How to maximize the reach of your Google business profile.

For those of us serving local markets, the Google business profile may be the most powerful weapon in your search arsenal. Formally known as Google my business, Google business profile tends to be a lead generating machine for service-based clients and others that are approaching a local market. So this makes the question how do I best adapt my google business profile to get maximum reach? This is a question we get from clients in prospects alike often so this article is intended to address that question and give value added information regarding maximizing the geographical reach of your Google business profile.

The reality of a situation is there are lots of variables that tie into the geographical reach of your Google business profile. Things like population density and business density in the area, how many other businesses with similar categories are in the area, age of the profile, and a multitude of other factors play into whether or not google decides that your profile is the one to be served given the proximity of the searcher. We normally tell clients that a realistic reach of a Google my business profile and a medium to large city is going to be roughly 5 to 10 miles on a well optimized profile. And large cities like New York and Chicago that reach may shrink simply due to the density of businesses and people in those large metropolitan areas. Conversely that range may grow and smaller cities that aren’t as densely populated. Now that we have hit on a realistic geographical reach for a Google business profile, let’s talk about how to maximize the reach within the realm of reality.

Things you can do on your website to help maximize reach.

The reality of what we’re trying to accomplish here is we’re trying to explain to Google what we do and where we do it. Although the Google business profile is separate from your website that you own and likely manage, that website plays into the larger picture. The reason the website becomes a variable is because the website is linked to the Google business profile. We all understand that with artificial intelligence and items like this that Google is getting smarter and smarter every single day. With this of mine Google is still not to the point and arguably may never be to the point that if we don’t train us and explain to it what we do and where are we doing it will never be able to figure it out. With this in mind below are some items that can help to “train “Google on where are you operate and what type of services you offer.

Create pages about local areas in your city to enhance reach. For instance if you live in a large city like San Diego you would want to write individual pages about San Diego and about other smaller municipalities within the San Diego metro area. We are linking of these is crucial which could be a long explanation but this is a good place to start.
Embrdfing Google maps on other pages can be helpful as well. Specifically if you’re able to reference things like points of interest in different areas of the metro area.
Driving directions on the website or another helpful tool. Well this may seem old-school as we all have GPS on our phone these days driving directions from different points in the city to where your Google business profile is located can help google understand that people might travel from those parts of the city to you or vice versa to complete services that you offer.
Last but not least, listing service areas or mention of service areas on the Google business profile landing page is also helpful. My Laing page I simply mean whatever the main link is from the Google business profiles to your website. Flushing out that page can help in a variety of ways, but at a minimum listing service areas and potentially embedding Google map can be helpful as well.

Things you can do outside of the website to help maximize your reach.

Just like the website itself can help train Google activities outside of the website can also help drinkable. Well this could be a very long list, we will give some of the top things that you can do to help train Google about what you do and where are you do it.

Building high-quality citations – If you don’t know what citations are easiest way to explain it is that it’s just an instance of your business name address phone number and website listed on a directory type site. The reason that these citations are important as they can help bolster the authority of your Google business profile. And doing this, that can help expand the geographical reach your goal business profile.
Press release activity – Generally people don’t think of press releases when they think of Google maps. No big surprise! The reason press releases can help is you can do nothing beds of your Google business profile within those press releases which intern can help the links back to the Google Business profile. In doing so I can help again Chris the authority I have a Google business profile and hopefully the reach as well.

Things you can do o the Google business profile to help increase your reach.

Now that we’ve talked about how to increase reach use your website and using other websites outside of your own, let’s talk about a few things that you can do to the Google business profile itself. Bear in mind this is nowhere near an exhaustive list, however these are good places to start.

Service areas. This may seem obvious but we’ve seen it 100 times make sure that you have listed all realistic service areas for your business. Even if it’s an area that you don’t often go if it’s somewhere that you might ever go list it now.
Reviews. When responding to reviews it is the best practice to mention the area in which the service took place. Regardless of whether it was the major city or one of the suburbs it all can help optimize the profile.
Services. In addition to listing out service areas if possible and natural list the areas that you serve at times within the service descriptions themselves.

Summary

Optimizing a Google business profile can be a complicated thing but I hope that this list is useful. Generally people that are trying to do these types of things or testing lots of different items to see what works and what doesn’t work before they apply it to their site or client site in our case. As a general rule you just want to try and tell Google as many different ways as possible where are you operate in the services that you offer within that geography. Wow this may seem overly simplistic this is the general an over arching idea of optimizing a Google my business profile, now Google business profile, for maximum geographic reach. I hope it helps!