Today we're going to explore: nine: Google Business Profile Ranking Cheat Codes Important Google is in terms of getting discovered and found by prospective customers in your local Marketplace And the way through which that is accomplished is your Google business profile. Your Google business profile is your gateway to being discovered by local customers who are eager to do business with somebody just like you. They're going to find you and then read your reviews and then based upon how those reviews either make the case that they should reach out to you or don't, they're going to reach out to you to do business with you. But the question is, are you even getting found on Google And that's a question related to are you ranking to be found in the real estate space? For instance, there could be thousands, tens of thousands of other realtors in your local Marketplace each of whom has their own Google business profile.

And so the question is, how do you optimize your profile to rank higher in Google What's more if somebody does a search on Google like best Realtor near me. For instance, those types of searches trigger What's called the map pack, which this show we've covered it many times before. In the map pack only ranks the top three Google Business profiles for that specific search in that specific area. so there's sort of two moving.

Parts What were the exact words They searched the phrase? they searched the keywords and where did they search it from or what area were they looking in and how optimized is your Google business profile to rank and get found for those customers to reach out to you as their listing agent as their buyer's agent as their local business of choice. That's what we're going to talk about today is how to get your profile to rank higher on Google So welcome to this week in marketing. My name is Jason Pantana I'm your host and today we're going to talk about nine different cheat codes if you will to massively improve the ranking position of your Google business profile. Uh warning, this is not going to be for the lighthearted.

This will be a rather intense and Technical conversation. So if you have a marketing manager Loop them into this conversation so you can start executing on the ideas you get from the show. Now without further. Ado Let's dive into our topic today.

nine cheat codes to improve the ranking position of your Google business profile I.E gets you found by more customers. Let's go Cheat code number one is to harness cat categories and services with your Google business profile. Now when you set up your Google business profile business.google.com you'll access it through What's called the profile manager or maybe it's called the control panel. It's simple you simply Google the name of your business ensuring that you're logged into the Google account with which your Google business profile is actually Associated and it reveals sort of an edit mode profile manager where you can edit and manage your Google business profile and in it the first button says edit profile.

When you edit your profile, you can choose your name and a lot of other stuff we'll talk about. And one of the sections that you can update is what's called categories. You cannot wildly invent a category. You can declare a category.

There's a finite set of categories per every respective local business industry that a Google business profile is relevant for. So in real estate you have options like Real estate agents, real estate Agency, and so forth. Choosing the right category in the right order matters. So what you should do is run a bunch of Google searches.

Do searches that you want to rank on like best Realtor near me, best realtor in your city, top real estate agents here and there or whatever run is many searches as you think a customer might run that you would want to rank on and then you'll notice in the map pack it will say the primary listed business category of each respective top ranking profile. So if they all say in the map pack real estate agency then you can assume the best category to select is Real estate agency. If it's a hodgepodge of real estate agency real estate agents, then pick one or two. This is quite simple.

in fact, whichever category you see the most frequently in terms of ranking and the searches for which you and rank becomes your first category. That is your primary category the one you see ranking second most often. pick that one for your second category and then maybe pick a third. You can't really choose too many categories, but here's what you can do.

You can choose categories that dilute Google's confidence and your primary category. So if you choose for example, Real Estate Agency, but then you also choose sort of random ones like property management or kind of secondary tertiary. A few steps removed from Real Estate Agency. It will create a sense where Google is like I'm not sure or you actually are a real estate agency.

My advice is probably Real Estate Agency, Real Estate Agents, Real Estate Consultant These terms. these labels vary from country to Country so use your own discretion based upon which ones you pick. but the idea is to choose a category that you see ranking the most frequently. Now back to that profile manager.

There's also a button that says edit: Services Think of it like this: Services Describe your categories. It's like adjectives and adverbs describe nouns and verbs. Services describe your categories. and so here's the trick.

