Open the doors with a Google Business audit
Google My Business (now called Google Business) is the ultimate business directory. When used well it is one of the most potent tools in your growth toolkit.
The key to the Google kingdom
Go to Google and search for your products and services as anyone else would; “emergency plumber Auckland”, for example. If you see other business listings with star ratings, a Google Map with featured businesses pinned – an opportunity is at hand.
Google My Business is a key driver of leads and revenue to websites across the country. 93% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses. If you leverage Google My Business to its full potential, you can engage with prospective customers who are ready to buy or at least be spoken to by a sales representative.
Growth Partners will help you unlock this incredible value to drive serious growth.
Harvey Cottle
Operations Manager, SmartShelters
DigitalArchitect gave us clarity like we’ve never seen before. By understanding the size of our online opportunity for each of our industry sectors, we were able to make better decisions on where to invest with confidence. There’s been no question around strategy since.
DigitalArchitect has given us a strategy to create more leads than we thought was possible… and led to the best ever sales results in our 106 year history!
Google My Business and local SEO
Having realised a large percentage of searches had local intent, Google has increasingly directed users to local businesses.
This saw the birth of ‘local search engine optimisation’ – a strategy that aims to get your website ranking high on Google, whether in the traditional or rich search results, when relevant, localised keywords are searched.
Google My Business forms the foundation of local SEO. In the process of claiming your listing you verify your address, which adds your business to Google Maps.
It also has a review feature that distils and displays your online reputation: rich results show a star rating for your business and detailed customer reviews can be viewed in a single click. Successful businesses see this not as a cause for concern, but as an opportunity to be seized. The better your reviews, the greater your visibility and the more likely you are to be chosen by a potential customer
Customer Stories – Maple Community Services
Growth Partners delivered a new website and increased website visits by 424% over 18 months.
Maple continues to see month on month growth.
In the past 18 months we’ve achieved:
- Ranking for over 2,000 keywords
- 900% increase on ROI
The importance of reviews
People don’t trust companies to talk about themselves… but they do trust other people. A lot.
More surprisingly, 88% of people trust online reviews written by strangers as much as recommendations from people in their personal network.
Google’s business model is built on offering users the best search experience possible. Displaying user generated ratings and reviews plays a key role, as it allows users to get a sense of the quality and trustworthiness of businesses at a glance.
For businesses, good reviews = greater visibility and more sales. It’s surprising then that so few put in the effort to encourage and curate reviews and other trust factors. Unless, that is, you work with Growth Partners. We:
- Optimise/create your Google Business listing to improve your visibility for relevant keywords in your local area.
- Collaborate with you to improve the quantity and quality of Google reviews.
- Establish local citations and conduct directory marketing to drive more referral traffic to your site and increase your local signals.
- Help you to get the most out of your Google Business Profile (and/or your Bing Places for Business/Bing Business Listing) by capitalising on features that you may not know exist.
Unleash the potential of Google My Business
Google My Business is overflowing with potential. If you are willing to invest the time and resources, it can become the ultimate source of qualified leads. But to fully capitalise on the tool you must first understand the current state of play and the areas in which you can improve.
At Growth Partners we offer a Google My Business audit as part of our DigitalArchitect SystemⓇ, which is designed to generate a comprehensive blueprint for digital growth.
The audit process plays out as follows:
- Performance analysis: We offer a complete breakdown of your current Google My Business performance and compare it against agreed upon benchmarks.
- Customer analysis: We compare your customers against your identified target market and analyse the effectiveness of your current Google My Business strategy.
- Competitor review: We analyse your Google My Business performance against the performance of your direct competitors.
- Issue identification: We develop a complete breakdown of issues and areas of improvement.
- Insights: We use the data from the analysis above to generate a suite of revealing insights and opportunities.
- Recommendations: We transform these insights and opportunities into actionable recommendations and light the path ahead by outlining the next steps.
Our SEO Services
Keyword research
Our deep research uncovers how potential customers search for your products or services online, as well as their needs, desires and pain points at every stage of the customer journey.
Technical SEO
A key component of a comprehensive strategic approach to gaining market share.
ROI projection
Our data-driven approach will identify the market opportunity and forecast what you stand to gain if you invest in SEO for Shopify.
Performance analysis
How fast does your website load? Are people bouncing off particular pages? Is it mobile friendly? Our performance analysis identifies and fixes these issues.
On-page SEO
Search habits are changing – smart speakers and virtual assistants are making search queries more conversational. We help you develop on-page content that adapts to and capitalises on the new normal. This creates more traffic to your website, more engagement with your target market and ultimately more leads.
Off-site SEO
If trustworthy, relevant and authoritative sites are linking to you, you’re probably trustworthy, relevant and authoritative too. We use white-hat tactics to systematically acquire these all-important ‘backlinks’.
Information architecture
Your website structure should be simple for both visitors and Google to navigate. We analyse your site architecture to ensure it is easy for users to get around and for Google to pull information from.
Content gap analysis
Answer the questions that your customers are asking to become the provider of choice. We’ll identify and fill content gaps throughout the Awareness, Consideration and Transaction phases.
Competitor analysis
We identify your main online competitors, compare your online presence to theirs, and analyse their strengths and weaknesses to reveal the biggest opportunities. The goal: to get you ahead.
Open your doors digitally with Google My Business
Looking for multi-million dollar growth? Local search forms a key part of our holistic DigitalArchitect, which has already generated $100+ million in revenue for businesses just like yours.
FAQs
Some sources suggest that almost half of all online searches have ‘local intent’, and 88% of consumers who use their smartphone for a local search visit or call a store within a day. These statistics are only becoming more meaningful, with searches including ‘near me’ and ‘close by’ increasing by more than 900% in two years.
While there are many elements to a local SEO strategy, Google My Business is the most important. It ensures you are listed in Google’s business directory and on Google Maps, and it grants you the opportunity to shape your online reputation.
Many businesses don’t recognise the importance of Google My Business. Sure, they have a profile, but it is not actively managed, much less optimised… which is great news for those ready to take local SEO seriously.
At Growth Partners we help you capitalise on the incredible opportunity that Google My Business represents. We’re not an SEO agency – we’re a growth agency. Our DigitalArchitect ensures every decision we make and strategic route we take is guided by the ability to grow your business.
Our Google My Business audits play a key role in achieving that growth.
Local search engine optimisation (SEO) is a local marketing strategy designed to get your business in front of a greater number of relevant, local customers on Google.
Local SEO marketing is particularly important for brick and mortar businesses who sell to local customers. Years ago Google realised that a lot of search queries had local intent, so began to factor in the user’s location. Now, when a user types in ‘Italian restaurant’, they’re served up a map and/or list of dining options in their immediate vicinity.
Local search marketing is the process of optimising your online presence to quite literally put yourself on the map. A well crafted local SEO strategy can make you more visible on Google Maps, can improve your ranking on the SERP and can enhance your online reputation.
At Growth Partners we bring a deep understanding of the power of local SEO as part of our broader DigitalArchitect-driven growth strategy and can ensure you capitalise on the tool’s incredible potential.
Our solutions are entirely bespoke – we identify and meet your specific needs, from developing SEO strategy for multiple locations to delivering hyper local SEO.
We know that our proprietary DigitalArchitect, of which a Google My Business audit is a keynpart, generates fast, controlled growth, and drives long-term success. And we’ve got the data to prove it.
In our experience our system and approach works best for businesses that:
- Have turnovers of $3M-$50M and who seek multi-million dollar growth.
- Sell in B2B or high-price point B2C environments.
- Are privately-owned and can make faster, more impactful decisions.