So welcome to another Smarter Business Tips @ Ten. Zoom is just connecting through to Facebook, hopefully that will stream smoothly, that'd be nice. So, if you think these business chips add value, please like it, love it, please share it on Facebook, make a comment or tag a friend.

And if you need any help with this, or any other topic, make a comment or send a direct email through to ua.moc.etisbewretrams@wonksa. So, today's session is all about Google My Business. Now, it's one of the best ways to leverage so I'm just going to quickly flip over to share screen, pick the correct screen would help.

And hopefully, you're able to see my screen. Now, I'm in Chrome in InCognito mode and, you can see up here, I've put in my business name. So, I haven't put in my web address, I've put in my business name, two words and I'd recommend you do the same, not now because you've got to listen to me.

Put in your business name after and see what comes up. Now, this element to the right here, this is what is known as a knowledge panel and you can see over here, my business shows multiple issues. Now, that's because clearly we set up really cool websites. And that's what you want to see, you don't just want to see one website link, you want to see multiple listings.

This is about showcasing your business to the world and using the tools that Google provides. The bottom line is, as I say, I've got a tagline, play the game with Google and Google will play the game with you. So, clearly, we're playing the game with Google.

You can see I've got all those business listings there, I've also got a directory listing there, otherwise known as a citation. I don't know who this person is butting in, that's a bit annoying, go away. You can see my Facebook and my reviews, again reference to reviews there, so what other people say about us is infinitely more powerful than what we say about us.

And you can see there's my Yellow Pages listing, there's my LinkedIn profile, clearly fully optimized and that's my company page by the way, this is my personal profile. So, you can see that when people are doing their due diligence on me, we present really well.

And this opportunity's there for every business. This is really not rocket science. A lot of the things ... people think they can just, I don't know, just go and create a Facebook business page, and anybody can, you can do it in three to five minutes flat. But, whether yous set it up right and optimize it, now, I know that one of my colleagues, Sharon McCluskey would support me in that.

It's in the attention to detail, you've got to list and get everything right. So, back to the knowledge panel here. You can see that we've got a massive amount of Google reviews and we've put a lot of time and effort into that. So, the other element, and on the topic of attention to detail, make sure that your business listing is filled in, in its entirety.

Everything, to the point where ... I've got an appointment schedule here. Now, if I hover over that, you can see down in the bottom left corner, just shows here that's it my website, but down in the bottom left corner it actually shows ... you can schedule meeting with me. So, really cool. The other thing that Google gives you an opportunity to do is post. Everybody knows the power, or should know the power, of blogging an doing blog posts. So, Google provides that and I'm going to walk you through that now. I'm actually going to show you the backend of my listing, my business listing.

So, we're just going to close down this window now and I don't generally show this but it's the only way that I can show you the real nuts and bolts of what you need to do within your own Google account. So, the first thing you need to do is to go to a Google page, and you can see that I'm signed in, previously I was showing you incognito, so that means I wasn't logged in to that window.

Just put in your business name, whatever it is, and be logged in and then you'll got your business listing, the world doesn't see this, I'm only seeing this because I am logged in to my account. But, this is where you're able to go through and edit your own listing. Fill in every section, absolutely every section.

So, I'm going to jump in to the back end of that now in the window I previously opened. So you're seeing some of my stats and sobeit, it's the only way I can actually show you the backend and I really do hope this makes a difference for you.

So, this is the Google My Business. You can see the address up there, business.google.com and my dashboard name. So, there's the homepage, I can do particular things. Now, I've got to show you later the power of adding photos, oh my God, it's amazing. I advocate this to all of my clients.

So, this is where you're able to make posts. So you can go here, this will load a little bit slowly because of the Zoom Facebook Live software, and going there. And, you can write posts. Bit of an odd thing this with Google actually, the posts expire, which is really bizarre. I'm not sure, I think they might be around 60 days.

And, I think what they're trying to do there is encourage people to make regular posts, which is a good thing. If you're doing blog posts, you can just copy and paste them and put them here. Don't worry about that duplicate content crap, that's a whole other conversation.

So, you can just go in here, write your post, add a photo, you've got limited words but you can put links in there, back to your website. Because, you've got to remember, everything we do in the social media sphere is to bring people back to your website. Whether you're Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever you're doing, Instagram, Pinterest, whatever. It's all to bring business back to your website.

