices as well. It can just give kind of quick and easy access buttons to drop you an email, give you a phone call or even potentially, you know, send you a message, depending on how you've set everything up.

So that's really interesting, Matt, actually, isn't it? I think it's easy for us all to forget because often when we're running our businesses, you spend so much time looking into desktop. You've got to remember that customers actually, you know, they're googling stuff, they're looking on your, on their mobile phone. So what you're saying is that by setting your Google my business profile up really well, it defines the experience that consumers get when they're on the mobile.

Yeah, 100%. And to be honest, we're kind of in a world now where a majority of searches do happen on a mobile device. There are very few kind of businesses or industries where desktop still kind of dominates the search terms. But it's one of those, I mean one of the things I always like to try and suppose entice people with Google Maps and the Google my business part of that is, you know, let's say you go for a weekend away and you're in a new city or a town that you've never explored before, you quickly jump onto your phone and you think, well I want to find, let's say a jewelry shop. You're probably going to search jewelry shop or jewelers near me. And that's where the map pop really comes into it. So obviously if the business is set up on Google my business, people can find them quickly. They can hit the directions button and literally be guided straight to that shop. So that's what we kind of class as local SEO, but it's really powerful for anyone. That's kind of a brick and mortar store based business.

And Matt, do I have to have a really swanky website to make this work or can any size of business use Google My business and the Google Business Profile Manager to start to be found more on the search results.

Any business whatsoever. And in terms of any website, whether it's small, huge, fancy, quite simple. So Google my business itself, obviously when you sign up, what we can see on the screen now is essentially your, your dashboard for your business profile. There's a couple of kind of things that go into making that profile active, which I think we'll touch on very soon. But yeah, so this is kind of everything you've got and you know, it gives people a lot more benefit than what you might think. So obviously you've got your website now your website is going to generally give information about yourself and your business and then services or products that you offer as well. Whereas Google.

Sorry, sorry, Matt. So the panel that we were just looking at is where you create your account. You know, if you had to give me, talk me through the four reasons, four really good reasons. If anybody listening to this hasn't yet set up their GMB profile or Google My business profile, what are the four key reasons that really, you know, are really game changing? And if you're not on it, you know, are you visible to somebody on a mobile phone searching in a place?

100%. So obviously one of the core ones I've just touched on there is are you actually visible? So if someone, if you have a brick and mortar store or a physical premises that customers can come into, if you're not on Google My Business and you're not showing on the maps, people are going to find it incredibly hard to find you. You know, they'd have to know about your business or your exact website address to be able to find your contact information. Whereas using the maps or just using Google My business in general is quick and easy for people to get there. The Google My Business account itself as well gives you essentially full control over how your business is presented in those search results. So anything from your logo to a bio or a little bit of an About Us section, contact details, opening hours, address, everything you can think of. But the benefit is if any of that changes, you can change it on there.

Matt, what you're saying is that all, all of those things I've got, every business has got their own dashboard to go and change, change how I'm doing business, in effect, what you're saying?

Yeah, 100%. So essentially, if you think about it, you can think about it in a way similar to a Facebook page. You know, you go on Facebook and you know how to quickly and easily update your profile picture or your address or your about information. This is the way to do it on a search engine and it's a way to really make sure people are finding you for what they need to.

So for an independent business that maybe doesn't trade online, this is absolutely critical that people can still find them. I think I find it very interesting. Matt Hub. There can often be a big divide and people think, I'm not, you know, I don't want to, you know, maybe digital is not my priority, which I would, I would, I would urge everybody to think differently to that. But fundamentally, if you're not visible on Google My business, people are much less likely to come into your physical store. Is that a fair statement?

Very much so. I like to think of an example I generally use is, let's say a butcher's. It's highly likely that a butcher's would ever sell through a website unless it was, you know, some rarer circumstances. So for a butcher's, it's fresh, fresh produce that people wanted to obviously come and buy. It's about making sure those customers can find you. You know, you might know of a butcher down your road, but you might not particularly be a big fan of them and you don't know where the next one is. So you're going to use Google to find it and you're going to find somewhere else to go to. So that's always a good way to look at it is whether you sell online or if you just have a presence online and you sell physically in person instead. Google my business is core to making sure you are found and you can drive more customers.

