Get Found Online: How to Set Up Your Google Business Profile | Quick Tutorial 2024

Good day. Today I'm going to be taking you through a quick tutorial on how to make sure you have your Google Business profile set up so you can make sure you are easily found online. So one of the best resources to get found on Google is to make sure you have an account set up on Google. Of course they're going to promote that the highest. I'm sure you've done a Google search and you have seen that the map pops up with multiple different businesses depending on what you're looking for, and that is all Google business profiles you see there. You can see reviews and so forth. So if you're a small business owner, it's a very important thing to make sure you set up. Even if you don't have a website, this is the first step to make sure you are found online. And if you have this set up properly and do some additional things, which I'll teach you later, you can really rank higher even if you don't have good SEO on your website, really rank higher than your competition.

And we'll dive into that stuff later in the video. But first, let's talk about how to set up your profile. So the first thing you need to do is make sure you have a Google account. If you don't already have a Google account, go set up an email with them and then once that's done, you're good to go. I do suggest if you have a business website and a URL to get a professional email set up so it's like info at whatever your URL or domain name is. But if you don't have that, that's totally fine as well. All you need is a Google account. I'm not going to go into details how to do those things, but if you want me to make a video on how to do those, please let me know down in the comments. Once you have a Google account, the next step to do is to go to google.com/business.

The first thing you want to do is sign in. It's showing here exactly what you're going to do. You're going to create a nice business profile that gives all this information and someone Googles you. It's easy to find. So click manage. Now, once you click manage now it'll take this page. It says start building your business profile. So put in your business name. I am going to build a fake profile for, I'm going to call it San Fran Landscaping. And if you already have a business that has been around for a while and you just haven't set this up, there might actually be a profile set up for you. Google might be aware of your business due to other things you've done online and so forth. So if you see it pop up here, feel free to click it. If you don't see it there, click right there, San Fran Landscaping and then click your business category.

So landscaper, that is exactly what I am. You also do landscape designer, landscape architect, all sorts of things, but we're going for landscaper. There we go. Then we hit next from there. Do you want to add a location so customers can visit like a store or an office? So if you have a brick and mortar location, you'll want to hit yes here. If you have any office outside your home, if you don't want your home to be online, if you do want your home to be online, you can hit yes as well. But if you work from home, I would suggest hitting no here if you are concerned about those things. So I'm going to say yes because in theory, this landscaping business does have a brick and mortar office that people can come to and we're going to enter an address. It is in the United States, 2, 2, 8, 1.

Let's go Market Street, San Francisco. There we go. San Francisco, California. It already knows my zip and then I hit next. So it's again, double checking. It looks at your business, might already have a business profile on Google search. So this is just because I'm making stuff up, it thinks that I could be a preexisting business. So I'm going to say none of these, but again, you might come up on this step. If you've been in business for a while, do you provide deliveries or home and office visits? Yes, so I am a landscape service, so I do provide home visits. Add the areas you serve. I know it says optional, but it's not actually optional. This is a mandatory element in my opinion. If you want to show up for the people in your area, for the people that you serve in that area, this you need to fill out.

This will dramatically change how you rank when someone searches for your type of business in their area. So I'm going to put in San Francisco and I'm also going to add, because we're going to go out to Marin and then to add more to it, we'll add San Rafael. There we go. Start typing there. It's there we go. So those are the main areas, main cities that I serve. One thing that's really important when you're putting in your service areas is to make sure you only put in areas that are within two hours of your hub location, your office location. If you go beyond that, that's actually against Google's guidelines and we'll get you flagged or they'll just pull them off for you. So make sure everything you put in there is with a two hour radius from your hub of your office address. Next, put in the phone number, (707) 555-1234 and the website and then hit next.

So this is the second most important part of this whole process. This is the getting verified section you absolutely need to get. You absolutely need to make sure you go through this verification process. If you don't do this, you're not going to show up on Google. And then what was the point of doing it? So Google wants to make sure that you are a legit business that is truly providing the services that you say you're providing. There are different things that pop up here. It's really nice. This came up with the phone code. This is one of the easiest things to do if this pops up, utilize it. It will either text you or give you a call and you can verify through that. So it's very quick. The next is an email code, so you can do it through your email. And again, same deal, very quick process.

You can do a business video. This is becoming a more common thing for Google to do, especially with brand new businesses or people that have no prior history with Google, I already have a business email through Google and I've been using it for years, so it's trusting me a little bit more, giving me those other options. But if you just set up your email and you're just doing this for the first time, this might be the only option it gives. And this can be a little complex to accomplish, but it's not that hard. You just need to make sure you hit some important elements. Number one, you really want to make sure it stays to a one to two minute long video. Number two is you want to start the video outside showing either local businesses around you or street signs around you. Then enter into your business.