You control your website, great that we've got these platforms out there but they're traffic drivers. That's their purpose, don't just rely on Facebook to build your business, leverage from it, use it yes, because it's a traffic driver back to your business website. That's where you need to have a website that converts. That's a whole other conversation.

So back on track. So, you can do blog posts there. This is the information panel, hopefully I'm not sharing too much of my stuff, I did preview it. Okay so, make sure you put in your operating times, look at your demographic, list the phone number, your website, if you've got an appointment URL use that.

If you want a tip on using that, there's a couple of different ways to do it, I won't go down that rabbit warren. But, again, flick me an email at ua.moc.setisbewretrams@wonksa and I'll give you the heads up. Service or edit items, this is a fairly new feature from what I can recall and I've actually added some elements there and it's not showing and it's not the text ...

I'll just quickly show you actually. It's totally bizarre. The text is just in massive blocks, what value is that? But anyway, it's something to be aware of and this is why I encourage you, login to your Google My Business account often, because they're constantly changing things. I'll share a couple of other changes shortly.

Okay, so you can add attributes, put in your short description, which is shown to the world, very tight character limit there. You can see we've been operating for 11 years so you can see it's a true story, I tell people that. And you can add photos there.

So, this is the info tab ... I'll probably have to change that store code now. Okay, so moving on. So this is where you get to view your insights. I'm not going to click on there, this is where you get reviews. So ... actually, I will go back to the insights, but anyway, so here you can see the reviews.

And, as I said earlier, what others say about us is infinitely more powerful than what we say about us. I leverage through this. A recent prospect, really put me through the ringer saying that, okay, I want it around SEO, search engine optimization, and he really wanted to do his due diligence.

Because, a lot of people get ripped off, there's a lot of smoked mirrors out there. And, by us having this reviews up to date, fresh new reviews, as well as reviews over a long period, obviously our credibility was high. And the result, the prospect came on as a client.

So those. Now, I'm going to show you this quickly. We load snapshots of all of our websites, when they go live. There's a lot of different ways you can leverage your photos but look. Google love you using their tools, I began with Google, Google will play the game with you.

I'll just show you an email report that I get to support ... get rid of that. To support my business. Okay, get rid of that. Right, so where is it? March photo report. So, Google My Business actually sent me a March photo report. And they're telling me how many times my photos were viewed, 67 times.

So, this is about leveraging, marketing. If you're able to do things that build up your portfolio, maybe people are doing their due diligence, and then you don't have to do anything else. But you're getting leverage from it, like hello, that's just good business. It is all about leverage.

So, we just load our photos, as they go, only takes 30 seconds. And, we're getting this benefit. People are going through and looking at our photos. So, we do that every month, we're adding photos, every month. And anybody can do it. Look, with smartphone technology, take a photo, upload it, it is not rocket science.

What else do I want to show you in there. No, I think we'll just leave that for the moment, let's go back here. So you list your website, like quickly please. Oh no, this is the Google website, don't even bother. They provide a free website that's right, yeah don't bother. Let's get out of there.

I did that a while ago and then I ended up deleting it. Okie dokie, so you can manage locations as well. So, if you've got multiple locations, you would go in and do that. I know one of the local business owners, QVC Dental, hi Sharon, they have two locations, so that's where you would manage that.

So, I'm now going to just briefly talk about the full suite of Google tools. So, so far we've just discussed the Google business listing, then there's also your map. So here, when people are Googling me, they're looking for where I am, this is what they're going to see.

Now, again, this comes back to the attention to detail and optimization. So, you can see my business is listed there but I've also got exactly what I do. So, it's at a higher level. So, there's an opportunity for all of these other businesses around me and look at them, there's a lot of them listed.

But, I'm telling you right now, there'd be a lot more that could be listed and should be listed. And that opportunity is there for you. So, what is the world saying about your business? I also have a comment from a lot of home business operators that say, yeah but I don't really want people ... well there is option in there to not show your residence address but you should still have a business listing.

For me, I want people to know my location, they do come here. So, to me, that's valid. But, it's in this attention to detail where I'm stating what I do and it showcases my reviews. There's massive leverage in that.

