Optimizing Google My Business: Business Name & Categories

But one of the things that we wanted to point out here is we want to try to be as consistent as possible across all of the internet basically. So, Google will actually use name, address, and phone number or NAP as a ranking factor. So making sure that the name of the business, the address of the business and the phone number of the business are consistent across the board, across the entire internet is a really big deal in terms of this profile here. There are some people out there that say, “Hey, if you want to, if you’re focused on one specific keyword, just throw it into your business name on your GMB. That actually is not a great suggestion. It actually goes against the Google policies for Google my business.

So save yourself a headache down the road. Just don’t do it. As we look at the category section, there’s a lot that goes into this section right here. You’re going to be approached with assigning yourself a primary category, and then you have the capability of actually doing additional categories too. But there is a very specific way that Google wants you to assign categories to your Google My Business profile. The primary category is going to be one that is as specific as possible yet speaks to your business as a whole. Really they’re kind of looking more for “my business is” rather than “my business does.” so that’s a big thing in terms of the categories.

So we want to try to be as specific as possible all the way across the board. You have the capability of adding up to nine categories here. But you want to try to do it in as in as few categories as possible, but still being able to encompass your business as a whole. What these will do, so the categories themselves so Google actually has a database of keywords that when a specific category is selected, it associates your profile with those keywords. That’s essentially how Google knows that, that they should be showing your profile for a specific search term. For instance, we’ll take a pizza restaurant as an example. So, when you assign your primary category as pizza restaurant, you’re opening the door for Google to show you for restaurants or restaurants near me.

Italian restaurants or pizza. So being able to associate and open those doors again, really big deal in terms of the amount of organic search traffic that you might be pulling into your website. A couple of big things here. So we want to make sure that we are not including pieces of our business or are distinct entities in our own profile. So distinct entities should have a standalone profile. So as an example, like a bowling alley that has a restaurant attached to it, or a hotel that has a restaurant attached to it, that restaurant should have its own Google My Business profile and should not be included in your Google My Business profile on the flip side of that say that you’re a manager of a grocery store. So your primary category is going to be grocery store but you also have a pharmacy and a deli in that same grocery store. Those categories should be selected as additional categories versus having their own GMB profile.

The categories that we select here will also open up some other features as well. So if you are a restaurant or you’re a local service provider when you select a specific category, you might get the option to add in a like a menu or a to go menu or to go ordering or different things like that. So again, really kind of interesting dynamic here with the categories section. We typically like to recommend anywhere between three and five, so kind of keep it in that three to five section unless you have multiple revenue streams that really do lend themselves to adding more categories but that’s it for today. If you guys have any other questions feel free to reach out to us directly, hit that like button, if you like what you’re watching, subscribe to the channel because there’s going to be quite a few more of these videos and then we might even branch out into other platforms if we get enough thumbs up. So that’s it for today. We’ll see you guys later. Thanks.