Are Google My Business Posts Really That Important?

Not only is your Google My Business (GMB) profile easily visible to potential customers when they search on Google, but it is also a key driver of Google's local ranking. According to local ranking factor industry research, GMB signals are the most important ranking factor for ranking local packages. The GMB “What's New” publication allows companies to publish recent news, such as special schedules, address changes, new product promotions or general information. Adding your location and using prepositions such as near, in and around will make your business appear on Google Maps pages. But if you're struggling to create creative posts or keep up with your GMB account, you can always turn to a marketing partner to help you manage the workload for you.

In my guide to UTM tagging for Google My Business, I detail the process of tagging your GMB posts using the “Campaign Content” field, which will describe the content of that post. Your last post should include your targeted keywords in the header and send a strong location, search intent to prevent Google from unranking. The default time period for posts is seven days after they are published, but Google offers the option to extend the uptime of a publication to fourteen days. Keep in mind that Google usually cuts words on the desktop, so place your most important information in the first 80 characters. If your home service business is running a special promotion, the “offer” posting will better fit the context of the information.

There are some interesting things you can do with these types of publications to get even better results for your business. This page allows your companies to manage their online presence on Google, through a physical location. We've heard that GMB posts are described as “microblogs”, but in my experience they're not really like blogs at all. It's totally playing on the excitement of Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) to attract more companies to this feature. Unfortunately, when companies had successfully used GMB publications to attract potential customers to their website, many experienced a significant drop in users with this method.

Google posts, in particular, are a perfect way to increase your online visibility in Google Search, Maps, and the 3-pack. In keeping with professionalism, Google requires that all your posts be honest and direct, with no intention of trying to deceive or scam users' information.