What is a Google Business Profile?
A Google Business Profile (GBP) is a free tool that allows local businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google Search and Google Maps. By creating or claiming a Google Business Profile, businesses can provide essential details like their address, phone number, hours of operation, website, and more.
Formerly known as Google My Business, Google Business Profiles are critical to local businesses … and media companies … to improve their visibility in search.
Why local media companies need a GBP
All publications want more traffic to their website from Google. For local and regional media companies, this means you must prove you are a trusted authority in your region with the expertise to publish content about it.
One way to prove your expertise is to show Google that you are based in the city or region that you write about. And the best way to do that is to claim and optimize the Google Business Profile for your own publication.
It’s important to note that you must have a physical office location within the region you write about in order to claim or create a Google Business Profile for your company. P.O. boxes do not count. Before you go any further, I highly recommend you read Google’s business eligibility guidelines.
How to claim your Google Business Profile
It’s possible that Google already has a business profile for your publication. Google looks at many public data sources and builds their own business profiles to help improve search results.
Do a search for your publication on Google. Make sure to use the city and state where you’re located (for example “d magazine dallas tx“) and you can see if there is already a Google Business Profile for your publication.
Whether you want to claim an existing listing, or need to create a new listing for your publication, go to the GBP home page located at https://www.google.com/business/. Log in using a Google account and then follow the steps outlined there to claim (or create) and verify your listing.
Once you’ve claimed or created your business profile, make sure to complete as much information as possible including business categories, address, phone, website, social media links, publication description, photos, etc. The more complete your business profile is, the better.
Connect your GBP with your website
The next step is to help Google understand the connection between your business listing and your website. You should have already entered your website URL in your Google Business Listing. This is the most important connection.
Next, go to Google Maps and search for your publication’s business listing. Click the “Share” button, then click the “Embed a map” tab. Copy the code and embed it on your website’s contact page. When Google indexes your website, it will find an embedded map for your business listing which helps reinforce the connection.
Finally, from your Google Business Profile on Google Maps, click the “Share” button again, click the “Send a link” tab and copy the URL. This is the URL directly to your Google Business Profile and will look something like this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/fpTrg93CPsy45aYBA
Embed your business profile’s URL in your website’s schema markup using the SameAs property. This tells Google and other search engines that your website is the same entity as your Google Business Profile. SEO tools like Yoast and RankMath have easy settings for this, or your website developer can program the schema markup for you.
Maintaining your Google Business Profile
Finally, make sure to check and update your Google Business Profile at least monthly and preferably weekly. Update any old information, check and respond to new user reviews, check and respond to any new community Q&A, upload a few new photos (events, magazine covers, staff, etc.) and update your business hours and holidays.
A Google Business Profile won’t double your website traffic overnight, but it is an excellent strategy to show Google that your publication has the experience, expertise, authority and trust (EEAT) to publish content about your city or region.