So let's say we're talking about a butcher in Ipswich. If I go into my phone and type in butcher Ipswich, all of the butchers that have set up their Google my business listing will appear in front of those that have not.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. And as I said earlier, if you were physically in Ipswich and you were there for the day and you needed to pick up something from the butchers on the way home and you thought, I'll go on the maps and see which one's closest. If you're not on Google my business you're not going to show on that map.

So how do you add your address? How, how do I get on Google my business? What, how do I do that?

So this is probably one of the most difficult parts of it, but it's not difficult, it's just a little bit timely. So when you sign up, you fill in some of your general information. So obviously you'll fill in business name, you'll fill in your initial contact details and your address. What Google does, and this is why the address is so important, is they send a postcard to that address, which on that postcard has a verification number or string of random, random characters. And you essentially put that into your account and it's live, but without that verification number you can't go live. So that's the.

So sorry. So literally I have to fill in my details on the Google my business page and then it's important I put the right address for my business because if I don't, the PIN will be in the wrong place on the map. And in order for Google to verify the PIN is in the right place, they send the postcard to it and I just have to pick it up and put the code into Google. Is that it?

Yeah, that is it. And that is the only kind of. I don't even know what you'd call it. It's the only thing Google need from you essentially in the entire time is just prove you have that address. It's generally to stop people creating thousands of fake profiles with no physical address. Now, it could be that maybe you work from home and you're never going to have customers around, that's fine. Obviously you can still get it sent to that address. We don't have to then in future tell people, oh, the office is open, come round. And one of the only other things I've seen intricacies. If you, let's say, have a couple of stores in various locations or maybe have one head office and you have a few people working somewhere else in the country that don't have an office themselves, but maybe they go to a co working space or, you know, they kind of work from home. One thing that you can use is virtual post boxes and PO boxes. That's something that I've kind of done for clients previously as well. Obviously they do physically exist, they are there and you can then go and pick up the mail from that PO box or arrange for, you know, it to be picked up, however, so that way you can get the verification postcard if you cannot physically put in your address.

Got you. And so once you've done that, you then get a listing like this where you can then add further information, is that right?

Exactly. So this is pretty much what you'll get once you've verified your address as essentially just the standard information. So this is what you've input during the creation of your account. You'll also have this 100% of the time. So if, let's say, for example, you're a opening times changed or the days that you open changed or you know, you changed address, company name, whatever it might be, this is the area where you essentially control everything you are saying about your business.

And can I do real time? Do I, you know, do I have to wait or does it just happen immediately?

So there is a wait time. Now generally, from what I found, it is never longer than 24 hours. A majority of the time. It's again, just, you know, Google trying to check there's no spam occurring or nothing strange has happened. Alternatively as well, sometimes it could be, I don't know if you've ever Seen this before yourself, probably. But you may have searched a company's name and done a branded search. You see the knowledge panel and it gives some of the information. You think that's not right. And it has a little button that says doesn't look right. Tell us now, if you click that, you can try and submit to Google what you think is wrong. But ultimately that goes into the Google my business profile of that business. So it could be that they haven't noticed something wrong. It could be Opening Times. As an example, they've just started closing on Saturdays, whereas they were open before. They may have forgot to update it. Someone else has gone and said, these are closed on Saturdays. I went today and they weren't open. And that allows you to review it as well.

Interesting. So it works both ways. And is there any element of human, you know, can you, can somebody go and mess up your profile? Or did Google. Does Google make sure that it stays, you know, how, how do they maintain the integrity of it? If this is what I call group editing aspects to it.

