How to Set Up Google My Business | EP 760

How to Set Up Google My Business

Read the full episode transcript below:

00:28 David Blackmon: Welcome to another episode of WP The Podcast, i’m David Blackmon.

00:35 Tim Strifler: And i’m Tim Strifler

00:38 David Blackmon: Today in episode 760 we’re going to talk about something that is really important. How to set up google my business. If you’re a local business and you depend on people that are using these things to find you or computers and they’re looking up whatever your type of business is, in this day and age it’s really really important to set up your google my business properly. Otherwise, i’m going to share some experience with you after Tim tells you what google my business is, why it’s super important. Tim why don’t you tell everybody what the heck is google my business?

01:17 Tim Strifler: Yeah, so google my business is essentially for local businesses. It’s a local google business profile that shows up when users in your area are searching for relevant keywords. And so for example if you type in a google mexican food near me, uh it’s going to pull up some restaurants that are near you based off your ip address, or if you type in you know mexican food near your city, um and then it’s gonna show you uh some listings. Right, those are google my business profiles, and so you can typically see uh reviews, you can see you, uh you can like hover over it or click on it’ll pop up kind of a summary that will.  Then show you their phone, number their website uh you know, maybe some services they offer that sort of thing. And so it basically is a profile for local businesses on google that show up in maps show up in within the listing itself when you just do a general search. Not searching the map, so really important way for local businesses to get found. Because a lot of times that’s where people start and end their search when they’re searching for something like mexican food or computer repair or whatever it may be.

02:37 David Blackmon:  And it’s it just think of back in the day, you had brick and mortar business and you had a sign on the front of your door you know. It had your hours of operation it had your phone number and all this stuff this is essentially your digital version of that. It’s going to give it’s going to let the user know all the information they need to know, what time you close, what time you open, what type of food, like Tim said, reviews. That kind of stuff, and it’s very very important. There are things that you have to do otherwise you’re kind of peeing in the wind, and that that means it’s not it doesn’t happen really good, it gets all over you and it’s messy and it’s no fun. And if you don’t do google, google my business, you just odds are you’re not really going to get found that well. Yes google indexes all websites regardless of if you go in the search console and stuff, however google my business is hugely important and you have to apply for it. They will send you a card in the mail with a very specific number, so that they can verify that you’re actually a business in that city, they may have digitized it now, i feel like they probably have but they used to you had to let them know that you’re a physical business in this town in order for them to prove that they had to verify it by mailing you a document with a code on it. And when you got that code you had to go to google my business and enter it, and until then they were not accepting you as a google my business. Well how is this hurting you when you’re not using google my business? Perfect example, i’m traveling and my i was having some issues with my water pump in my rv. And so i’m calling in rv tech. Well i’m obviously in the web business I’m familiar, i’m also familiar with the fact that rv repairmen are busier than doctors see in patients i mean these guys are booked out months in advance, because there’s just not enough of them. The rv industry has exploded over they keep breaking rec sales records, every single year for rvs, and there’s just not enough shops or mobile repair technicians to fix, you know things. And i know this, so i’m thinking the odds of me getting someone and getting in with someone is probably not good, so i’ve got to fix it myself but i just want to ask them some questions. And so i’m at the time i was in um let’s see where I was. I was actually in Portland Maine and i googled rv repair you know near me, kind of like Tim said. And the maps come up first and they have the listing there with all the businesses that have their google my business set up properly, and they’re listed there. Well i found one down I decided, you know what these guys are going to be insanely busy because they did their business. Right, and they’re getting a million phone calls let me see if i can find one that isn’t and sure enough i did i found Chris. And Chris was down there not even showing up in the maps you know, and he was buried. I want to say he might even been on page two which we know if you’re on page two you might as well be on page a thousand, because nobody’s going past page one of google. And so i called him. Sure enough Chris had some time to talk to me and you know when he was done helping me, i decided i was gonna help him and educate him on why he needed to go take care of specifically google my business. And that was his issue he hadn’t been verified by google, so google’s not going to put him in there with the map and the preview and all the stuff. You’ve got to be verified first. So i told him to take care of that as quickly as possible because even if he shows up number 10, and all these other guys because he’s new show up ahead of him, it won’t matter. They’re so busy anyways people are going to get down to number 10 in the rv business because nobody’s available, and but you got to give yourself a chance. And when i explain this to him and the only reason i found him is because Tim and i are internet gurus, we’re web gurus, and we can find stuff, and you know, we know how the web works and stuff. So um it was really good and this just just happened recently you know and he was very appreciative because he said you know, he said i’ve only been getting about four calls a month and i really don’t understand it because everybody is so busy, they have more work than they can shake a stick at and he had no idea that the whole reason, why he wasn’t getting calls. So super important, if you’re a brick and mortar and you’re in a town and you have a a business that you know requires google my business to be set up properly. So make sense Tim?

08:07 Tim Strifler: Yep absolutely. Yeah bottom line uh google my business is going to help you get found that’s why it’s amazing, and uh yeah if you want you or your client to get calls from google unlike this guy that David talked to no one is calling him, because no one could find him. Yeah you’re definitely going to want to set up google my business.

08:30 David Blackmon: Yeah the funny thing was google indexed his website which even though he did you know it indexed it. But it was buried and it wasn’t because google when you do searches when people do searches for local businesses it always shows that map and stuff first and most people don’t go below that. They don’t go looking at individual websites they look at that because there’s so much information in there reviews contact information hours of operation directions, all of the things you need are right there. So you don’t need to go and the only reason i found him was because he had a website it had been indexed but it was buried deep in you know. So Chris if you ever come across this episode i hope you’re getting tons of business my friend. All right, tomorrow we’ve got another great episode. Tim until tomorrow we’ll see you then.

09:43 Tim Strifler: Take care, bye.