A feature within your Google Business Profile is the ability to create compelling posts to showcase the happenings within your company.
Most people don’t realize the benefits of posting onto your Google Business Profile. Many brands, including Fortune 500 Companies, neglect posting all together.
I’m going to explain why your company should be taking advantage of GBP posting. I will also share examples of posts I like and dislike. By the end of this article, you’ll see how easy it is to capitalize on posting onto your business profile.
First, I want to make sure you have a better understanding of Google Business Profile and the power associated with it.
Table of Contents
- 1 Understanding Google Business Profile
- 2 Importance of Google Business Profile for Local SEO
- 3 Does Posting on Google Business Profile Help with SEO?
- 4 Google Business Profile Post Examples
- 5 How To Create Google Business Profile Posts
- 6 Where Do Google Business Profile Posts Populate?
- 7 How to View Analytics on Google Business Profile Posts
- 8 In Closing
Understanding Google Business Profile
Your business profile gives your company the ability to share information with current and prospective customers. This information includes your business name, address, phone number, description, primary and secondary categories, photos and hours of operation (to name a few).
Below is a visual showing you the backend of our Google Business Profile. It takes less than 30-minutes (in most instances) to set-up a Google Business Profile.
The information displayed in your business profile won’t change frequently. The posts within your business profile give you the ability to share new information on a consistent basis.
Related Article: How to optimize your Google Business Profile
Importance of Google Business Profile for Local SEO
Your Google Business Profile is an integral part of your local SEO strategy. If your business profile is populating prominently in the local pack for relevant search queries, this can lead to more exposure, website traffic and phone calls to your business.
While making posts onto your business profile won’t directly improve your local SEO rankings, there are benefits to posting onto Google (more on this to come). The bottom line is that when you have such a powerful entity in your business profile, you should be taking advantage of every feature they have, including posting.
I wanted to provide you with a visual example of our business profile ranking prominently in the local pack for the query, “Columbus SEO Company.” It’s important to understand that the information from your business profile is what pulls into the local pack.
Does Posting on Google Business Profile Help with SEO?
Making posts on your business profile won’t improve your local SEO rankings. We’ve seen no impact with keyword ranking improvement in the local pack once we started making more posts from our business profile.
That being said, when you make posts from GBP, this can drive more clicks to your website and a higher click through rate on your business profile.
We don’t recommend posting on GBP with the sole intention of improving your local pack rankings. We recommend making posts for the following reasons:
- Fresh Content
- You can promote new happenings at your business. Whether you want to share a blog post, promote a product or event or share new information, GBP posts allow for you to distribute fresh and relevant content.
- Get in Front of Current and Prospective Customers
- When you post on your GBP, the post will populate when people search for your brand name on Google (more on this below). This is a great opportunity to get your message in front of current and prospective customers.
Related Blog: 25 Unreal Google My Business Stats
Google Business Profile Post Examples
It’s amazing how many businesses don’t make posts from their business profile. I did a manual search for 50 businesses and less than 10% of these businesses, ranging from Fortune 500 to local businesses, were making posts from their business profile. Below are some examples of posts I liked.
La Jeune Marie
This bridal boutique is constantly posting on their Google Business profile. In the example below, which you can view here, they did a great job of showcasing video content. The verbiage within the post is simple since they let the video do the talking. The call-to-action aligns with what they are looking to accomplish, which is for someone to book an appointment.
Roto Rooter
Despite having numerous locations, Roto Rooter is distributing posts onto their GBP pages within each market. We feel the posts from their page would perform better if they were offering discounts or promotions. The photo below doesn’t feel as personalized as La Jeune Marie’s but they are making an effort to distribute fresh content in each local market.
The Media Captain
We love to showcase success stories on our Google Business Profile [view example]. If people are searching for our brand name, we want them to see the work we’ve successfully done for other clients. We have our graphic design team come up with graphics that will grab people’s attention on Google.
How To Create Google Business Profile Posts
Below are step-by-step instructions on how to create a Google Business Profile post.
Note: Our agency manages posting onto many Google Business Profiles for our clients. We love using HubSpot’s social media scheduler, so we can schedule our posts through one centralized location, without having to login to numerous accounts.
Step 1: Click Into Posts
Upon accessing your business profile, on the left hand side you will see “Posts.” You’ll want to click on this for the ability to create a post.
Once you’ve clicked into posts, you’ll see on the right hand side there’s a blue button. You’ll want to click on this and it will give you the option to create your Google Business Profile post.
Step 3: Create the Post
You can choose from one of the options below when creating your post. The messaging and structure of each post will be slightly different depending on which type of post you choose to create.
- Covid 19 Update
- Offer
- What’s New
- Event
- Product
In the example below, we selected the “What’s New” option and promoted our blog on How to get more eCommerce reviews. You’ll notice we wrote verbiage to accompany the post, we uploaded an image, selected the “learn more” button and provided the link to the blog post URL. When you complete your post, you click on “Publish” and your post will go live!
Where Do Google Business Profile Posts Populate?
If you do a branded search for “The Media Captain,” in the knowledge panel you will see the Google Business Profile posts populate in a prominent position on the right hand side. On mobile, you’ll see the posts populate on the first page of your branded search in the “What’s New” section.
From my research, Google Business Profile posts populate for brand searches the high majority of the time, if you don’t have issues with your GBP.
How to View Analytics on Google Business Profile Posts
You can view the metrics for each of your Google Business Profile posts easily. Within your GBP dashboard, when you view past posts, you will see views and clicks.
Below you can see that one of our recent posts generated 439 views and 1 click. The larger your brand is, the more impressions and clicks you’ll receive.
In Closing
Posting onto your business profile is a great way for your brand to distribute messaging onto Google for current and prospective clients to see.
There’s no excuse for you not to be taking advantage of Google Business Profile posting since it’s simple and effective.
Since you now have a better understanding of business profile posting and the ease of distributing posts, there’s no excuse for you not to get started with posts for your business.