So essentially the only people that can physically make updates that then get presented kind of on the front end of Google is anyone who you've given access to that account that would be obviously yourself. If you've set that up and then if, let's say you added me to go on and kind of manage that profile for you, that would make us two the only ones. If someone submitted a change from the search results itself, that will never go live without Google kind of getting you to say, yes, this is correct.

And that comes back to postcard. Because once you've, once you, once you've received that postcard and verified it, they know that you're the owner of the business and therefore they can trust you.

Yes. Yeah, exactly.

So what do you do if you, you sign up and you find, for example, that. I don't know, Google's, Google's driven. Google's taking a picture of the wrong place and it's the wrong, the wrong, you know, why has it got the wrong front door? What do you do then?

So that is probably the most common issue is the image. So essentially when you start seeing that profile on the search results, it can splits the images into three sections. You'll have a map view, so your street view of a map, you will have the street view itself. And that street view is where Google assumes is the exact physical spot. Now that is not always correct. Obviously it's not a proven thing that Google, although they do go and, you know, take the videos and create Google Earth and the maps, it's never always correct. So there are ways to go around changing that. A majority of that does come into obviously the info section that we were kind of looking at earlier on. So on that left hand menu and where it's got the address, you can also see when you're looking at the address it does say doesn't look right and it shows a little tiny map on the right hand side with the red pin drop. And if it's not correct, that's where you can go in and you can physically drag that to the right place. Now normally it's not miles and miles away. It could be it's at the wrong end of a street, it's facing the wrong way. I've seen it before where there's been high streets where the shops on the left and right hand side and Google's just pointing the wrong way. So instead of showing, you know, the customer shop, it's actually showing a different shop across the road. But it is genuinely, you can go in and you can drag that and just say this is correct, I've had one.

And you can then go and add as much other detail as you want as well. You can add your own videos and all of this starts to enrich your profile. So if you're a cafe, you can start to show the great bread you broke but you've baked or the great the sandwiches you got for lunch. And this all then starts to appear on your Google Maps profile in near real time?

Yes. Yeah, pretty much. So again, no longer than 24 hours with the photos. It is generally near enough real time. Obviously the most important one I would always say is your logo to make sure you've got the logo there. It's used in various different ways from Google and this is the easiest way to submit that information and you literally.

Press that button and add it. There's nothing more complex to it than that.

No, literally choose the photo and add it in. As I said, it's like a profile on any other countless websites you may have used with profile pictures. Very similar with the COVID photo as well. You can obviously choose that if you've got maybe like a panorama or a wide angled shot and then yeah, as you kind of say in there, Polly as well, you've got videos and one that they call interior. So if you have got a physical premises, a cafe is a great example of this. Having that video and interior is really going to set you apart because not everyone adds those in and obviously Google can't physically get in the premises as it's doing its kind of rounds to, you know, film inside. That's where you can kind of show off how amazing your cafe or your store is compared to everyone else.

Absolutely. So really good way to differentiate yourself in the search results, isn't it?

Oh, no, no worries. I was just going to say, yeah, it's a really good way to differentiate yourself. And you know, it's one of those relatively simple ones in terms of the pictures. Videos can sometimes be harder to get, but the benefit you get from the minimal effort of actually getting those taken is exponential.

And then moving on from there, once you've shown people how great you are and they can buy stuff from you, you want them to review you, right? Because, I mean, this is a great example of somebody that's really cracked the reviews. Tell me how this works. How do you crack this? How do you make sure your customers are reviewing you?

So this is probably what I would say is one of the most beneficial parts of Google My Business and having that profile is the reviews. There's many ways you can gather reviews these days. There's Google My Business, countless other pieces of software or companies out there. But essentially, reviews are what drives consumer behavior these days more than anything else is. If you've come across a company that you've maybe heard of once or twice in passing, but you haven't been recommended, you're going to want to look at the reviews. And Google My Business is the easiest way to collect those. Again, multiple ways you can do it, but it's literally as easy as someone searches your brand name. Your profile pops up on the right hand side of the search results and there is a button there which says write a review. Obviously that's for a customer perspective, but it is literally that easy. And they go in, they write the review, they submit the review, and it pops up in your profile, in your kind of dashboard, allowing you to reply to those reviews as well. So. So that's kind of the easiest way to do it. And I think there's a lot of different ways within that. You could create little postcards that you give to customers and, you know, ask them to leave a review. You could just physically ask them in person. There's many ways companies go around kind of asking for those reviews. A lot of it comes down to a business by business case. You know, what's your tone of voice, how do you actually come across to your customers? But the more ways that you can try and get those reviews, the more beneficial it will be in the end.

