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By: Ami Hooper, Spiel PR - Temple Chamber of Commerce March 2019 Focus on Business This column has looked at various ways to improve your company’s SEO or Search Engine Optimization. One way you can supercharge your reach is through Google My business. Local consumers search online for places to shop, places to eat, and for service providers. Google My Business continues to evolve and is essential to getting your business to rank in local listings. There are a lot of new features such as services, description, Google Posts, and a Q&A. Here are some actionable tips to help kick-start your listing. Make sure you use Google Posts. Posts help drive your ranking. Another great thing about posts is that you can offer promos and coupons. Take advantage of this feature. There is a Q&A section now. Think about the most asked questions about the business and post it here. You are populating your account with great content and providing information to potential customers. Reviews are even more important now. Reviews continue to increase in importance in local search and now it is imperative that you are competing with your competition on reviews. If customers mention what service they bought, even better. Businesses can ask customers to mention those specifics and that will help get keywords in the reviews. Also, make sure you respond to every review. Google appreciates engaged businesses. Make sure all the basic profile information is complete. At a minimum you need to fill out your business name, address, link to the website, contact phone number, hours, and the business category. Keep this information updated so that customers can easily find you. There is also a place for a description. Use this space to share your story and promote what you do. If you have multiple locations then you have multiple listings. Be sure to fill out everything for every listing. It is important to keep your Google My Business page updated and optimized because it is the primary place users will get information about your company. Google My Business gives you complete control over what information people find when they search for your business with the added benefit of improving your SEO rank score.