Why is a Google Business Profile so Important?
Everyone’s aware by now of Google’s system for collecting and displaying small business information in a Google Business Profile, but what real value does it have? What does it do for you, the local business?
To understand it let’s take a quick look at a typical Local business search results page broken into sections starting with the top and a typical user’s query:
So someone looking for a local service provider enters a “near me” search and Google does its best to determine both where the search is starting from and which providers are in a range of about 20-30 miles depending on the number of local providers, the population density and other factors known only to Google.
Google then creates a local search engine results page (SERP) which is broken into sections Starting with a block of ads like this:
Now if you are running ads, and you are running them for a near me search, and your daily budget isn’t spent, and the user isn’t being filtered out by your demographic settings, then this could be your ad and it may well be clicked on because the ads at the top of the page tend to have a very high click-through rate.
But let’s say your ad isn’t there for whatever reason, where is your next chance to show up? It’s in the Map 3-pack (or sometimes 4-pack if google includes one company from an ad like in this image below).
Why is it super important? It’s important because this is your new first place to show up in Google’s search results organically without having to outbid the competition for each click. How you land here is a complicated equation but the factors are fairly well known.
It starts with proximity, rank, ratings, the quality of your website, and then a large number of factors many of which are based on how good and how complete your Google Business Profile is built and maintained. See the “More businesses” button under the results? That link takes you to the map and it gets clicked about 10% of the time, even by people who are looking for service providers to come to them.
If a user is looking for a business they will be driving to, the click-through rate to show the map is higher. Here is the important thing to know – the companies listed here in the 3-pack get a very large percentage of all the clicks on this page, Some people tend not to click ads, they would rather click an organic result, and here is their first chance. There are 4 results on this map example, the top one being an ad placement, then 3 free ones, if you are #5 on this list then the only way to be seen is for someone to click the “more businesses” button and find you on the full map results.
Ignoring the ad in the map results for a minute it’s Obvious that being in the top 3 organically is the whole game and moving up from 4 or worse is critical. This is where having a great profile matters. I don’t blame you for thinking “yeah, but there are 10 more organic results under this!” and you would be correct, but who is in those results? Let’s see below.
When the user searched, they typed in “house painters near me”, not “painter rating agencies”, not “The Better Business Bureau” and not “lead generation companies near me” but there they are. If you have a huge local presence, a great website, and a long local history, you and maybe one other company can land in the 10 organic results on page one of the local SERPS, otherwise you are on page 2 or worse.
What’s after this? More ads:
At this point, a very high percentage of users have stopped scrolling down. What’s after this? Other search suggestions and page controls:
Most of the time if you really want to find what you were searching for and not aggregators, lead generators or list makers, you would go to page 2 of the SERPs. Try this in your own backyard, doing a “plumber near me” search (or your own service). You will quickly see that tons of legit businesses you actually were looking for are on page 2 and maybe even more on page 3. They’re problem is they can’t outrank the folks that ate up the first ten spots of the organic search.
The bottom line is this: you can fight it out on all fronts, you can get ads, you can SEO your website and try to climb to page one, but now you can also maximize your Google Business Profile and really move to the top of the organic results – the new top, the one with the map. It’s also quicker and easier to do than traditional SEO on a website.
The good news is that only local product or service providers can get on the map, not the people taking up space in the traditional organic results, and if you want quick results, or are on a budget, this is the first place to begin in your fight for users on google even if you have given up in the past.
So, to sum it all up and answer the question “Why is a Google Business Profile so Important?” It’s important because it’s nearly the last place where you can get on page one of google’s search results without spending a fortune or waiting for months for SEO to kick in (and it still works in combination with ads and SEO).
Which leads to the ultimate question. What are you doing to maximize your Google Business Profile to move from the 4th or worse spot into one of the top 3 spots on the map pack? Why not set aside time for a quick call with GBP Pilot and let us show you what we can do to get you into that map pack for the search terms you most interested in.