Local SEO Do It Yourself Guide Tip #1

Claim Your Google My Business Account

What is Google My Business?

Google My Business (GMB) is basically how your register your local business with Google. Like a Facebook or LinkedIn page, Google My Business tells people about your business. Mostly, it's just the basic information about your business - phone number, address, logo, services offered, hours of operation, etc...

GMB also controls how your business appears on Google Maps. For destination businesses - like restaurants, doctors, lawyers or retail stores - people often use Google Maps to find businesses near them, or near where they will be later, so it's critical you have your account optimized to get more people to your store or office.

GMB also allows you to reply to reviews left by Google Users so you can thank them for leaving a great reviews, or perhaps explain to the world how your business will strive to do better for a bad review.

For a local business, Google My Business is one of the most powerful marketing tools you have - and it's FREE. In our experience, when a small business has a well optimized Google My Business account, MORE PEOPLE WILL SEE YOUR GMB INFORMATION THAN YOUR WEBSITE BY A FACTOR OF AT LEAST 10. So if you get 1000 visitors to your website each month, you can expect over 10,000 impressions on your Google My Business account.

By contrast, a well liked Facebook page might only get 100 views each month for that same business. Yet, for some reason, most business owners spend hours on Facebook each month, and no time on their Google My Business account.

Claim Your Google My Business Account

(If you have already claimed and verified your Google My Business, then scroll down and skip to the next section.)

Sign into Google.com. It's best if you have an email address that uses the same domain name as your website. If you don't have that, then use whatever business email address you most frequently use for the business. We highly recommend using an email address that only the business owner has access to. You can add other employees as managers in the future.
Go to Business.Google.com.
Enter your business's name and try to find it in the list.
If you don't find you business, click the link that allows you to add a business manually.
Follow the instructions on adding your business and confirming any information that Google has.
If you work from home, enter your home address - you can hide it from the public later if you would like (although we don't recommend that for SEO reasons.)
Once the process is complete, Google will mail you a verification code (yes, the use snail mail for this part).
Wait 2-3 weeks for the verification envelope to arrive - make sure everyone that gets the mail at your business address is on the look-out for this envelope from Google - it's one of those envelopes where you tear off the three sides to see what's inside.
That envelope contains a verification code - log back into business.google.com and find the verification messages - follow the instructions to enter the verification code.
You now own your Google My Business account.