- [Neil] Hey everyone, it's Neil Patel
and today is another day of Local SEO Unlocked
where we break down, setting up your map listings.
If you haven't seen the past lessons,
there's a few lessons that we've already covered,
you can go to neilpatel.com/training,
click on Local SEO Unlocked and underneath each lesson,
you'll also find the worksheets and handouts
that go along with each lesson.
So now let's go over setting up your map.
There's quite a few different things that you need to know
from this Google My Business to Bing places
to Facebook, Facebook locations and Apple maps
and we'll be going over quite a few of them,
technically actually all of them.
And if you do these and you do it right,
you'll start seeing more and more results over time.
So let's go over a Google My Business,
60% of smartphone users have contacted a business directly
using the search results,
EX click to call option which you have seen
on Google My Business.
So Google My Business, showing up there in the maps,
it increases traffic and sales that allows people
to learn more about your business,
a higher rankings causes increase revenue
and increase engagement as well
which is all good things that you want.
And you want to ideally show up in Google's local pack
which is right underneath the map,
this helps you earn trust from customers,
this helps you get better star ratings over time,
assuming your product or service is great
and it's free Google advertising
and helps you stand up from the competition.
So let's set up your Google My Business.
Step one, set up a new Google account,
if you already have one you can use that
and access your Google My Business login.
Step two, head to google.com/business, click on Manage Now,
then the next step is entering your business name.
You want to avoid accidental duplication,
I know that sounds silly
but a lot of people make this mistake.
And did you just open up a new location?
If so, add a new Google My Business profile
to existing business as well.
Step four, enter the address of the business location only
if where the business engages with people face to face.
I'm not talking about virtual places,
you want to more so pick that address
of your physical location
and your service area business that delivers good
if you are ticked that box at the bottom of the form,
step five, specify the service areas that you guys offer
and then from there, Google can accurately surface
your business for searches in those areas.
Step six, choose the right business category
and no research your competitors
to find the most accurate categories for your business
before you do this.
You want to pick the one that's most relevant towards you.
For example, Wendy's and McDonald's,
yeah, they offer ice cream but they're not a restaurant,
they're more of a fast food or hamburger joint.
So pick the one that is most relevant towards your business.
And then the next step would be
to add a contact phone number, your website URL,
if you don't have a website,
I highly recommend that you create one
and Google will even give you the option
to create a new Google website.
Step eight, complete your Google My Business verification,
this is important and you have a few options,
postcard verification, phone or email
each of them works.
So now what's next.
Well, it's time to optimize your Google My Business.
So how do you optimize it?
Well, first you want to add photos
and videos to your listings.
If you add photos and videos,
people are much more likely to come to your store
and you also want to write a compelling business description.
What is it your business does?
Why should people choose you over the competition, right?
And you want to use Google My Business Q&A's as well
so that's the question and answers
to understand your audience.
So let them ask questions
and then of course you'll want to answer them as well,
shows that you care.
Then you want to create Google My Business posts
to showcase offers and promotions and discounts
that you could be having for things like Black Friday
or holiday shopping or anything like that.
Like Valentine's day specials
and then of course you want to add service menus
and product collections.
So doing all of this will help you
get the most amount of traffic
and it also encourages your most loyal customers
to also follow you on Google My Maps in case you change.
Locations and you'll be shocked
at how many people change over time.
So I also recommend that you start requesting
and managing Google reviews,
review ratings are the biggest driver of clicks
to the local SERPs.
So make sure that you focus on them
and 82% of customers read online reviews
for local businesses.
So it's important that you also try to get great ones.
Don't fake it if people give you bad reviews,
try to fix what they're saying
so that when the future you get better ratings
in the future.
And you also want to view search insights,
this will give you ideas of what's happening
to your listing and how you can better optimize it.
You want to post statuses and pictures,
you want to update your business hours, your locations,
your contact information descriptions,
if any of that changes as well.
And with Google, they dominate the search
in your marketplace
and it's important to pay attention
even when it comes to local SEO
because there is a ton of traffic
but Google isn't the only search engine to keep in mind,
there's also Bing even though it's not as popular,
it still gets a ton of searches and Bing places
is free to set up, it's simple, it's one time
and they even give access to analytics.
A quick step for you Bing gets over a billion,
unique visitors a month
and 12 billion monthly search requests,
that's how popular Bing is.
So with Bing places you want to showcase your business
to online customers, businesses, your Yelp reviews,
your business hours, your contact information.
So let's optimize your listing.
So go over to bingplaces.com,
click on new user Bing to get started
and then locate yourself on Bing places
and make sure you're not already listed, very important
because someone on your team could have already done this
and then specify your location, claim it
and if you already have a business,
if not create a new business.
Step four, it's time to set up and create account,
pick or create account that all the relevant people
have access to within your business,
notably specifically the business owner
if you're not the business owner.
Step five, enter your business address and details,
Bing places will try to locate you on the map,
note that do not display this address check box
at the bottom, check this box
if you want people showing up at your address
but in most cases you do but this is the option for you
in case you don't want people showing up.
