Google My Business 101: How to Optimize Your Google Business Profile – 3 Aspens Media

Enable Chat with Customers

People looking for your company on Google can directly chat with you if you enable messages on your Google Business Profile.  It’s recommended you have email notifications set up so that you can notified immediately when a question comes in. Google has guidelines for both businesses and customers for using Business Profile messaging. Make sure to read those.

Use the Bookings Feature

If you operate a business that uses an online booking platform, you may benefit from integrating that platform with GBP’s bookings tool. With our increasingly speedy world, people want to take action right from the spot on the web where they find info about your business. Currently, more than 60 booking partners, including major players such as EventBrite and Ticketmaster, are integrated with GBP. Read more about how to integrate your booking tool with GBP.

How to Post on Google Business Profile

One of the most powerful tools within the Google Business Profile platform is Google Posts. This functionality was released in June 2017. You can use a Google Business Profile Post to promote your next event, to share updates about your latest sale or to cross-promote your most recent blog, just to name a few ideas. There is a seven-day lifespan on GBP posts except for a live event promotion, which will get automatically pulled once your event ends. Space in a GBP post is limited to just 300 words, so make sure you have a clear call-to-action and a catchy headline and include an eye-catching image to increase your click-through rate.

Where Do Google Posts Show Up?

The layout of Google’s search results page (SERP) seems to change as frequently as the weather in San Francisco. As of the writing of this blog, Google Posts appear toward the bottom section of the Knowledge Panel, which often appears on the right side of a desktop view. This Google Knowledge Panel (also referred to at times as a Business Panel) takes up a considerable amount of real estate on a desktop, as you can see in the image below: