Picture this: you’re in a new city for the day and looking for a comfortable coffee shop to work remotely. Likely, the first place you’ll turn to is Google/Google Maps to get a search of shops in your area. What are some of the characteristics you take into account when choosing a spot? Is it the reviews, proximity, photos, or if they make your go-to-drink: a large white chocolate mocha?
Your customers are doing the same thing for your business. 97 percent of people found out more about a local company through the internet in 2017. This means your small business needs a presence online if you want to take advantage of that visibility. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a fancy term for how visible your website is when someone searches a topic and has been proven to have a better ROI than social media, yet many dedicate less time to it comparably.
Google My Business (GMB) is a user-friendly platform that helps put your website at the top of someone’s search (on Google specifically). The better maintained your online presence is here, the more likely your page will be found and the more traffic you will have at your business. This is a great place to start for someone with limited time, money, or experience with SEO. This is free, takes less time, and requires less SEO understanding to make your business stand out.
This can certainly be intimidating. You may be wondering where to start. If you’d like, our team at Bankable would be more than happy to help our clients with this sort of thing. Reach out to your loan officer or point of contact and we will help you set up your own GMB profile.
Check out another blog about GMB we wrote: https://bankable.org/guide-to-google-business-profile/