Now the other tools that are available, what have I got in this tab? Oh right, yes, now this is really massive. So, somebody's looking for me, obviously web design pers is a very common search term. So, hey I want to be on page one in Google.

Now, there's guys that have been doing this 20 years longer than me and they've certainly got an edge, but we do well, we hold our own. But here's some other ... and this is just a little sidetrack. This is Google's suggestive search term. So, what they're saying here is that people have actually used this as a search term. So, it's a keyword that you should consider having on your website and clearly we do.

This is another search term that people are actually using. So, I've only just put in one and look how many Google have actually suggested? So, we have optimized lots of different pages within my website and I will do an SEO session as well. Because SEO is not rocket science. It is technical, but if you understand the foundations, the basics, it just is incredible in time.

Anyway, so you can see ... this is called a local pack listing. So, I've searched for web design pers. Looking down here, these people are paying for the privilege of doing that, very expensive. If I clicked on that link, that would cost that business owner x amount of money and it ranges anywhere from 10 cents to 40 dollars. So I'm not going to do that.

But you can show that it's showing a Google map and guess what? There's Smarter Websites. How good is that? And guess what? There's my listing in the local pack. So, that's the sort of thing that we help business owners do and hopefully the details and the information I've give you so far will help you to update your own.

But, look, if you need help, if you want to shout out, give us shout. I'm here to help. So, where are we? Let's look back at my notes. So I've shown you the map, I'm actually going to show you my insights, I'll just quickly go back to outlook. And this is a performance report.

Now, you should get this on a monthly basis. If you don't, and you've got a business listing, again give us a shout out because having this report is gold. So, in the last month, this is a report for April, yeah. So 403 found me, 1 asked for directions, the rest of them probably know where we are. Eight actually visited my website, now how did they visit my website from my business listing?

I'll just quickly go back to that and show you this, this is gold. It is in the local pack. So there, that is how they track it. Because, eight people have clicked on that to have a look at my website and the people that wanted directions, they've clicked on there.

Okay, so let's go back to outlook, got too many windows here. You don't see behind the scenes, I've actually got three screens here. One with the Zoom webinar, one the Facebook Live and then one that I'm directing you through. So, five people actually called me. So, this is a good report.

My March report I think the numbers were higher. No, that's my photo report, there we go. My March report, so 424 people, four people needed directions there, 11 ... So, you can see I've operated with total transparency so I really hope this does make a difference.

Now, one of the other things that I will just give you an insight into. With the Google maps, that's my incognito screen, let's close that down, my other window. One of the things with ... there's a change coming with Google maps and I'm not going to go through that now but Google are actually going to start charging people.

Now, you will, as a business owner, get a 200 credit and it depends on how many views this has. But look, I'm not going to go down that little rabbit warren, I may do another webinar on that, I may just do an individual blog post. But, be aware that, that's happening, you should have received an email notification if you've got a Google account, you've got a Google business listing.

Something to be aware of ... I'm actually just going to jump into here, I'm going to show you locations, so I'm really showing you behind the scenes now. So, there's my locations, we've only got one. We've become a manager for this particular client to try and help them out.

Because, we see this often, with business owners. Their webby has created a business account for them, in their own Google account. So, the webby has created the Google business listing under their own Google account, which is just absolutely ridiculous.

Everything we do is done in the business owners name. The bottom line is, you own ... you should own the rights to access your primary Google account. So, it's just something that absolutely just does my head in, it frustrates the crap out of me. Anyway, so look, I hope all of that helps. So, that's Peter Butler from Smarter Websites. If you'd like to stay in touch, join our group for more business tips, Smarter Business Mastermind. I'll put a link in the comment streak so you can just click on that link and ask to join the group and that way we'll keep you up to date with these.

We're going to be covering a really broad range of subjects so not all of it's on websites, but it directly effects your website and building your business. It's all about business growth. I do also load these videos, along with the transcript to my website, so just got to smarterwebsites.com.au and check this out and hundreds of other blog posts.

If you think a friend or a colleague will benefit from this post or any other one, tag them in the post and please do like, share, comment and tag people. I hope this really helps, have a great day and go and work smarter.