So if your Google My business page looks like this with no reviews. You want to just say to people while they're in your store or they've had a great meal, just say, please drop a review for us on Google. My business, there's no harm in asking. Or in your emails, same thing. Is there any pride in asking that? Just how valuable are they to a business, particularly a high street business?

Yeah, I don't think there's any harm in asking at all. The worst someone can do is just not do it. Some people don't tend to do that, but the benefits you get from it are, as I said before, a bit exponential. Like it really helps drive the conversion rate for other customers. Even if that's conversion rate in terms of getting people to physically come into your cafe and have a drink or a meal, it can still be classed as a conversion rate. People want to know the reviews. And I think while we're kind of on the reviews, best practice wise for it. I would always suggest, and I would suggest to any of my clients, reply to every single review, whether the review is good or bad or mediocre in the middle. If you reply to that review, you are showing everyone else who sees it that you're active, which is always a good start. You don't shy away from if anyone has said something bad. And you're also very thankful for those really good reviews as well. Within those. I'd obviously always say to be professional, it can sometimes be a case someone will leave you a bad review and you know it's not true. It could be a competitor's done it or someone that, you know just has it in for you for whatever reason. And in those times it can be very easy to think I'm going to say, you know, some nasty things back, giving peace in my mind. But it's a public profile. At the end of the day, everyone can see it. So it's just addressing it with professionalism and kind of taking it from that point.

Sometimes other people can see if somebody's having a rant and even, even if you've had a rant and somebody said some awful things about you, the way you respond is almost more important than the rent itself.

Yeah, 100. I mean, I've had it personally before, you know, I've been looking to buy products and there's been one or two bad reviews and you kind of question it, but it doesn't sit with the other reviews they're getting. And then you see that company reply to that review professionally, they handle it well, you know, whether it's offering a refund or a free replacement or even if it's just generally saying, you know, they're very sorry to hear about it, can they give feedback to make it better in future. And that's turned me around. And you know what? I will buy from these because I can see a lot of good reviews and I can see that also if someone's left a bad review, they've tried to, you know, not scrape it back, but try to say we're as disappointed as you are, let's make it right.

Absolutely. So think about it as a dialogue. I think Google is not a social media platform, but Google, my business is the closest thing to it and it's very easy to think of it as to not put it in that bucket. And I think your points are really well made. It's so important that people understand that Google is one of the places that drives you around. And if you don't look after the health of your Google, your listing, it's. It can be damaging.

Right, exactly. I always like to think of it as, you know, let's say you have a physical store, a customer comes in and complains. This essentially a bit of a bad review. But you wouldn't just walk away, you wouldn't, they wouldn't come and complain and you go and just walk away and leave them. That's not how obviously we do it in person. So treat it exactly the same. You would talk back to them in a professional way. You would ask them what's been wrong, how they can help. So I'd say, you know, carry that over to your reviews as well, even your digital reviews. It's the same thing.

And that applies to the question answer section as well, doesn't it? Which is you really want to get the dialogue that you're having when people you have face to face in a store or in a hospitality venue going on your page as well. Because it's what people are making decisions in seven seconds on Google or less. And you, you've got to get all that great stuff, Google Juice around you so people think you're basically making people's thumbs stop. And it's that stuff that gives people confidence that actually doesn't take that long to achieve, does it, Matt?