Step six, select your business category,
you have the option to pick multiple categories
and at the end, pick which one you want to display
as your primary category.
Step seven, set up your contact details,
make sure it's accurate and you're thorough about it,
pay attention, make sure you didn't mess up here
those are little things like
that can really mess things up in the future.
For social listings, place a full URL of your social pages,
not your handle and on the right side of the screen,
you can preview what customers will see.
And then what you want to do is add your working hours.
Now you can tailor the hours for each day of the week.
If you're not open, let's say late on Fridays,
they can accommodate that, they're pretty flexible,
just like Google and then from there,
you want to make sure you add your logos,
snapshot of your storefront,
examples of your products services, photos of your team
and then you'll want to verify your listing.
Bing will send you a unique either by email
or a phone call or a Snail mail, all this is important.
Now the next one we have is Facebook for businesses.
Facebook is the largest social media platform,
they provide an authority, a third data backlink to you,
even if it doesn't help with search in your rankings,
that's okay and it helps with social proof
and it's easy to set up.
So 90 million small businesses use Facebook, that's huge.
So it's time to create your Facebook business page.
Step one, go to facebook.com/pages/create,
select the type of page you want to create,
click the get started option.
Typically most people click the business or brand page.
Step two, enter your business information.
Use a business name that people are likely
to search for when trying to find your business.
For the category, type the word or two
that describes your business and then Facebook
will then offer some suggested options
and then click one of their suggested options.
Step three, apply your profile and cover image,
make sure is that those photos aligned with your brand.
Step four, create your username,
also called your vanity URL
so that way people can easily find it on Facebook
and join the community as well
which is very important in the long run,
because this helps make your business page more popular.
You want to add your business details
and then you do this by going to settings,
then keep page info and share information
about your business like your category,
your contact information, your hours, location,
all that kind of good stuff.
And for the next step, tell your story.
A story says a thousand words, right.
It's not just a picture, a story does as well.
And stories are the age old marketing technique
that's been around for thousands and thousands of years.
At a longer description to your business,
this will help people find you when they're doing searches
on Facebook as well and tell customers
what your business has to offer.
Next step, create your first post,
your first post should add value to your visitors.
Like if you're a sandwich shop,
start talking about your sandwiches,
maybe some of the raw ingredients you put in there,
why you guys are different?
What people think about it?
You can do some fun stuff like a sandwich blind tests,
what sandwich do people prefer?
And then the next step you want to publish your page
and invite it to other people like your friends,
to other friends of colleagues, co-workers
and invite your existing Facebook friends
to like your page, use other channels like your website
and Twitter profile to promote it
and add a follow us logos
and promotional material all throughout everything
so that way people go and follow you on Facebook
when they visit your store.
But wait, there's more with Facebook,
there's also location faced with business page locations
is not intuitive, does your business
have more than one location?
Wondering how to promote separate businesses
to local audience?
Well, let's set this up.
So let's set up locations for your page.
Step one, I want you to log into business manager,
stuck business locations, under assets,
select your Facebook page and then click get started.
Step two, if your main page has an address,
you'll see a warning message,
if your main page has an address,
you can add this address as a location.
And then for the next step,
click Add Locations to set up
your first Facebook page location.
Then from there, you'll see three options to add locations,
you can either manually type in address,
upload a CSV, migrate an existing page
into a location manager.
So pick the one that's most relevant for you
and step five, edit and optimize
your Facebook location pages.
You want to go to your business locations dashboard,
you can view all your location pages
and add any missing details like a store office
or whatever it may be.
So are you ready to even grow even more?
Apple has over 1.5 Billion active devices.
Now there's Apple Maps,
even though it's not as good as Google Maps,
it's still improving and getting better over time
but you still want to be in there
because so many people use them.
So let's go over setting up your Apple maps.
First off, create an Apple ID if you don't have one,
just takes a few minutes and it's free to register
then you want to log into your account
and then you want to access Apple Map connect
and this is where you can add your business
to Apple Maps and then search a secret business
is already listed.
I know it's probably may not be
but still just double-check this and doing so
can prevent double listings which will hurt you
in the future if you have one
and if Apple maps list your business, claim it,
review the information to ensure it's accurate
and then click claim this place boxing,
claim your business listing.
If you can't locate your business, just click,
Add a New Place to start and then accurately,
enter your business information,
make sure it's keyword rich
because people search for keywords.
You can use Uber suggests as they showed
in the previous lesson,
which you can find that neilpatel.com/training,
click on Local SEO Unlocked
but you can use this to put in the right keywords
and then you want to make sure everything's up to date
like your address, your hours, phone number,
social media accounts
and then of course verify your business,
apple will give you a verification code
and once you do that, you're off into the races.
"Great things may come to those who wait,
"but only the things left by those who hustle."
So that's it, if you enjoyed this lesson,
make sure you like it, share it, subscribe to the channel,
tell other people about it.
If you need help with your local business,
you can also check on my Ad Agency Neil Patel Digital.
Thank you very much.