Google My Business (now known as Google Business Profile) is a way for business owners to easily find and attract customers, especially local ones, using Google Maps and Google Search. For Cardiff businesses looking to set up their Google my business profile in Cardiff, read on.
It is especially important for businesses who’s customer base is mostly or entirely local – as it allows you to gain visibility on location specific Google searches such as “plumbers in Cardiff” or “bakery south Wales”. It also allows you to improve your authority and standing by receiving reviews, and more easily control the information about your business that is published on Google.
As the #1 SEO and online marketing agency in Cardiff, we regularly help clients set up their Google Business Profile, and, along with our other strategies, tend to see them quickly grow in attention and revenue.
In fact, for brick-and-mortar businesses who have little experience with online marketing, “how to get my business on Google” is one of the questions we most commonly receive, and for good reason.
The reason this works so well is because:
- As of 2018, almost half of all product searches began on Google. The number has likely only increased since.
- 30% of Google mobile searches are related to location
- 76% of people who search for a business on a smartphone, visit one the same day
- 28% of Google searches that include “near me” result in a purchase
All of this combined means that if your Google Business Profile isn’t set up, or optimised properly, you are leaving money on the table.
It also means that if a potential customer of yours searches for the relevant keyword and location for your business, and you don’t show up in a high position in the search results – they will more than likely never find you.
Unfortunately, Cardiff isn’t known for its tech savvy businesses, and it’s a shame that a lot of businesses in the South Wales area are missing this huge opportunity for additional sales, especially in this post-Covid period of reduced footfall.
Luckily for you, this complete guide to setting up Google Business Profile will show you how to easily and quickly set it up, how to optimise it for best results, and answer any frequently asked questions you may have. It’s a great way to start your Cardiff SEO journey.
But first, a little bit more info on how it actually works:
What is Google Business Profile? (Formerly known as Google My Business)
Google Business Profile allows you to create a profile for your business that will display information within Google search results, as shown above.
You can post business updates and qualifications, list services and contact details, opening times, links to your website and more, to make it as easy as possible for people to find out about your business and reach out to you.
The only requirement for a Google Business Profile is that you must see customers in person. This doesn’t mean you need a storefront – for example, a plumber or electrician might see customers in their own houses but that still counts.
What Are the Benefits of Google Business Profile?
The primary benefits of getting your business set up on Google Business Profile are:
- Display all relevant business information to those who search for it
- Build up reviews to gain credibility and authority in your niche
- Increase general visibility in Google
How Does Google Business Profile Display Business Information?
You can present the user with general information you want them to know, such as opening hours, phone number, address, services offered etc, as detailed above.
You can also update this page with more temporary/seasonal information such as holiday hours, temporarily closed, or anything else that might be useful at the time.
How Does Google Business Profile Help Me Increase Google Visibility in Cardiff?
When you search for a specific type of business in a local area, you are given a map in the search results with 3 of the most relevant businesses to that local area.
It’s known as the “map pack” and looks something like this:
You can’t necessarily just expect to set up a Google Business Profile and immediately appear here though. If you’re the only person in your niche in a small town, you might get lucky – but most businesses will have to overcome competition first.
Having a well optimised business profile AND well optimised website is crucial to maximise your likelihood of gaining a strong position here. Reviews are an indirect factor too, as negative reviews will reduce the amount of clicks your profile receives, leading to others outranking you over time.
Of course, location is a major factor too, so the closer to your business a searcher is, the more likely they are to find you – especially if the amount of comparable businesses nearby is low.
How Does Google Business Profile Help Me Gain Credibility?
If you google “thai restaurant Cardiff”, you won’t just get a list of options. You will see a star rating for each restaurant too.
Reviews provide customers with valuable feedback and real life experience about businesses.
This “social proof” is often crucial in pushing an unsure viewer to go ahead and use the business or make a purchase.
After all – every business will say they’re the best on their own website – that’s how marketing and copywriting works.
However, the average modern day web user is pretty wise to this, and is unlikely to go ahead and trust a business based purely on the selling points listed on the business’s own website.
Reviews are a way to go straight past this to the customers themselves, and get feedback that is (usually) more trustworthy and authentic.
You might think only positive reviews are helpful in this regard – but a list of 100% positive reviews is likely to be seen as difficult to believe. A majority of positive reviews with a few negative ones sprinkled in here and there is likely to be a lot more believable, authentic and convincing – after all, nothing is loved by everyone!
Setting up a Google Business Profile for your Cardiff company will help you to start receiving these reviews, which will make your profile become more and more convincing over time.
How to Setup Google Business Profile in Cardiff
- How to Add Your Business to Google Maps
First, go to Google Maps:
Next, click the menu button on the top left and choose “Add your Business”.
- Fill Out Your Business Information
After clicking on “Add Your Business” above, Google will ask you to log in to a Gmail account.
