If you own a business and you care about being seen online in the specific city in which your business is located, then it is imperative to have your business show up in Google Maps.
What is Google Maps?
When you search for a specific keyword, take the keyword, “Fabric Protection” for instance, the first result you get will generally look like this:
In this picture, the first results that people see when searching for any keyword are the Google Ads where businesses pay Google per click, and the Google Maps results like in the picture above.
These results show the local business results of businesses nearby, from the city in which you are searching from. As you can see, only 3 results show up in the Google Maps Results.
There are more than 3 results usually, but in order to see them you must click the “view all” button at the bottom of the Google Maps results in order to see the remaining businesses that are optimizing themselves for the keyword you are searching for, in this case, “fabric protection”. Depending on how many businesses want to show up for the same thing will depend on how many results end up in the “view all” area. If your business wants to show up in the top 3 you will likely also need something called search engine optimization in order to get there but that is a topic for another day.
In Order To Get Seen in Any Maps Result you Must Have a Google My Business Listing
But in order to even be in any of the Maps results your business MUST have a Google My Business listing associated with your business or you CANNOT be listed in the maps results. It is possible to have a Maps result if your business did not create a Google My Business listing yourself, as Google may have created one for you if Google knows your business exists. If you have never created a Google My Business listing but see one show up for your business then you need to “claim it” to obtain control over the listing.
A Google My Business as seen from the person searching looks like this:
In this case, the person would be searching for “Fabric Protection Las Vegas” and Ultra-Guard’s Las Vegas Google My Business location shows up. If Ultra-Guard did not have a Google My Business listing for Las Vegas then only the businesses that did have a Google My Business listing would show up, or if no businesses did, then only the organic listings would appear like this:
So you can see just how important it is to have a Google My Business listing if you want to show up in Google Maps results for the city in which your business is specifically located.
What are the Steps to Get Your Business Listed in Google Maps?
To sign up for a Google My Business listing, it is easy! Just follow these simple steps:
- You Must have a Gmail Account.
In order to be listed on Google My Business, which is a Google-owned property, you must obviously use Google’s email account which is Gmail. So, step 1 is to simply create a Gmail account for your business.
Simply go to Google and search for “Gmail”
Then click the “sign-in” button on the top right corner. See image above.
Then click the “create account” button. See image above. And simply go through the steps it asks to create your Gmail account for your business. You will need a phone number that you can have text messages sent to and also a backup email where you can receive email from Google as well for the Gmail account
2. Now Create your Google My Business Listing:
After you have created your Gmail account then you will need to simply create your Google My Business Listing. Go to Google and search for “Google My Business”
Click the top listing that says Google My Business. Then click “sign-in”. Then click “add your business to Google”.
Then put in your business name
Add your business category
Add whether you are a storefront that people can visit or whether or not. If you don’t want people to visit your store you are a Service Area Business and your business can still be on Google Maps but you will hide the address so people don’t come to your business.
Add the business address
Add your phone number and website information.
If you don’t have a website don’t worry! Google will give you a free one if you click Get a Free Website based on your information.
Put in the name for the postcard and hit go. Google will then ask you a few other questions to get information from you and then bring into the inside of your Google My Business listing which looks like this:
This particular listing is not real and was created solely for the purpose of this article.
Congratulations, with all of these steps done you have created a Google My Business listing and are now on Google Maps! Your Google My Business listing does have information that you can add under the “info” tab like business hours, phone number, business description etc. and under the “photos” tab you can add your business photos etc.
That is everything you need to do to be listed on Google Maps! However, showing up in the top 3 is another story which will likely require search engine optimization (SEO) to get your business optimized enough to be in the top 3 results.
If you are interested in having search engine optimization done for your website I can help. I specialize in local SEO for small businesses and as you can see, Ultra-Guard is in the first map’s position. I can be reached at (949) 940-5295 or simply send me a message on the contact form of my website here: https://brooksinternetmarketing.com/contact I am happy to give free consultations to show you how I can help your business achieve these types of results.
I hope you enjoyed this article and I look forward to helping your business today.