Local Market Monopoly

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Intro: You're listening to Local Market Monopoly with Clarence Fisher uncovering the tools, tactics and strategies, the most successful small businesses used to dominate their local market and own the block.

Clarence Fisher: Hey, welcome back to Local Market Monopoly. It's Clarence Fisher, your host, and this is episode 68 where we're going to discuss the dos and don'ts of optimizing your Google Business profile for maximum exposure. Notice I said Google Business Profile, not Google My Business. I know a lot of people are still saying Google my Business, but it changed again, remember it used to be Google, used to be Google Plus, and I'm not sure, I don't remember what it was before that. And then Google My business, which they kept for quite a while and it got known quite a bit. And now it is Google Business Profile. Imagine us. We have to change all of our SOPs every time something like that happens. But anyway, Google business profiles, when you hear someone say that, you hear me say that is what we are talking about. Your Google listing, that thing that shows up right next to the maps, there are some dos and don'ts for optimizing that so that you can have your maximum exposure.
One of the, I'll say one, the biggest dos is to make sure that it is 100% complete when you log in. You don't want to have any information missing that they're asking for. That is going to, that alone will help you rank higher in the local search results. Because most business owners, I'm not going to put this on the owners I'm going to, if it's you that did your Google Business profile, that's fine, but most, usually there's someone else that has claimed the Google Business Profile and they're making sure that you know, have a little description and that your phone number is correct. And that's pretty much it. So have that you go look at it or have that person your marketing lead, look at it and just make sure that everything is complete. You also, your business name, your category number one, Hey, here's a tip.
Look at, type in your main keyword that someone would be searching in order to find business like yours, you and your competitors. And if you're not, number one, look at what the category is that the number one ranked profile is using. A lot of times you can get a boost by just replicating that. So if, here's the thought behind this. Google is weighing heavily whatever category that number one listing is. And a lot of times you'll see number one and number two are using the same category. Number one, two, and five are using the same category, these who are ranked in these positions. And then you're using a different category. So change your category if it makes sense, if you're not ranking in that top three. And then make sure you have a description. Put more than a couple of paragraphs here and make sure you put your keywords in there so that you have a really complete description there.
Upload photos, again, you can look at, a lot of times we're looking at the top, the person of beat is the profile. That's number one. How many photos do they have? We got to get more photos. Photos than that. But don't just raw photos just to have photos. You really want to have some really good photos. There's an episode that we talked with my buddy Mike Tedford from Tedford Photography, or is it Mike Photography? But we cover the ultimate business and personal brand photo shoot, like how to get great photos for your Google business profile and then also your brand. That's episode 20. If you go to the website, Local Market Monopoly, and then you can, at the top right, there's a search bar, just hit Mike Tedford or hit photo and search and then that'll come up. But it's episode 20 and we talk about in there how to come up with great poses and pictures that you can put on your Google business profile to make it stand out to increase your visibility.
So make sure you have that. And then keywords, I'll tell you a don't what not to do is stuff your keyword in your title. Now, we used to be able to do that some years ago, but now Google is penalizing people for that and it can be hard to come back from, so please resist the urge to put your keyword in the title if you have or, and it doesn't make sense, I guess is what I'm saying, because it is difficult to come back from one of those suspensions. You can come back from it. We've done it before. We did it with our own with Tulsa Internet Marketing before they realized our name is Tulsa Internet Marketing. We got penalized and no joke it took, we were on the second page, and this is so embarrassing. We were on the second page for over a year with everything else, correct, all the backlinks, all everything.
Took us over a year to get out of that what's called sandbox. Now here's the beautiful thing. We do that still because we practice stuff on our profiles before we ever roll things out so that we catch all of that. So that is a good thing that, and so it's like, Hey, don't roll that out, whatever we do, because that doesn't work, you know? You know what I mean? So anyway, alright, get back on track. Let's see, what are we going to tell you? Optimizing? Yeah, we talk about the photos and you want to be consistent. Your NAP, NAP name, address, phone number needs to be consistent across all the online directories, as many as you possibly can. I'm going to send you back to the website again, Local Market Monopoly. And if you search for episode, what is it? Episode 64, when we talk about local SEO, I give you the one two punch and one two step for making sure that your site is in all of the online directories that it can, and these other directories really need to match whatever you put in Google.