If you already have a Gmail account you use for your business, simply sign in.
If you don’t have one yet, simply register for a business Gmail account as shown in the image below:
Once you’re signed in, you’ll need to start building your Google Business Profile by filling in your business name and some basic other information such as the category your business falls under.
Please note it’s crucial to write your business title EXACTLY as it is here. Don’t try to get clever by adding additional keywords, as Google is likely to remove your profile for good.
When you type in your business name, Google will automatically provide some potential titles of known Cardiff businesses it thinks might be appropriate.
If your business title doesn’t come up, ignore the list and simply enter it as a new title.
If your business does come up in the suggested list, skip past the remainder of this section and we will discuss how to claim it as your own a bit further down.
- Add Your Location
This is arguably the easiest part of the whole process. However, don’t forget that the reason we’re doing all of this is local SEO in Cardiff – and that potentially makes this the most important part, too.
After all, a simple typo causing you to add the wrong postcode or similar could prevent your business profile from showing up in the right area, making the whole strategy rather pointless.
If Google thinks your address matches an existing business it is aware of, it will ask you if that’s what you’re looking for. You can either select the existing business profile to take control over it, or choose “none of these” to create a new profile entirely.
Once your location is filled in and confirmed, you will also be asked if you offer home deliveries. This doesn’t apply to courier style deliveries – and is only asking if you offer home deliveries manually by your own staff. Local food delivery companies and local tradesmen for example will want to choose yes at this stage.
You will then need to tell Google which areas you are able to deliver to, in order to ensure that your local business profile is not offered up to users who are too far away to become a potential customer.
Finally, you will need to take care of a few smaller details, such as opting in to updates and adding contact information, before it’s time to verify everything:
- How to Verify Your Google Business Profile in Cardiff
Google Business Profiles cannot be found by potential customers until this step is completed.
There are 5 options for how to verify your Google Business Profile:
- By live video call proving your business location and authority in the business
- By providing a video recording of the same as above
- By receiving a postcard at your address and entering the code on it
- By automated phone call
- By email
Choose whichever option is best for you, however, if you aren’t using a physical location we would recommend sticking to the phone call or email, as they’re the quickest options and allow you to verify immediately rather than waiting for a postcard to arrive or wasting time making a video.
If you are adding a physical location, the postcard is necessary to prove to Google that you are working at these premises.
Once verified, your Google Business Profile setup is now complete!
You will be asked if you want to add more info about your business. We would recommend filling this in immediately and comprehensively, including allowing messaging through Google, adding your opening hours and contact information, details on your services and/or products etc.
This information is what will tell potential customers that you’re the right business for them, and make it easy for them to contact you – so any missing information is likely to translate into missed opportunities.
You can also add business photos here. This is a great idea, but ensure they are professional and appealing enough to be used for marketing purposes, and authentic enough not to disappoint anybody.
After all, if your business is a restaurant, and your business photos include seating areas that don’t look clean, or messy, half eaten food – you are more likely to turn potential customers away than attract them. In the same way, false or overly promising images will just result in negative reviews as you give people a false impression of what to expect.
You will also be offered a chance to add your business profile to paid Google Ads at this stage and start bidding on clicks. This isn’t required if your priority is organic rankings (it should be) – but it is still an excellent opportunity worth considering, and will allow you to bring further traffic to your business profile on Google or your website, beyond that already being achieved by your organic ranks.
It’s too deep of a topic to discuss here, but if you’re interested, look out for our guide on Google Ads for Cardiff-based business in the near future.
How to Claim An Existing Google Business Profile
Google regularly researches existing companies and adds the information to their database.
As a result, there is a chance your business already exists as a Google Business Profile.
If this is true, you can skip the entire guide above, and all you need to do is claim and verify it.
This can be easily and quickly done like so:
- Find Your Business on Google Maps
First, simply go to Google Maps and search for your business.
All Google Business Profiles show up on Google Maps, including their physical addresses – so this should be easy to find.
If it doesn’t show up, the most likely reason is that it doesn’t exist in Google yet, and you need to go back to the start of this guide and create it.
If it does show up, all you need to do is click “Claim This Business”.
If that option doesn’t appear, it either means somebody has already claimed the business, or you’re already the owner.
You can log into your Google Account and go here to confirm if the business is already added to your account.
If it isn’t, you’ll need to contact the existing business manager to resolve this, which we will detail shortly a little further down.
- Claim Your Business
Now that you’ve clicked “Claim Your Business”, you’ll be shown some info on the business and asked to confirm it is yours. If you’ve made a mistake and it’s a different business, just click “I own or manage another business” to cancel out.
If it’s definitely your business, click “Manage Now” to take control.
At this stage you will be asked to verify, exactly like shown in step 4 above.
Once you’ve done that, congratulations, you now control your Google Business Profile!
