Claim/Optimize or Create a Google My Business Listing

To begin this process, you will need a Google Account. Once you have it, you can find several Google Apps located in your account that are all free of charge! Find and click the My Business icon and you can start publishing your listing to Google. You may already have a listing, and in this case you can search and find your location instead of creating a new one.  Once you have your listing under your control, you can upload a nice profile pic and cover image and you can also upload several pics of the exterior, interior and staff at your business. There’s an awesome smarthpone app you can get that will help you manage your listing from your phone and receive notifications from Google like when a new review is posted! Which brings us to our next point….

Start generating new reviews on your Google Listing

Google tends to bump up the local business with the most & best reviews in it’s organic map’s listings. Start rising to the top of the maps pack by asking some of your customers to review you on Google. Just make sure to tell them to search organically for the listing as Google can sense when someone is pushing new reviews through direct links.

Start a Facebook Page

Google has no problem turning up Facebook pages in it’s organic search results. They will even show your Facebook reviews score in your My Business listing. So, do yourself a favor and start taking advantage of the gazillion people on Facebook locally who are waiting to hear from your business! The more active the page, the better your chances of it popping in Google Search so put together a plan to post consistently before launching. Don’t have time? Take a look at our Facebook management services. You can start creating your Facebook page here. Click the Create a Page link at top right after visiting link.

Buy and install an SSL certificate on your site

There’s a few reasons why investing in an SSL certificate is a wise move. One is that Google is giving a slight bump in organic search rank to sites that have SSL protection. As an additional consideration, Google Chrome has begun to notify it’s users of non-secure (no SSL) sites in October, 2017. Go ahead and invest in https and it’s little lock and you will not be disappointed.