You can choose services and so here's the trick. So you could choose hypothetically the exact Search terms you want to rank on like best Realtor Nashville Top Real Estate agent. Those types of phrases that you want to rank on could be declared as Services which sounds a little a little suspect and I'll admit that it is, but it kind of works. So if you look at the map pack, you'll sometimes see what are called local justifications.

Oftentimes there's a snippet from a review where it asserts this was indeed the best Realtor, but it will also sometimes show in that little section in the map pack it might say provides. and then it will embolden Best Real Estate Agent. And so what we're suggesting is not that you're necessarily the best real estate agent. We're simply trying to convince Google to think you are to rank your profile so that customers can find you and then read your reviews and make that determination for themselves.

Now, don't go too crazy. you don't add like 20 or 30 Services that's going to be like Spam Deluxe but maybe two or three goes a long way. So look at it like this: Choose the categories that you see ranking the most prevalently the most often, and then choose a few Choice services that are the verbatim search phrases you want to rank on. That further describe the category to reinforce and or or optimize your profile to rank for those searches.

Ergo Vis-a-vis if somebody does a search for best Realtor in Nashville and you've got all the right optimizations Kaboom that gets you in the map pack. Theoretically, there's a lot more you can do, but this is the first cheat code out of nine. Hey, is the potential of your Google business profile literally blowing your mind right now in terms of if I just did this, this and this. look what could happen? Look at the compound effect of more sellers, more buyers, more customers reaching out because they want to work with you.

If it is, and you want to go to the next level and learn all there is to know about maximizing the return on a Google business profile, Make sure to check out Google Business Boss. It's part of the marketing Pro Training Suite There's a link in the description for more details. These courses are roughly three hours long each and they go step by step, screen by screen with demonstration, tutorials and best practices. So you can go from A to Z rookie to Rockstar on all things.

Google Take your marketing to the next level. Click the link in the description for more details. This leads us to Cheat code number two, which is and by the way, this is not for the faint of heart. On-page SEO Essentials On-page SEO Essentials SEO stands for search engine Optimization on page is simply an SEO term.

That means on your website there's off-page SEO and on-page seo. Off-page Seo is what you do off of your website. So theoretically your Google business profile is actually off page SEO. Now we're going to talk about on-page SEO.

That is what can you do on your actual website with which you have linked to from your Google business profile. because Google Business profiles aren't like a Facebook profile. Google's always Googling you and so what you say or declare about your business on your website has a really big impact about what Google thinks about it in terms of whether or not it chooses to rank you or not on your Google business profile. So your website SEO matters a bunch.

So here's a quick 10 item. PreFlight Checklist Kind of idea for some basic SEO on your website. First item is to craft the right page title tags meta descriptions I I Told you this is not going to be for the light of heart page title tags. That just means put the right titles on your pages.

Think about SEO through the lens of are you putting the right keywords and the titles of every page on your website. A lot of you have web pages that talk about the generic aspects of real estate. It doesn't declare where you're doing real estate. for instance, be very specific.

So if you have a page about selling a home, don't just say why List with us be more specific than that in terms of how you title the page, maybe the page should say uh, selling your Lakefront whatever location home with our team and name the team, the more specificity you can provide, you're giving additional support to Google to understand. Oh, we should rank this person this business on Google for searches like this because we can see clearly that they do business in this area and this kind of business. So from an SEO standpoint, recognize that there is a pecking order In terms of when Google scans your website looking for authority on a specific subject, it goes in sort of a ranking order. The title tag is huge From an SEO standpoint, title tags have more weight from an SEO standpoint Than Just Words on screen somewhere in the body text of for instance, a Blog Page or any kind of page on your website.

What I'm trying to say to you is the titles on all the pages of your website are key grounds for claiming SEO location terms. The kind of work you do reaffirming the name of your business and where you do it, reaffirm it in the title tags and also the meta descriptions which is where you can put some not seen information but you can give some additional context to Google that it can see on the back side of your web page that would again give it support and affirmation that it should rank you on those kinds of searches. Another best practice from an SEO standpoint this one's again super technical is to utilize Rich markup that's a big old term. Uh, if you're adding images to your website, you could actually Spruce those images up by editing their metadata like the alt text where you can give some additional commentary about what the photo is about, where you can add geo coordinates like the longitude latitude to affirm where you do business you're in this hyper local area.