How to Request Access to a Google Business Profile
This section is solely for if you have found your Google Business Profile, but there is no “Claim Your Business” button showing.
If this isn’t the case, simply skip to the next section of the post..
If it is the case, it means somebody else already has ownership of the business.
Firstly, simply go to the Create page and search for your business name, exactly as detailed above.
When you select your business, Google will tell you that it is already owned by somebody else, and provide their email address.
First, check this email address carefully – as it’s possible it is one of your older email addresses, or one for somebody else in your organisation.
If this isn’t the case and you don’t have any access to that email address, simply click “Request access”.
You will then be asked to fill out some info such as your name, relationship to the company, contact info etc.
Once this is sent off, the current business owner will have 72 hours to approve or decline the request. Please note, you won’t receive any notification if they approve it, so if you receive no response, we would recommend following the above steps again to double check if you’ve been added to the account without being told.
In the vast majority of cases, this will have resolved the issue and you now have full control of your business profile! If you’re still having issues, check out Google’s page for owner conflicts.
Congratulations, your Cardiff business is now set up on Google maps!
Now that we’ve covered the basics of setting up your Google business profile, let’s look at some tips at optimising it for the best possible results:
How to Optimise My Google Business Profile
Optimization is the key to successful on page SEO. Whether implementing good Cardiff SEO or beyond, you have to pay it good attention. We are going to go into some tips on Google business profile optimisation, but first, be sure to triple check all of the basic information we’ve entered so far:
The first stage of this should be to verify that all of your basic contact information is correct. After all, this is what will be offered up to people searching for your business, and is therefore the main route for Google searchers to become your customers.
A simple typing error or missed digit here could genuinely make the whole process translate into zero additional sales.
So double, triple check everything – and at a bare minimum your business name, address and phone number should be correct, to ensure anybody who wants to contact you is able.
There are some clever things you can implement here to make life easier, such as call tracking, but we will go more into detail on that in a separate post.
Fill out Your Description
This one is hopefully self explanatory, giving you an opportunity to fill out more information about your business. You ideally want to cover all products and services offered by your business, as people may click away and find another business if they don’t see what they’re looking for.
Beyond that, use established techniques like copywriting and brand storytelling to get as much as you can from this text.
Keep it simple and don’t put promotional messages, gimmicks or keyword stuffing here – just make it straightforward, accurate and clear.
Images/How to Change Profile Pictures on Google My Business
Arguably another easy one, but still very important as the images you choose will hopefully be the first impression a lot of local people get of your business.
First, set a simple profile and cover photo – if you’re not sure what to use, a logo will do the trick just fine.
Then add more in depth photos that will give people an idea of what you offer, such as photos of the team, products/shelves, interior and exterior areas etc.
You are limited here to images of between 10kb and 5mb, and can only use JPG or PNG.
If you’re not very good at photos, consider hiring a professional photographer to do this – it sounds like a relatively minor thing, but unprofessional or unappealing photos will put people off working with you.
Add Highlights & Attributes
This is an effective way to highlight the main selling points of your business, or any attributes you think might be important to people.
Examples could be “accepting new patients” for a dental surgery, “LGBT friendly” for a pub, or “vegan options” for a restaurant.
You should include any and all you can think of that are relevant, as each one will be appealing to a different audience.
Simply scroll to the “info” tab, and scroll down to “from the business”.
Click the pencil icon to add your attributes.
Consider Using Google Posts
Google Posts aren’t necessary to use, and the majority of companies with Google Business Profiles don’t. However, they can be a great way to update customers and potential customers about offers, events, new products etc – especially since Google’s rules stipulate that you can’t do this in the business profile itself.
Google Posts are essentially short blog posts that exist within Google itself, allowing you to publish about 3 specific categories:
- Offers
- What’s New
- Events
Simply go to “posts” and click the bottom right button to create your first Google post.
You can choose the type of post from the above list, then fill it out and add photos as you wish.
You can also choose to add a specific button to it to encourage the customer to take action – e.g, “Buy” or “Book Now”, and input the relevant link for where you’d like the button to send them.
Finally you’ll see a preview button that will allow you to see your post before publishing it – be sure to click this every time, to ensure no post goes live with any issues or errors.
Posts will typically last for a week – although this may vary, for example if you set up an event post for a specific time frame.
Please keep in mind that only two posts will be visible on your business profile at a time – so any more than this is a waste.
It’s also a good idea to keep the posts concise. The limit is 1500 characters, however, only around 100 will show up in the initial preview – it is a good idea to either get all of the important information into the preview, as varying percentages of people simply won’t bother reading beyond it.
Add Featured Products
Products Editor allows small to medium businesses to add a list of products to your business profile, or “Popular Dishes” in the case of restaurants.
Simply go to “products”, then “add a product”, and fill in the necessary information and upload an image.