Yeah, exactly. And I think the questions answer section is something that I would push as many businesses to do as possible because it is underutilized at the moment by a lot of companies, is very straightforward in terms of what it is. It's a question and answer section. You know, people will answer questions through Your Google My business profile and you answer them. It is as simple as that. But the way that can really help is if we were to put this into an actual example. If you are a restaurant, someone might put the question, does this restaurant do vegetarian and vegan food as well as obviously you know, everything else now, someone looking on a map and saying restaurant near me. Or even if they put vegan restaurant near me, if you've answered that question, they know immediately, yes, this restaurant does offer vegan or vegetarian food. I can go there, it's suitable. And it's the same with anything, you know, it doesn't have to be a restaurant. I recently moved house and I love doing pub quizzes, but I had no idea which pubs did a pub quiz and. And I genuinely found the answer through Google my business of pubs near me that have a quiz. And one of the questions was, do you do a quiz? And the answer was yes.

Really interesting. Are we actually saying. I don't think I've actually stopped and thought about this myself. And we're also busy with our day jobs. Right. But what you're saying is if you do your Google My business profile really, really well, it's like a micro site for you. It's like your little mini website that Google's actually going to read before they read your website. It's. It's the summary of all the stuff that's going to help people make decisions.

Yeah. 100 as you kind of touched on there, you know, as consumers, we're making decisions in. In a matter of seconds these days, whether it's as soon as you land on a website, you know, within 10 seconds, you know you're going to buy from that website or not. And it's the same with if you're just doing a search on a search engine, then a Google My business profile pops up. You know, the more information we can give to our customers or potential customers at the drop of a hat, the more likely we'll convert them.

And it's universal. Right. So this is an example of a dashboard for somebody in Palm Beach. So Google is training people to use it. It's really down to businesses to embrace the tool because do I have to pay for this map?

Not at all, no.

So it's. And I think the purpose of this webinar is to help people understand that this is a free tool that they can go and use today to reach more customers.

Yeah.

100% to blog post to. How do blog posts link to Google My business?

So obviously, if you've got a Blog post, you've got a website, so that's one place it'll be. You know, you've wrote a blog post on new products or, or maybe you've opened a new store or just anything in general to do with your business at the minute. People can only access it if they go to your website and when they're on your website, then they have to find it. What you can do is literally take that new blog post you've written and create a very small version of it in your Google My business profile. You know, you can put the photo in there like your featured image, the title, a very small description and a link to it. And once you've submitted that on your Google My business profile, on the search results pages, there are little sort of square tabs that show your most recent blog posts. Someone clicks on that and it takes them straight to it.

Another great way of getting your content to Google to pay attention to your content.

Yes, 100%. And I think one thing people again underutilize that specific blog post tool for is, is you might have written a blog post two years ago about, let's say Tik Tok. Tik Tok is quite new, blah blah. Now Tik Tok's like, it's viral, it's trending, it's huge. You could just put that onto your Google My business profile to drive more traffic back through to that blog. You, that blog could have been a how to use Tik Tok for beginners. So it doesn't have to be posts that you've literally just created. If you've got an old post that can offer a lot of benefit based on something that's trending or anything that's happening in the world recently, push that through it drive people back to even an older post that's really interesting.

So you mean seasonal pieces and things like that. You can start to reuse content very, very well. Got you.

Yeah. 100. So anything seasonal, trending, whatever, it might be.

Perfect. So Matt, how does the offer piece work?

So the offer one is. It is new. It's new. It isn't something that Google have always done. It's relatively straightforward in terms of what you can do. You can create a post about an offer. Now the offer could be an offer on your website. You're offering 10 off or buy one, get one free. Or it could be, you know, you wanted to do an offer of something's reduced in store because you only sell in a physical brick and mortar store. It's very similar to the post that We've just been talking about some blog posts and what you can see on the screen there is literally how easy it is to do. You've got this new offer. So it's a discount or a limited time deal. You set the dates for it if there's a specific date range and if not, you know there is always. You'd start on today and you would end it maybe in a month or so. You never want an offer to kind of be always on. And yeah, you just literally say what the offer is, give a bit of a description. So the example on the screen there is literally you need to do, it's maybe new arrivals, it's a new season or you know, whatever it might be. So get 10% off anything.

