Optimizing Google Business Profile in 2024 for Local SEO

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In a previous post we told you the details of the change from Google My Business to Google Business Profile . Today we bring you a series of tips for optimizing our Google Business Profile, adapted to the most recent changes in the tool and Google policies. The Google My Business optimizations that we recommended previously are still mostly valid, but as SEOs we must always be up to date.


Google Business Profile Tips 2024:
The importance of Google Business Profile in local SEO
Don't take risks with business names
Comply with Google policies
Good selection of categories
Make the most of your characters
Take advantage of all the features
High quality and high resolution images
Use the posts
Answer users' questions
Advanced Review Promotion
Analyze data for decision making
The importance of Google Business Profile in local SEO
Our listing on Google Business , or in other words, on Google Maps , is a local SEO tooland marketing is essential for any business with a physical location. And not only for small businesses with one location, but also for multi-store chains with egypt whatsapp data dozens or hundreds of listings. If you still don't have a website (something we recommend you fix immediately), our profile on Business Profile is our main channel to make our business visible on the Internet. So we must take the utmost care of it.

Don't take risks with business names
The name of your business in your Business Profile should be your brand name . Although it may be tempting to want to include keywords, you should know that this is something that Google has long penalized, but that it has been directly pursuing for a few months now. It can remove keywords from our name, and even delete our business listing. Google shoots first and asks questions later, so be careful. It also recently stopped allowing aspects such as the registered trademark (that little rounded R) to be included in our business name. It doesn't matter if you have it registered, they don't want it there. And this is optional and debatable: if we have more than one physical location, we recommend that they all have the same name. This way we can make sure that, if someone searches for our brand, Google shows users our closest locations.

Comply with Google policies
We shouldn't put this point, but it is essential. Please read Google's policies on Business Profile , as they are changing. It is especially advisable because Google's support service for this tool is quite lamentable. We have several cases of companies that have come to us with suspended profiles for weeks and even months, with very poor management and attention from the platform. So the best way to not put our profile at risk is to always comply with the regulations .

Good selection of categories
Choosing business categories is essential to be correctly classified by our activities, and essentially the main one. Look at the ones that the competition has , they have surely already studied and tested it before. We often have dilemmas if our company does more than one activity (let's imagine, in our case it could be web page development, digital marketing, SEO and SEM). In these situations you must choose the main and priority one, and weave a plan to also be able to position yourself for the rest (descriptions, photos, service or product pages, reviews, etc.). Although they will never have the strength in searches that the main category has.

Make the most of your characters
The principle that “good things, if short, are twice as good” does not apply in this case. Google offers us spaces that we can take advantage of to position ourselves , so let’s take advantage of every last character. For example, for our main business description, we can use 750 characters: think about how many informational, transactional and local keywords we can put in those characters. The same goes for publications or service pages.

Take advantage of all the features
If you are creating a local listing for the first time or optimizing it for the first time, check and take advantage of all the features that are enabled for your type of business . Many listings are limited to the description and general settings, but you are missing out on a lot of opportunities. We recommend giving special impetus to product and service listings , which, very importantly, include a description and photo as well as a link to our URLs. Important note: do not include services and especially products that you are going to delete in a few days, and the user and Google will receive a beautiful 4xx error .

High quality and high resolution images
In other areas of digital life, especially on our website, we have insisted that images must have a minimum acceptable quality, but that we must focus on their light weight. This does not apply here, again. Google Business Profile accepts large images, users will greatly appreciate that you offer them quality and detailed photos , and the tool itself optimizes them for fast loading without excessive loss of quality. Keep in mind that our profile contains our photos alongside those of users, which will not always be in our favor. So it is important that we upload many images of our business , with a careful selection, because it is the first thing that many users will see about us and it will be a decisive element before visiting or contacting us. Another aspect to keep in mind is that Google local listings are very often consulted through mobile devices. Well, you should keep this in mind to upload, at least partially, images that, due to their square or vertical proportions, work well on this type of device .