Double check your opening hours and phone number as these often change over time or the business has new owners or management.Ensure your details are up-to-date (previously you might not have accepted Credit Cards).Firstly claim your listing, as often many people don’t.I wrote a guide on this last year which should be a good starting point, but to pick out some of the key points – I would strongly suggest: Beyond that, my suspicion is that nothing else will matter after the change. It’s super important to use the actual business name and choose the correct categories as well. It’s absolutely important that the number listed is a local number, and that it matches the number displayed on the landing page it links to. What are the most important things businesses can do to optimise their Google local listings? It’s the centerpiece and fundamental to any local campaign! You simply don’t exist if you don’t create a Google my business page for your local business. Without it you won’t be appearing on any local map listings in the SERPs which Google displays for the vast majority of local queries.Ĭritical. GMB is incredibly important for local SEO. If you are searching on a mobile device you will see that organic results are now shown below the fold (you have to scroll down to see them) and there are now only the top three Google local results being shown – so due to the on-page real estate Google local can take up, there’s huge traffic opportunities for being listed for competitive searches. The increased visibility that Google has placed around Google Local listing results on mobile has meant that Google My Business is essential for local SEO. But – the GMB dashboard still feeds the info to Maps and the Knowledge Box for a business, so it’s still of vital importance to claim your location and fill out your info. There’ll now simply be a social interface (on a social network that no one is using). GMB is incredibly important, but it’s going to lose prominence now that they’re removing all location information from the GMB listings. How important is Google My Business for local SEO? Kevin Gibbons, MD at Digital Marketing agency Blueglass, and a contributor to SEW.

Max Holloway, Senior Search Manager at Pi Datametrics.Greg Gifford, Director of Search and Social at DealerOn.

Google business seo