And this isn't an ad, it's not something that is painful from Google. I literally can go in here and create my offer, create my offer and Google will show it to people when they type in the relevant terms around it.

Yeah, 100%. You literally just tell them what the actual code itself is. So in that example you'd go to the checkout and say and obviously type in Feb10. It's as simple as that cost you nothing other than the 10%. But it doesn't cost you to kind of promote this offer which you would do across probably 99% of other different platforms that do advertisement.

And you've got the biggest search engine in the world giving you this tool. All you've got to go and do is go in and click on create an offer in your profile. That's really exciting. Thank you Google. And now you can also add products as well. Now tell me about that.

Yes, so again this is a relatively new feature that they've built. So I would advise everyone who is relevant for to add the products and have the discounts now because not everyone's doing them. So you know, the more you can do it, you're standing out. But essentially what they've now done is as you can see on the left hand side, it will just show your products. They've tested this, you know, across various different things before like Google Shopping and Google Shopping ads. And you know the finally thought, you know what, these actually have benefits to the people who are doing the searching. But not every company wants to pay to have them show because not every company's got the budget so they've added it for free into Google my business, which we love. But yeah, essentially it's you can just add products within the dashboard itself. There's obviously the product section and it is as simple as product name, an image and a description. The benefit you've got from that as well is you can create collections. So if you wanted to add five products that are in one collection and five products in the other, you can do. And then as you can see on the left hand side it does have quick links to those collections themselves. So it's just a great way to push people through. And similar to what I said with the blog post, it could be maybe there's a product that you've been selling for a while and you know it's doing well for you but for some reason it's now hugely popular, it's trending online or something's happening in the world and make that type of product really high in demand, push that through as a product, drive people through to it quickly, capitalize on what's going off in the world. And especially you know, it's free as we said so you can push that for free, draw attention to it and send people straight to that product really excited.

That's a great shout out. And again you can do that all from within your dashboard. You just literally come into your Google my business profile manager and click on products and add it. That's it, right? There's nothing more to it?

Yeah, 100%. It's probably easier to add them there than it would be to add a product onto a website. So.

And you add it there and then it's straight in the top of Google when somebody search the right term. That's just brilliant, isn't it?

It is, yeah.

So I'm conscious that we've been with there's so much exciting stuff to learn here. Matt, give us a really short summary of you know, if I haven't started on Google my business yet where one of best practices and you know, tell me don't blow my brain because tell me what the people that haven't listened to this draw and I'm thinking gosh, I need to go and do this. Is it complicated? Can you bite it off one bit at a time? Do you have to have it perfect all in one go or could you just sort of start and incrementally improve.

100% start and incrementally improve. It doesn't have to be perfect. It is something that as we've said is essentially real time sometimes maybe 24 hour wait after you've updated something but it in this day and age that's still not that long a time. And the thing is things always change. You'll always have new products, new Reviews. Everything else would be to just create the profile, get started and obviously get that verification postcard to come towards you. But it's just generally, you know, if you can keep on top of it, keep things up to date, just be yourself or, you know, your business, stick to your tone of voice. It will do everything for you essentially.

And it is as simple as going to Google my business, claiming your business and then from here you can do everything we've just talked about.

Yep, 100% is one of the most simple things to set up that I've come across in years. So.

So what about from an so at the beginning, Matt, we talked about the Euro SEO technical expert. So that's all about my website. We're not going to cover that on this webinar. But what's the SEO benefit? That's the search engine optimization benefit of getting your Google My business right.