For instance, uh, Rich markup is sort of related to if you've ever done a Google search. uh, maybe it's for a property or something like that. It could be for anything. and sometimes you'll see the links listed on the results page, but to the right of a link you might see a square little photo that kind of goes with the link.

Well, the reason that photos there is because of Rich markup. What it means is Google Read the metadata that further describe what the image was and decided the image would help support the link and they're trying to make a better user experience for their Searchers on the results page on Google. So my thought for you is hey, if you're adding images to your website, take the time to mark them up a little bit geo coordinates and ALT text. Another SEO consideration is for linking that is both inbound and internal linking.

So internal linking means linking to other blogs other resources within. because as Google crawls through your website, if it sees you linking from this page to that page, from that page to this page, it helps give Google a context for how your site is structured. but also inbound linking also called backlinking is when other folks link to your website if they've got domain Authority it can rub off on your domain by giving you more Authority Which helps you rank better because remember your your website actually boosts your Google Business profile's ranking position. So really, work hard on getting good quality inbound links.

Talk to your web developer to make sure that you have a site map. If you don't, you can go to Google Search console and get a site map made very quickly and easily. You might have to Google that, but having a site map helps Google Know how to crawl your website and understand the structure of your website. Be cognizant of your load times on your website.

Do you have a fast or slow loading website? Pay attention to that because if it's slow Google doesn't want to rank you, That's a sign of poor quality. So if you have a lot of really slow loading videos maybe on your home page, that could be hurting more than it's helping. Another SEO tip is to avoid redirects. So for example, if you own www.yourdomain.com but if somebody goes there, it forwards to like a sub domain uh, your name dot whatever company.com that doesn't look great.

In terms of Google having confidence in your business ranking locally, redirects are to be avoided. You should also talk to your web developer to ensure your site is SSL encrypted. That's when you're on Google Chrome and you see the little lock in the top left next to the URL. It means it's SSL encrypted.

and if it isn't, it doesn't look good. So talk to your web developer about that. You should also mention to your web developer or ask, hey, is my website mobily responsive? That means does my website have the ability to detect the dimensions of the screen viewing it? Whether it's a tablet or a smartphone or a big computer monitor or whatever it is looking at, it. Can it auto configure its aspect ratio to suit whatever the device is.

And last, our 10th item on the SEO Best Practices Pre-flight Checklist is to make sure you've installed Google Analytics 4. It is the new version of Google Analytics And here's the reason: Uh, the same Google that owns Google Analytics owns your Google business profile. And so if you've installed that, tag your Google Analytics 4 on the back end of your website. That adds an additional layer of authentication.

From Google's perspective that you're legit, you're credible, and they can feel confident. Ranking a, um, a verified validated business like yours I Told you this was not going to be for the faint of heart. We're talking about cheat codes to get your Google business profile ranking higher and higher. So we've talked about uh, categories and services and we've talked about some on-page SEO best practices.

Now we talk about how to optimize your nap for search. What is a nap that sounds good right now? it's an acronym. It stands for name, address, phone number and it's the basic details of your profile. Have you optimized the nap? What does that mean? Well, the name of your business is a strategic opportunity to optimize, but it comes with sort of a double-edged sword.

There is an opportunity need to integrate some Choice keywords. Maybe a location term like Nashville for instance, if that's where you do business, maybe an industry term like realtor or real estate or Realty However, be very careful. Google has a lot of policies that talk about no, no, no when it comes to keyword stuffing. And so if Google believes that those terms were added on top of what your business is legitimately called in the real world, it can get you in trouble.