You can even add a category, price and a “buy” button that goes directly to the product page on your website.
Improve Social Proof by Responding to Reviews
One of the biggest benefits of Google Business Profile is that your business can easily receive Google My Business reviews from customers and that these will display in Google for all to see.
Reviews provide social proof that local people have used your business and been happy with the results.
For example, 36% of 25 to 34 year olds say they use online reviews for product and brand research.
This means that even in this day and age of reviews potentially being faked in some situations, people still trust reviews more than the regular marketing text on your website, and that they still work when it comes to pushing a potential customer to become a genuine buyer.
Unfortunately, even the best companies in the world will receive negative reviews from time to time. Sometimes they’re very much justified. Other times, the negative experience might be due to the customers own incorrect expectations, or even their own fault due to purchasing the wrong product or a similar mistake.
Such negative reviews will be seen by anyone who decides to click to view your reviews – but this doesn’t mean they need to harm your reputation.
It is highly recommended that you respond to any negative reviews, as all viewers of your business profile will be able to read this response immediately under the review. This gives you a chance to add context to the negative experience and show people how dedicated you are to fixing issues for customers.
Instead of being defensive or passing on the blame, simply apologise, explain why it happened in a non-biased way, and provide a solution that makes the customer happy. Above all, look at your own processes to ensure a similar issue doesn’t happen again. In many cases this course of action may lead to them removing the negative review or changing it to a positive one.
However, even if this doesn’t happen, people viewing the negative review are much less likely to be turned off by it after seeing your proactive response.
It’s against Google’s terms to incentivise reviews, and of course, you can’t specifically request a positive one. But there are tools out there that allow you to automatically request a review from customers by email a set amount of time after they make a purchase. These are relatively cheap and easy to manage, and will allow you to build up genuine reviews rapidly.
You could also add a link to posting a review to receipts, order confirmation emails etc.
Add Relevant Q&A
The Q&A section allows you to add customer questions to your Google Business Profile along with your official response.
These will often be asked directly by your customers in Google – be sure to keep up with these and respond appropriately. This will not only provide people with up to date information about your business, but will also help you to appear more trustworthy, in a similar way to responding to reviews.
You can also add your own questions – and if you have any frequently asked questions that customers ask, it would be a good idea to add these immediately to remove any common confusion or ambiguity customers may face.
For example, if you’re a restaurant that offers delivery, and customers often ask if you do or not, it potentially isn;’t clear enough on your website or business profile – answering this question here will not only encourage more people to use your business and order for delivery, it will likely reduce the amount of query calls you need to handle too.
Simply search for your business in Google, go to the questions and answers section, and then click “More questions” to answer any unanswered questions.
You can also report any incorrect answers provided by other Google users, which is important to avoid any misunderstandings.
Now that we’ve covered the basics of setting up and optimising your Google Business Profile, it’s time to look at the answers to some questions we are regularly asked.
Frequently Asked Questions about Google Business Profile
Can I Change my Address on Google Business Profile?
Absolutely! First go to the “Businesses” tab to ensure you’re editing the correct location. Then go to “info” and edit the Address field.
You can also drag and place the pin to show your exact location on the map. Please note Google will need to approve this change before it goes live, so you won’t see the change happen immediately.
Do I Need a Physical Address to Use Google Business Profile?
If your business is a physical storefront, such as a restaurant, shop, optician, etc, then yes. However, if you don’t have a physical storefront and travel directly to your customers (e.g. a plumber, electrician, mobile hairdresser etc), you can still operate a Google Business Profile page without needing to publish an address. You will still need to add it to your profile, but you can hide it from public Google results. To do this simply go to “Info” then find your address and click “clear address”.
Unfortunately online only businesses such as lead generation companies, cannot use Google Business Profile – you need to either have a physical storefront, or travel to customers.
Can I Track Organic Traffic from Google My Business in Google Analytics?
By default, Analytics tracks your site’s organic traffic, but it doesn’t tell you which traffic comes from your Google Business Profile.
You can fix this by editing your URL in Google Business Profile and adding the below to the end of the URL:
?utm_source=gmb&utm_medium=organic&utm_content=listing&utm_campaign=local
For example: https://sequenceseo.com/utm_source=gmb&utm_medium=organic&utm_content=listing&utm_campaign=local
In the future this will show GMB as a traffic source in Analytics, allowing you to see who’s found you via the profile and who hasn’t. This will be useful for figuring out what works and what doesn’t, and making further optimisations over time.
Need Help With This?
We hope this guide is clear enough to allow you to easily and quickly set up your own Google Business Profile.
However, as the #1 SEO agency in Cardiff, we help local businesses with this and related tasks daily, and have a process in place to create, optimise and manage highly effective Google Business Profiles.
If you need help with this, have any questions you’d like to ask, or want to discuss further marketing or search engine optimisation for your business please contact us here.