Your Google Business Profile (GBP) is a free listing feature offered by Google to help local businesses get noticed online. Since it is only for local businesses, you are not competing with anyone national, but only other local businesses

Google has made (and will continue to make) significant changes to the GBP platform, and it can be difficult for small businesses to keep up with those changes since they are primarily focused on running their business and don’t have a lot of time to devote to marketing. See our Google Business web page for more information

We will try to help by posting helpful information concerning GBP changes from time to time. Take today’s post for example.

If you have not claimed, verified, and optimized your GBP listing, when potential customers search online for the products and services you offer, they probably won’t find your business but will find your competitors. Not having your profile up to snuff is literally giving away business. You are practically paying your competition to send their kids to college!

In today’s business climate, it is imperative that your business shows up high in searches for your products and services, and your GBP is the most efficient vehicle to generate those search results. Plus, GBP is FREE to use!

Unfortunately, most small business owners are too busy actually running their business to bother with their GBP. This is an expensive mistake. Taking the time, however, can pay big dividends, by generating more calls to your business and visits to your website. To assist, we are providing an infographic that walks you through the steps to claim, verify, and optimize your GBP for better rankings in search. (Thanks to Tim Kahlert.)

While this graphic (once enlarged!) shows what to do to make full use of your GBP, it is not too detailed, and you may need more detailed instructions.  In that case, we have provided a more detailed set of instructions here: The Google Business Profile Optimization Checklist. It is a PDF file you can save and use as a reference when optimizing your GBP. This 23-page document will walk you through, step-by-step, the process of claiming, verifying, and optimizing your Google Business Profile for maximum visibility on the Internet.

If you feel this is too much or too technical, reach out to us and let us help. We want to build a relationship with you and help you grow your business. We feel the investment you make will be trivial compared to the increase in business. Again, our consultations are no-cost, no obligation. Contact us soon to get started growing your business.

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C&S Local Marketing is based in Land O Lakes, Florida. We are a dedicated team of local online and offline marketing professionals. Our team specializes in getting small businesses more business.

We offer a variety of services to grow your small business revenue and customer base. List your business with one (or more) of our Local Business Directories, of which we currently manage three: the Land O Lakes Local Business Directory; the Land O Lakes Local Restaurant Directory; and soon the Tampa Bay Home Services Directory.

Each of our directories offers local businesses the opportunity of a free listing to showcase their business in a YELP-type directory, providing business information for the public to locate and patronize their business. We currently have over 1500 businesses listed across our directories. We urge you to check the appropriate directory for your business and list your business if it is not already, register and update the listing if it is, or upgrade to a Premium or Featured  Listing if you choose.

We offer Premium Listings which provide considerably more business information for an annual fee, and reasonably-priced Featured Listings on the front page of the directory. Advertising opportunities across the sites are also available. No businesses are required or pressured to upgrade their listings from the free tier but may choose to do so of their own accord, or we can help. We are happy to assist with upgrades at no additional charge.

Additional services we offer include; Website design, hosting, and maintenance; Google Business Profile (GBP) management; Social media posting; Search Engine Optimization;  Reputation Management and Marketing; Google Adwords; Facebook advertising, and more. Our solutions are customized to our client’s needs and are never a cookie-cutter package.

Our consultations are always no-charge, no obligation, and we will freely offer suggestions to help your business grow. Contact us today for an appointment.

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