So if you're gonna go down the road of adding some keywords into the name of your Google business profile, a couple of thoughts for you. One less is more: don't do crazy overboard keyword stuffing or you will get suspended. Very, very high likelihood of that. and the other is, make sure whatever you put in your profile is mirrored on your website because Google always Googles you and if they go to your website and they find those keywords very well reinforced there, it's far less likely they're going to be suspicious of those keywords in your title from that point.

Fourth, on our list of cheat codes is to ensure that the location where you do business is included in the site tag on your website. So if you go to your website's homepage and you right click it like I was talking about before and you say view page, source and then you do a word find for the term title. you'll see the word title in angle brackets those less than greater than signs I got that in the right order and then whatever's in between those brackets and between the title tags is the title of the actual website is the location where you do business listed in that title. Or it's just the name of your business.

You should include the location of where you do business. That's a big factor in terms of being able to rank your profile higher now. I Know this might seem a little bit backwards. like wait a minute.

Jason We're editing our website to rank our Google business profile. That's right, it's kind of like playing a game at Billiards We're hitting the cue ball to hit the eight ball in the corner pocket. Kind of an idea. If you do not see the location of where you do business in the title tag of your website, add it number five.

I'm going to talk more about phone number and address but not on your Google business profile. Actually, on your website, it would be a best practice that you list the address of your business and the phone number of your business like literally on every page of your website. so maybe in the footer section of your website because that reinforces on every respective page of your domain Authority for that specific location. So the question is is your phone number and is your address your office address on basically every web page on your entire website because if it is, you're boosting your website's location Authority and by extension the location authority of your Google business profile.

Which means you're going to rank higher sixth on our list of cheat codes. To better rank your Google business profile is to quote Unquote Harmonize External Business Listings Your Google business profile is not the only web page on which your address is displayed in particular I'm looking at the address So for example websites like uh BBB like Yelp like Zillow like Realtor like local.com like MapQuest the Yellow Pages Yahoo local basically Google the name of your business and see wherever it shows up, even Foursquare any kind of a reason reasonably known local listing kind of web page where the address of your business is shown is an opportunity to reinforce your location Authority because if that address matches up with and if the name as well and the phone number as well matches up with what you have specified about your business on your Google business profile and on your website. Google's like it all checks out. it looks legit.

We see matchy matchiness across the web, so when was the last time you did a Google search to scan and see how am I showing up on all these other little profiles that I don't really think matter that much, but where they matter is do they work for you or against you in terms of Google's perception of your business I bet you didn't even know you could have a MapQuest profile. Seventh on the list is to develop service specific web pages now I Sort of brushed over this early on. Let's tackle it head on. I Suppose first and foremost, what are your services? Well, if you're in real estate, you should have service Pages for buying a house, selling a house, investing in real estate, relocation luxury, perhaps any one of your services could have its own web pages where I could go to a menu, a navigation on your web page and click on services and I could see listing, uh, buying and all the different services you offer.

We live in a world of AI We're creating SEO enriched content through tools like chat. GPT is literally at your fingertips or your thumbs if you're using the mobile app and so the ability to go into an AI like that and say I want to build out a thousand word web page that is designed for a service page on my website, feed it with all the right keywords Give It All The Right prompts so that you get a web page that is completely SEO optimized so that when somebody Googles best Realtor near me Google does this whole little scan gymnastics to figure out who should be ranking and it considers not only their profiles but also their off-page SEO and all those random profiles that we just talked about on the last point and it also looks at the respective websites of all the contenders who could Rank and it's doing this all in real time and it looks at your web page and it sees these services and it says oh, look, they have a page about listing agent or whatever it might be and the right terms are there and it gives Google a high degree of certainty and confidence that your business should rank for the search based upon what it found about you on Google. So the advice is you should make service pages on your website and you should use chat GPT or Claude or Bard or whatever you use for generative AI text outputs to create an absolutely dialed in SEO ridiculous web page for every one of your services because it bolsters your Google business profile like crazy. Number eight on the list is keyword Rich reviews So when you're focusing on getting reviews as you should be, you should also be talking to your customers about enriching those reviews with some specific keywords like the name of your business, like the kind of business you're in realtor real estate Realty Terms like that like where you do business like what they did to work with you.

