When analyzing the most overlooked aspects of Google My Business, it’s hard to look beyond Google Posts. Yet while other businesses skip using this feature, you can reap the benefits and maximize the impact of your GMB profile. Along with keeping your audience up-to-date with your latest business developments, it also enhances your overall visibility.
What are Google Posts?
Have you ever made a post on the likes of Facebook or Twitter? If so, you’ll already possess a general idea about Google Posts and what they entail. The posts are small slices of content, and these are made to keep your customer base in the loop about your business.
These posts can cover different topics. Here are some examples:
- The latest updates about your business
- Promote new products/services
- Feedback from past customers
- Special offers, discount codes, and competitions
- A behind-the-scenes look at your company
- Advertise an upcoming event
In essence, you can create content about any business-related subject you want – within reason. Google’s guidelines spotlight that GMB posts have to remain family-friendly, so sexually suggestive or explicit content is a no-go.
When someone conducts a local search relevant to your business, those Google Posts have a chance of appearing in the results for both Google and Google Maps. That’s the reason why marketing specialists label GMB posts SEO-friendly! It is speculated a consistent posting schedule can boost search rankings and organic traffic numbers for local SEO plans.
Creating a GMB post
Creating Google Posts has one notable similarity with creating a Google My Business profile: it’s easy to do on the surface.
Start by logging into your GMB account. The menu will display a button marked “Posts”. When you click on this button, it will present two post options: regular posts and event posts. Select the one which best fits your post idea.
Now you can start adding the meat to your posts. Note: each post has a 100-word count minimum, 300-word count maximum. Ensure your post falls within these restrictions. If you feel the word count it too restricting, keep in mind, your written content can be supported by video or image content.
When uploading an image, ensure it falls within these requirements:
- Minimum: 10KB size limit, 400 x 300 pixels
- Maximum: 25MB size limit, 10000 x 10000 pixels
What’s the difference between regular posts and event posts?
As noted in the previous section, there are two post choices available. These are regular post and event post.
A regular post is for standard content likes news and status updates – as you would expect. One drawback of this option is that each post has an expiry date of seven days. This is why it’s recommended to stick to at least a weekly post schedule. By doing this, it helps to give the appearance your Google My Business account is continually up-to-date.
Event posts function differently. Instead of a seven-day limit, this post type lasts until the event it is promoting concludes. The result: you can make an event post for an event five months from now, and it will remain on your GMB account for, you guessed it, five months. This is great if you intend to build event interest over an extended period.
There is one thing both posts have in common: they’re great for your local marketing efforts. Along with directing traffic towards your website, Google Posts are indexed – which means they could show up in search results.
Tips and tricks
Simply using the Google Posts function is a solid start. However, you want to maximize their impact for the best results. To help with this, consider the following tips and tricks:
Create high-quality posts
Yes, it’s an obvious point – but it doesn’t make it any less relevant. Your posts need to be engaging and professional. This means, along with cutting out misspellings and grammar errors, the content has to be compelling and free from fluff. If not, users may decide to bail before they finish reading the post.
If you don’t feel you can produce content to that level, our GMB posting service is available. When utilized, our content creation specialists will deliver high-quality Google Posts that deliver results.
Maintain a regular schedule
In the same way as running a blog, a consistent posting schedule is important. As mentioned previously, your aim should be to make at least one post a week on Google My Business.
Use the GMB post scheduler
That’s right: you can schedule GMB posts. You also don’t have to download any plugins or additional software – this is a feature provided by Google.
By using this, you can create a post, save it as a draft, and schedule it for release on a day of your choice. This means you could produce a couple months’ worth of Google Posts in one evening, schedule them, and then not have to worry about always posting each week.
Add a call to action
The main goal with your posts is to entice people into visiting your website. To increase the chances of this happening, make sure to incorporate an effective call to action into each post. Something as simple as ‘Buy now’ or ‘Read more’ can make the difference. Plus even if they don’t click on the link published alongside the CTA, you at least profit from the backlink.
Do you still require assistance with your Google My Business account? Get in touch today. Our team of experts can concoct a bespoke managed SEO campaign, one which covers everything about GMB. We can also assist with all elements of local SEO, where our knowledge and proficiency can push your website to the top of Google search results!
