GMB For Edmonton Businesses

Remember the Yellow Pages? You might even still get them in your mail every once in a while, but I doubt you’ve used them in ages. After all, you can just go online and search for businesses.

Here’s something that you might not know, however – not all business searches are the same. Google has their own Yellow Pages-esque directory called Google My Business (GMB), and if your business has one, it’s going to do much better in search results than if it doesn’t.

Let me show you:

Let’s say my car just broke down in Queen Mary Park. I don’t know the area well, so I did a search for “mechanic in queen mary park”. Here’s part of the results page from Google:

Look at that beautiful result – a map with nearby auto shops, their ratings, whether or not they’re open, and a link to their websites. This is called a 3-Pack (or, affectionately, a Snack Pack). You can only show up in 3-Pack results if you have a GMB. When I click on one of the results:

I get expanded results, showing me more auto shops in the area, and more information about the one I clicked (qays). The additional information includes in-depth reviews, photos, questions and answers, and a whole lot more. Perhaps most importantly, there are call-to-action buttons at the top, including a button to call the business directly.

Edmonton is a big city – lots of people, lots of neighbourhoods. When someone is near your business, you want them to find it when they make a search like “mechanic in queen mary park” or “auto shop near me”, or even just “body shop”. Setting up your GMB will help clients who are actively looking for your products and services find you before they find your competitors.

 

Setting Up Your GMB

Setting up your GMB is simple. Go on this page and look up your business name. One of three things will happen:

The business will already be claimed. In this case, you’ll get a message that looks like this:

More often than not, that means someone on your team has already set up a GMB for your business. If you don’t think that’s the case, you can use the Request Access button and get everything sorted out with Google.

In the second case, your business will already be listed with GMB, but will be unclaimed. That means you may be reaping some of the advantages of GMB, like showing up in 3-Packs, but none of the benefits of optimization. What’s worse, other people will be able to edit your GMB (more on that later). If your GMB is unclaimed but listed, you’ll get the following message:

From there, simply follow the instructions.

The third possibility is an unclaimed, unlisted GMB. Follow Google’s instructions (which will include adding a business category, hours of operation, address, phone number, photos, and more). 

 

Business Categories

A quick note on business categories: there are a lot of businesses in Edmonton. You need to be specific about your business category to stand out from other businesses. Imagine your auto shop primarily does auto detailing – you’d list your category as “Car detailing service”. You can add other categories to paint a more accurate picture of your business, but don’t overdo it – say as much as you can in as few categories as possible.

Not sure which category to pick? Look at what other businesses similar to yours in Edmonton are choosing. You can see the category of a business by looking at their GMB listing (the mechanics we found in Queen Mary were all listed as “Auto repair shop”).

 

Optimize Your GMB

Now that you’re listed and in control of your listing, it’s time to optimize. When there are a lot of businesses similar to yours in the area, optimization may be the thing that gets you into the coveted 3-Pack (which, we should mention, is at the top of the search results page).

The first step is to check your GMB every day. Why? Well, even though your GMB has been claimed, other people can still edit it. Now, I know what you’re thinking – why would Google allow that? Can’t my competitors just come and edit my GMB to mess with me?

A very valid question, because you’re right – your competitors could mess with your GMB. Hopefully they have better things to do, but if they want to, they can make changes to your hours of operation, your name, your location – it can be bad.

Google allows for this because not every GMB is claimed, and not every claimed GMB is monitored. They rely on a network of users to edit GMBs when their information is no longer accurate. By monitoring your GMB, you prevent edits from malicious editors, or from well-meaning but misinformed editors.

 

GMB Posts

You should also know about GMB Posts. They allow you to interact with your customers by microblogging about relevant happenings. In-store sales, new renovations, a change in your hours of operation because of a holiday – if you think it’s relevant to your customers, you should post about it.

Google automatically deletes GMB Posts after a week unless you tell them not to. You can extend some posts for multiple weeks (a multi-week sale is a good example of this), but it’s often still best to simply make a new post about the same topic every week. Google will send you reminders about posts expiring – don’t ignore them!

GMB is an absolutely essential component for all Edmonton SEO and online marketing – without a GMB, you’re far less likely to get local clicks. Set yours up, optimize it, and get ready for more clients! 

Contact Us

Please call (204) 272-7265 or fill out the form below and we’ll get back to you within 24 hours. Also, make sure to follow us on social media
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The purpose of First Rank is to help businesses generate leads from their websites. We put a focus on SEO, because we believe it is one of the most cost effective and highest converting forms of traffic generation, however traffic alone is not enough on its own to grow your business. SEO should be combined with conversion optimization, email marketing and retargeting to maximize the ROI of your advertising dollars.