6 tips to get more out of your Google Business Profile

2. Invest time in your Google Business Profile page

Are you missing out on the benefits of Google Business Profile because you’re concerned about the time that you will have to invest in providing regular content updates? That's understandable, but for WordPress users, there's a time-saving solution for that too.

The WP Google Business Profile Auto Publish plug-in can automatically post all your blogs, events, and other content.

Not a WordPress user? No problem. There are also automatic publishing tools that allow you to schedule all posts in advance. Some examples:

• OneUp;

• Sendible;

• Social Pilot;

• Social Report.

One disadvantage is that all of the tools listed above are paid, but they all offer a free trial.

3. Get to know your target group through (accurate) data

Finding out where your visitors are coming from can provide you with useful insights about your Google Business Profile page. You will find a brief overview on the Insights page. You can use this data to check:

• Which keywords find your Google Business Profile page.

• What visitors do (calling, visiting the website, getting directions, etc.).

• How often your images are viewed (compared to your competition).

• How your customers search.

4. Leverage relevant (unused) keywords

Are you neglecting relevant keywords? Have you listed all of your services? It’s worth checking whether the keywords have already been processed in:

• The description of your Google Business Profile page.

• Your posts on Google Business Profile.

• Reviews on your page;

• Your website’s blog.

This type of analysis means that you can put the missing keywords in the spotlight and improve your results.

5. Make data more transparent with UTM tags

Traffic that comes from Google Business Profile is automatically added to your organic traffic total in Analytics.

This doesn’t give you a clear picture of the impact of your Google Business Profile page on your visitor numbers, but you can easily solve that. By adding a UTM tag to your links, Google Analytics can keep each link’s data separate.

For example, suppose we add the following UTM tags to our existing URL:

utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gmb&utm_content=lv_riga

The first three bold words are mandatory. They enable you to make a subdivision of the source (Google), the medium (organic traffic), the campaign (GMB) and, if desired, the content. That last part is useful if you want to split traffic from multiple locations — in the example above, a location in Riga (Latvia).

Build UTM tags for your links easily?

You can do that with a Campaign URL Builder. All you have to do is input the details of your campaign and you’ll automatically receive the correct string.

6. Google Business Profile Community

If you use Google Business Profile regularly, you may occasionally encounter problems or functions that don’t work properly. The Google Business Profile community are here to answer questions about Google Business Profile, and you can search the archive for previous issues that other users have resolved.

The big advantage of the Google Business Profile Community is that there are a lot of active admins (volunteers) who respond to problems quickly. If they can't help you themselves, they forward the issue to Google's internal team.

Do not underestimate the power of Google Business Profile

Some people still doubt the usefulness of Google Business Profile, but in a study of all possible factors that influence local ranking, we see that Google Business Profile plays an increasingly important role.

Strategic use of Google Business Profile makes it clear to Google, what your website and your business is about, in a structured way. Google stores this in its underlying knowledge base and uses it to interpret your content and match it to searches.