Why Isn’t My Business Showing Up on Google?
Enhance search visibility by ensuring that your business information, such as NAP (Name, Address, and Phone number), categories, and website, is correct and complete. Changes made to a Google Business Profile typically take up to three days for search results to reflect. If you are helping a client troubleshoot why their business listing doesn’t show, several common causes may be behind its absence.
Benefits of Google Business Profile
A Google Business Profile is vital for local SEO and for businesses to enhance their online presence. It helps local customers find your business, displays important information like contact details and reviews, and improves local SEO, driving more traffic and potential customers to your business.
- Boosts Local SEO: Increases visibility in local searches, helping potential customers find your business easily.
- Displays Important Information: This section displays your business address, contact details, hours of operation, and more to help customers.
- Customer Reviews: Encourages reviews from customers, enhancing credibility and trustworthiness.
- Insights and Analytics: Provides data on how customers find and interact with your business.
- Google Maps Integration: Ensures your business appears on the Google Maps App, helping with location-based searches.
- Free Advertising: You can showcase your business to local customers at no cost.
- Enhanced Customer Engagement: Enables direct communication with customers through messaging and Q&A features.
Check if Your Business is Verified
Unverified means Google cannot verify the information you provided in your business profile. Search and map results may exclude it without accurate and authentic business details. Optimizing Google Business Profile includes:
- Verification procedures vary for different businesses.
- Some can be verified via email or phone calls from Google
- Some even qualify for video verification.
- To see if your business is verified, log into your GMB account and select “Get Verified”, followed by phone or email verification to make the selection.
Increasing visibility and credibility requires creating and verifying your Google Business Profile, which allows you to add photos, promote your business online via Google Posts, update contact info regularly, and gain an edge in local search rankings.
Verified profiles tend to get increased clicks and prominence in local search results; additionally, maintaining this type of profile will help secure NAP citations from high-quality directories like Yelp or Yellow Pages.
Ensure Google Business Profile Setup
Google Business Profile is your go-to place for managing your business’s appearance in search and map results. Here, you can add details such as address, business hours, and more – an essential resource for creating more accurate search results from Google. Customers favor and display businesses with full profiles more prominently than businesses without.
- When creating your GMB account, be sure that your business name echoes exactly what is displayed at your physical storefront and matches all other listings across the web.
- Any discrepancies, such as inconsistent spellings and abbreviations, will cause your Google listing to be flagged as inaccurate and spammy.
- Similarly, if you list either street numbers or zip codes as the format for your address listing(s), stay consistent.
Your GMB listing should include photos of your products or service areas, a brief description, contact information (phone number and website URL), regular and holiday business hours, and services offered. In the Additional Categories section, you may add available services, but beware of listing too many, as this could be considered spammy and result in the suspension of your listing.
Add Business Categories & Subcategories
Category selection can significantly impact how and where your business appears in Google search results, especially within the Local Pack. Selecting relevant primary and secondary categories ensures your listing appears for relevant searches.
- Selecting your primary business category is one of the key steps when setting up or updating a Google My Business (GMB) account.
- Your primary category reflects exactly what your business does and has direct ramifications on Google’s ability to match you to relevant queries.
By selecting appropriate business categories, your chances of appearing as an authoritative recommendation in Google Search, Google Maps, and Assistant increase substantially, enabling searchers to find you easily.
How To Change Your Business Category?
You can change your business categories on a smartphone or tablet by signing in to your verified Google Business Profile account and selecting “Edit business information.” Then, select “Business categories” and “Primary category,” and select your best category fit from there.
Up to 9 secondary categories may also be added, highlighting specific services or products your business offers. However, their impact on search ranking results will likely be less substantial than that of the primary category alone.
Optimize Your Website for SEO
Search engines use relevant keywords to assess relevance in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), so optimizing your content can increase its chance of appearing higher on results pages. When writing new or updating old posts, ensure your keywords appear in title tags and meta descriptions for maximum search engine relevance.
Consider mobile-friendliness when optimizing your website. Google prefers websites that provide an exceptional user experience on smartphones and tablets. GTMetrix provides free tests to detect loading issues; for additional tips, use the Google PageSpeed Insights tool.
How Long Does Google Take to Approve GBP Profile?
Google can take up to three days to process any major adjustments you’ve made to your Business Profile or website, so be patient. Also, remember to back up your site prior to making significant adjustments because Google prioritizes businesses with an SEO-friendly website.
This can be especially helpful if working on large sites that require significant efforts and oversight; having a backup in place can keep stress at bay while managing SEO for massive sites, so don’t be intimidated into breaking things up into manageable chunks!
Conclusion
ensuring your business appears on Google requires maintaining an accurate and verified Google Business Profile. Verifying your business, optimizing its profile with the correct categories, and improving your website’s SEO are crucial steps to boost visibility and ranking. Regular updates, attention to detail, and consistency across all platforms can enhance local search performance and improve customer engagement, leading to greater business success.
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