As you know, Google My Business is the most critical online listing for a local business. Many search experts believe it is even more important for converting customers than your own website.
You can claim and manage your own listing through the GMB website or app, but there are so many options. You need to be up-to-date on all of the features and best practices … and it’s going to take a lot of time to do it well.
So how do you best optimize your listing to show as high as possible in search results and convert visitors into customers?
One way is to use a Google My Business management service. In my opinion, one of the best ones out there is from Darren Shaw and his team at Whitespark. Darren is a regular guest here on Local Marketing Institute and a well-respected local search expert.
Whitespark’s fully-managed GMB service includes:
- A dedicated project manager.
- Complete listing optimization.
- Weekly Google posts to keep your audience engaged and connected.
- Management of services and products in your listing.
- Monitoring and responding to customer reviews.
- Fighting spam that competes with your listing.
- Ongoing photo/video uploads to your listing.
- Answering “Know this place?” questions that Google asks visitors.
- Monitoring and managing visitor Q&A on your listing.
- Troubleshooting problems or issues with your listing.
- Full reporting and insights about the performance of your listing.
The pricing for the service is quite reasonable for everything they do. There’s no setup fee, you can cancel at anytime without penalty and YOU own the listing, not Whitespark. They have multi-location discounts and the service can be white-labeled for agencies.