They bought a house, they sold a house they invested. They referred those kinds of terms and context in the reviews that your customers are publishing on. Google are money because Google is reading your reviews and what your customers say about you and your business has a really, really strong impact on what Google believes about you. And so if you want to rank higher, make sure to understand well, what are the Search terms the search phrases you want to rank on? Best Real estate Agent near me, Best Realtors Near me.

What are all those different phrases and then have a casual conversation with your customers about? hey, I'm grateful for the review. If and when it makes sense, can you integrate any of these keywords? Because Google is going to be reading those reviews looking for those words and phrases to determine should it or shouldn't it rank you or your competitor And the map pack. Now something else you could consider is. let's say for instance, you've got a bunch of reviews on Zillow and you want to migrate your reviews from Zillow to your Google business profile.

Well, you can't do that per se because the customer has to author the review, so it has to be your customer who posts the review on Google. Ultimately, however, I do see a very good opportunity to take the reviews from Zillow Run them through a tool like chat GPT to infuse them with the right keywords not where it looks suspect or like spam because if it does look, Spanish Google will filter it out and not publish it. but to then take the modified improved review and send it to your customer and say hey, what do you think about this This is based upon your Zillow review of us. Would you feel confident or comfortable posting this to our Google business page and see what you get at the end of the day? Your reviews are money in terms of ranking on Google Now A lot of folks say well it's just easier to get five stars without the text.

Five stars is good, but five stars with a text review with the right keywords in it is money and last up. Number nine is to revise the bio on your website about you from a local SEO standpoint. Your Google business profile seems to look at different sections of your web page with a different level of importance and one of the areas that is most important is your biography about you. Your bio isn't really about you, it's really about your customers, but it's also a strategic opportunity for you to enrich it with the right keywords that will help you rank on those key Target search phrases that you want to get.

found. on the search phrases that trigger the map pack are phrases like best Realtor near me, top real Estate Agents in Albuquerque Those kinds of phrases trigger that map pack and again, your website has a huge corollary too. If you can strengthen it, it can improve your odds of your profile ranking higher in the map pack, which is two thumbs up. It's great.

It's what we want, all right. So what do you do with the bio? Well, think about those Target search phrases. For example, if one of your phrases is best Realtor in Nashville you don't have to actually say you're the best Realtor, but you could inject that idea into your bio. You could say as a Realtor proudly serving or you could say like Jane Smith is a Realtor proudly serving the X Y and Z Community for the past 20 plus years comma striving to be the best Realtor with whom any buyer or seller in the local such and such County area has ever worked.

Something like that I just made that up off the cuff. But you're not necessarily saying you're the best realtor, You're saying you're striving to be the best realtor. But what Google will see is website says best Realtor Let's take it. let's rank it.

and so it's really thinking about those keywords. It's really thinking about how can how can you create a system where your website and your Google business profile and your off-page SEO on all the other profiles that Google considers all say the same thing and when they all say the same thing it creates sort of a echo effect that gives Google greater confidence in terms of your authority to rank your profile on those searches in those areas. For those terms, it's all about getting found by more customers on Google One of the perks of SEO search engine optimization is I get it, it can be tedious and Technical but it's also a lot more said it and forget it. We live in a world where we're having to make content over and over and over again and it can feel a bit like you're on a treadmill that's getting nowhere.

Now that's not true and I don't mean to be negative about video and content, but one of the perks of SEO is once you lock it in and once you start building authority, it starts to come Compound on top of itself, further cementing you and Google's Mind's Eye as the ultimate definitive choice in your local segment. So do the work now and reap the rewards forever. I Wonder what you think? Let us know in the comments. what are your hacks, tips, tricks, and best practices to level up your Google business profile ranking? Thanks so much for watching Until next week! This is this week Foreign.