So as you said, it's not kind of the technical side of it, but I believe I briefly touched on it earlier. There's something called local SEO that is very much when someone makes a search and uses the maps to find a local business that they need to use. So the SEO benefits are something called SERP Real Estate. So SERP is a search engine results page. Anytime you've gone into Google and typed anything, when the results come up, that is the cert. Now the real estate of that is essentially when someone searches your brand and you've got a Google my business profile, you have got this huge section on the right hand side which shows all your profile, your pictures, your information. You are just drawing people to come to you and not any competitors or any other website. And other than that, as I said, it's that opportunity to capture new audiences. So it is the people who having a day trip in, in your town or city that are looking for your type of business and they find it on the maps or people who are just generally looking for those types of products that you've added, the posts that you've added, etc, it's just a great way to really push forward and kind of bring in the new audiences and drive more business for your business.

So Lana, sometimes I talk to businesses who, you know, once you've got once, once they understand the sort of whole search engine optimization piece, they're off to the races. But there are many people that start it very daunting. So I think for me the message would be, you know, if you're, if you're at the beginning of your journey, get your Google my business profile set up and it Just it is not complicated, Matt. Right, I've got one question for you actually, which is that, you know, if I've got limited time, I'm a busy, you know, shopkeeper. If you had to pick one thing, which would it be? Would it be Facebook? Would it be Twitter, Would it be Instagram? Would it be Google my business? Actually, I say two. If you had two choices that you had to do of those profiles, you had time to do two or time to start doing two, which two would you pick and why?

See, this is difficult as it depends most of the time on the type of business. For any business, I would 100% say Google my business. The benefits you get from Google my business and all the new features that we've spoken about, which will undoubtedly be added to as well, will always reap benefits for you. So without a doubt, it would always be Google my business if you were to have a second. 1. 9 times out of 10 I would probably go for Instagram. But the only caveat to that, and the one time out of 10 I wouldn't is if it's not a very visual type of business at all. Take butchers for example. You know, it's not always something that you're kind of limited on what you can post without going against guidelines or offending people. So it generally, you know, you can take that with a pinch of salt. But for me, Google My Business 100, you can drive much more traffic. You can obviously show up on the maps, everything on those new features with your products, your reviews and if you've got time, Instagram as well. Use that to really capture new audiences, use very visually pleasing images and to really drive people that way as well. Build up a bit of a brand for yourself.

Yeah, I'm with you. I think, you know, and I think the, for me, Google my business is a must have. And then I'd invest daily time with Instagram and I think there's a real opportunity, opportunity to cross link the two as well. Obviously if you've got time to do everything, then the whole lot matters. But there's a lot of commonality, if you like, between Facebook, Twitter, particularly Facebook and Instagram. You know, people are often on both but you know, Google my business. If you're not there, please get there. Next up, particularly if you're a visual business, Instagram and then Facebook and Twitter vital as well. But you know, if you've got to make, make it, make a decision. That's how I would personally start to prioritize my time. So Matt, I thought I knew about Google, my business when we started this webinar. I really appreciate your time. I think what I've taken away from this is that what I hadn't put in my head is that actually this isn't just another bit of Google. It's a way to get yourself the top of Google. It almost gives every business some ways to hack their way to the top of Google without paying them money. So it's much more than just showing up on the maps about offering that up to date information in your business, it's about actively displaying those reviews. Because you know, think how many times you've looked at you search for something, you've got only three stores won't go there. You know that that's the difference between making a sale or not making a sale. And the profile showing up for branded searches, they search for you. You need your logo there, having the correct contact information, the correct opening times and then pay you can show your products and services. I had no idea they'd added that. Right now, now I always assumed that from the Google Shopping link it just shows how fast things move. So any business Matt, just confirm can access all of this free of charge today.

100%.

Matt, you've been an absolute legend. Please, please feel free to get in touch with Matt disclosure here. He runs our SEO for maybe tech. He is the nicest man to deal with. Matt, thank you so much for this. Have you any final words?

No, I think the final words would be repeat and just say if you're not on Google my business get there now, get that verification started. But as Polly said, if anyone's got any further questions, feel free to drop me an email on that email address. And yeah, more than happy to help out.

Matt, thank you very much indeed. You've been a star.

My pleasure. Thank you very much Polly.

Take care. It.