It's a great idea to have your business locked and actually show you unlocking it if you have a brick and mortar. That way it can see that you have ownership and you can enter this building. And then once you're on the inside show products, show tools and things you use. Show business cards potentially show a bill that was sent to that location and those elements will really help Google feel confident. If you're a service business and you don't actually have a brick and mortar location, same deal. You want to start outside your business, go into your office space or interior location, show bills that are in your business name sent to that address. Show business cards, show tools and things you use if you're a plumber or an HVAC or something of that nature, show you unlocking your vehicle with your branded vehicle outside. Things like that will really help Google feel confident about it.

And again, you want to try and keep it to one to two minutes, so it could be a little complex, practice it one time and then nail it the second time. There are some other verification options available that might pop up for you. The classic one, like the one I did back in the day was actually receiving a postcard from Google sent to your address. That does obviously take a little bit longer and you need to make sure it doesn't get lost and you submit it as soon as you get it. But that comes with a little code that looks like this. And then there's also a potential of doing a live call as well. So whichever one pops up, whichever one is most convenient, go ahead and do that. And if you do have to do a business video, just make sure you plan out how you're going to shoot it before you actually get started.

If you want me to make a video specifically around this, please let me know down on the comments. What I'm going to do. This is not a real business. I'm going to click verify later. Now that you've verified your business or in my case going to do it later, you can add your services. So if you're a landscaper, it's already going to fill in a lot of options or if you are a common business, it's going to fill in a lot of options of what your services are. So I don't do artificial turf installation, but I do concrete masonry, desert landscaping, driveway landscaping. You can go through this. You can uncheck the ones that might already be checked for you or check additional ones and also you can add some custom ones if it doesn't have it in here. So you can see if you have a pretty common business, it's probably in here.

There's a lot of options Once you've selected all these and these are also important, they do help with your search results so people are searching for those specific things. Next, we want to add business hours. This is extremely important. Do not leave this blank. Google wants to see that you do have proper hours and it's also really important if you have your hours listed any place else, such as, let's say you're a hair salon and you have a booking site and has hours on there, make sure these hours align with those hours. If they don't, it could get flagged and it could get pulled. So make sure you pick your days that you're open. Next step is messaging. This is a great feature to have on if you can manage it. If you are willing to accept messages throughout the day that come directly from Google, you can leave this on and go ahead and try and manage it.

If you don't manage this well, Google might turn it off. Google is really serious about making sure that they provide great experiences for their customers and if you aren't providing an experience that is up to their level, they might just turn something off like this. I'm going to turn it off for now. Add a business description. So this is a really important element, but it's not quite as important as some people think it is. This is not a place to focus on keywords. This is really a place just to identify who your business is. I would make sure you do some things to edify your business such as how long you've been in business, maybe some awards that you've won, things of that nature. What makes your business unique? This is a great place to put that in. One note about this is actually do not put any promotions in here or phone numbers.

That's also against Google guidelines and could get you flagged. The next element is to upload photos of your work. This is a place to showcase your products, your services, your location, a happy customers, your vehicles work you've done in the past. This is a great place to keep it fresh. Google loves businesses that populate this area and regularly revisit it. Do not just put stock photography in here. That will not work well for you. Put in true photos that you have taken or had a professional photographer take of your products or services. The other thing that's really neat about this is I actually have a client who is a massage therapist and she updates this once a month or so, adds a photo or two, and the day after she does that, she gets at least one or two inquiries. So it is a very impactful thing.

Google wants you to use their tools and elements to grow your business, and if you do utilize them regularly, you will rank better. Next is to claim your $500 free advertising credit. I'm going to skip this for now. You can always pick this up later. It's available in your account. There we go. Your edits will be visible once you are verified it continue, and then that will take you to this page where you can see your elements. Main thing that you see here is customers cannot see your business information until you're verified. I'm not going to do that process. I'm actually going to delete all this because it's not a real business and I don't want to take up the space. Then we can see the beginning of our Google business profile. We can see our information here. We can see that it's not publicly visible and I'm going to delete all this so it won't ever be publicly visible because I'm not verified.

But once you get verified, this will all show. It'll actually pop up in the right hand corner and it's really nice. The number one thing to do though, other than adding photos regularly is to get reviews. See this little button right here? If we had some reviews, we could click that and then see the reviews that are there. There would also be a little button above that that would say get more reviews, and then that would give you a copyable link that you can email out to clients and get reviews. I strongly suggest doing this. This is the number one way to start ranking above your competition. If you focus on getting a lot of positive five star reviews, Google will skyrocket you to the top. This is a case where quality is more important than quantity, but if you can get quality and quantity, you're going to be doing amazing.

Another thing to do with reviews is actually to respond to your reviews that you receive. If you do this, it shows Google that you are doing more customer engagement and has been shown to increase rankings as well. So when you get those positive reviews, throw on a thank you, send a couple additional sentences of appreciating their business and how you'd like to serve them in the future, and that will greatly help as well. There you go. That is how you set up your Google Business profile. It's a very important thing to do to be found online. It is a quick and simple process as long as the verification process isn't too complex. I hope you found this video helpful. Please share it with any new business owner that you know or someone who hasn't set this up, and I hope you have a great day and great success.