So you fill out Google completely and then you take that information and make sure that these other directories match that.
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And then also do not. I mean, please answer your reviews. Please, please, please. We are looking for a, we just got a, well, not just, it's been five months that we have Zoe and she is a five month old Shitzu.
She is more than that. But we're going through this whole, what do you call, socialization type thing where the dogs have to be socialized with other dogs and other people and all of this stuff that is really important for their mental development and all this stuff. So we're learning all of this and I, we serve a lot of veterinarians. We have a lot of vet clients, and I was asking one of our clients during a coaching call, how do two introverts, cause my wife and I are both introverts. How do two introverted people get this dog socialized? Because in our natural day we don't see very many people. We, we both work from home. We've built our life to where, and my team is all remote. I do have an office where we get mail, but that is pretty much it to the extent. So how do you socialize a dog that needs to be socialized?
And one really good recommendation that she gave me was doggie daycare. I'm like, whoa, I didn't think about that. Yes, doggy daycare. So we got to looking for that and just this morning my wife is giving me the rundown about these daycares, doggy daycares that she's seeing. And one of them, she's like, well, the bad reviews, we do this for a living. So we understand that there are bad reviews, but what she said is they're not answering their reviews, they're not answering the bad reviews. And there's a bad review that's like, Hey, I dropped my dog off and before I knew it, I was getting called, my dog needed stitches, my dog got attacked and my dog needs stitches. I'm like, did they answer that? And the person who left the reviews, they won't even take ownership of it. So I'm like, please tell me they answer that review no.
And then look any further. And they're not answering any of their reviews. Well, guess what? This is a prime example of when I say you're not answering your negative reviews just for that person that left a negative review. You're answering it for the thousands of people that see that negative review, who want to know that you will take ownership if something happens and you're going to handle it. And they're not doing that. So guess what? We're not taking our precious Zoe there, and I can't imagine how many other people are seeing this and avoiding even calling to have a conversation with this business because of what we're seeing online in this review. We're assuming and already putting together our story because of what we're seeing and their lack of any response. And so this was going on with another daycare, same thing. And so the third one, she told me about a bad review and this daycare responded to the bad review, responds to, if you look, they're responding to all the good reviews as well.
They're having a conversation with the people, whether they leave a bad review or good review. That's where we're taking her because they are showing, they're demonstrating that they are not going to hide and say, well, oh, well, we just don't want you to come back anymore. And they're not they're going to take ownership. That's how important it is to respond to these reviews. If you don't have a way to respond to reviews, go to episode 25 and we actually, in the show notes page of that, give away some review templates for you. We actually, the whole episode is about how to respond to negative reviews and then in the show notes, we actually give you the templates. I think it's or slash review response. We'll put a link in this show notes for that. Okay, yeah, that would be easier. So these are the points.
Go to Google Business Profile, make sure that it is claimed. Number one, you want to verify it. They're going to call your business. I don't think they're doing postcards anymore. We just had kind of a run in about a week ago and they weren't allowing a postcard. You may have to turn off, if you have an auto attendant that says, press one for this. You may have turned that off for a second, but claim your Google Business Profile. Make sure that it's totally optimized. Get some photos in there, preferably photos of your team. I know a lot of people don't want to take pictures of team or put team photos up there because people may not be around anymore, but put some real, real people up there or pictures around the office, around your business in there. Make sure you respond to all negative reviews, all great reviews, have the conversation and then push out, get your all of that information.
Push pushed out amongst as many other online directories as you possibly can. Oh, and lemme tell you this, this is something we'll close with this one. A lot of people aren't realizing that two things people can message you from your Google Business Profile now. So answer those. You're getting leads that way. They just click the button and they message. And then also when you make a social media post, you can post that on your Google Business Profile and it counts as content. If you remember like your website, you want blog posts so that Google knows that you're putting new content on your website and then they favor your site. The same thing happens with your Google Business Profile listing. Now, make sure that when you're posting on social media, you're also posting on Google Business Profile. If you post on your blog, log into Google and post that on Google and that will tell Google that you have new content always happening and they are going to give you the preferential treatment.
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Closing: We appreciate you listening to Local Market Monopoly. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe to the show and visit localmarketmonopoly.com for more resources that will help you dominate your local market and own the block.