13 Things You Didn't Know About Google Business Profiles

0:00 what if I told you there's hidden spec inside your Google business profile stuff that even most experts have no idea about and not only is it real but it's like unlocking a cheat code for rankings so today I'm lifting the Bonnet on we say Bonnet in the UK we say the hood I suppose for my International friends we're lifting the hood on Google Business profiles and revealing 13 secrets are going to supercharge your rankings overnight so secret number one Bots run the show if you think that when you upload something that Google's got people there and they're looking at it they're checking it out and deciding whether or not to approve it then actually you've got to rethink this 99% of the actions on Google Business

0:45 profiles are just being processed by Bots and using complex algorithms but here's the thing Google loves patterns and once you start to understand the patterns It all becomes a lot easier to rank so secret number two there are hug humans behind Google business profile now not many because you try and get hold of someone to help you and you'll know that's pretty difficult going but from time to time manual checks need to be done and Brands need to be checked for trustworthiness and so the good thing is if you know what Google Business teams are looking for then you can fly through these easily secret number three is there's over 200 ranking signals that going to affect how Google puts your brand when it ranks it so you probably heard of reviews and photos but

1:30 did you know Google also tracks how often you update your profile the keywords that are used in the reviews by your customers and even the quality of your photograph makes a difference secret number four is Google's AI is watching you so Google's AI doesn't just rank you but it also learns about how you interact with your customers how reviews interact with you how your photographs really and truly interact with your customers and their expect ations so there's some great little tricks you can do to just understand what Google AI considers as a specific keyword in a photograph and once you understand that you can turn it around in your favor secret number five is Google loves the number three so here's

2:17 a hack that no one seems to talk about did you know that if you get three likes on a review it'll rank it higher if you get three likes or more on a Q&A it may well show that on the knowledge panel of your business meaning you get more real estate showing and also you get this useful Q&A showing and what about if you've noticed a competitor is spamming and you've reported it and nothing's happened this is where three comes in if you get three different Google Business profiles reporting it then Google starts looking at it and it'll make a difference so start understanding how Google uses three and it's going to have a massive impact on your rankings so by the time you get to secret 13 you're going to see how all these little details add up and make a massive difference to how Google ranks you how

3:02 you respond to your reviews how fast your business loads how fast it loads on on mobile all these have a massive compounding effect which we're going to come on to in a moment let's come on to number six engage Google so here's a trick that most people Miss Google loves engagement so when you respond to reviews when you're posting regularly and when you're updating your hours you give yourself a hidden boost inv visibility it's like feeding the algorithm fresh data and Google likes to nibble and bite away okay so for number seven onwards you may want to just sit down for these because these are mindblowing you see most business owners just don't understand how reviews work they just think if you get more reviews

3:48 and if they're five-star reviews you'll be fine and you'll rank above your competitors but that's not the way it works so look at your knowledge panel take a look and see the clues of there for you so Google doesn't just look at your star rating but it looks at how you're viewed on the web it looks at your rating overall your average rating and it also looks at the industry ratings too so let's take that first bit Google actually looks at the keywords your customers are using when they do a review and it'll pick up on those key phrases and you'll notice it can then filter them out it can filter them through and you can even sort how many other businesses have said the same phrase so Google's reading it's recognizing them so that's the first tip

4:33 the second one or number eight is that Google doesn't trust itself when it comes to its review system it knows there's a lot of fake reviews out there a lot of spammy reviews unfair reviews being given so Google also looks at reviews on the web itself and that's why there's a section called reviews on the web and there are things like Facebook yell Checker trade if you've got other third party giving good reviews to then Google starts feeling more confident with how it reviews you and so it needs those two to match up for it to be confident to trust and to have the authority authenticity that it wants to give your business when it ranks it and taking our next tip tip number nine is that five star reviews aren't actually

5:20 the very very best what do I mean by that well I did a whole course on analyzing thousands of reviews and what I found was that if you've got an average of about 4.3 to 4.6 Google thinks that's more authentic why does it do that well Google just doesn't trust five-star reviews most reviews that get removed by spam filters are five star there's a lot of fake five stars out there if you got genuine five-star reviews that's great but Google saying every so often someone's going to give you a two star review a three star review and so it reckons that about 4.3 to 4.6 is a fair estimate of being the perfect type of review score especially if you've got hundreds of reviews so if you want to know more

6:05 about that course I do on reviews I'll put a link down below number 10 local proximity is massive so what do we mean by that well when someone goes to their phone or their computer and they do a search for your type of business Google is very familiar with who are the three nearest to that person's searching so maybe it knows its IP address maybe it knows what mask it's using if it's using a signal either way Google likely will put the nearest three now it doesn't always do that and there is a triangle element involved and that comes down to your brand Authority so there are ways that you can make sure that you Shar up a bit further away than the Searcher and we we'll cover that in other videos in fact I'll put a link to a

6:51 video at the end of this video that will help you understand how that works number 11 Google Tracks how sticky you are seriously when I say sticky you've probably heard of balance rates when customers go to your profile or they go to your website Google then sees how long do they stay there when they read your posts how long they involved when they watch your videos how long do they watch it for Google's got a good understanding of how long people stay with your business and your brand so if Google's serving up you as the number one and people love going there and it answers their questions they get a great service or they get the products there after Google's confident that keeping you number one makes sense so you're sticky but if you get people just bouncing back saying I didn't find anything there Google picks that up to

7:38 and it starts bringing you back down the rankings so if you want to stay number one or get to number one then you need to get people to stick around so when you do write detailed descriptions when you do have mind-blowing offers when you do have social media that supports your profile on Google when you do have a website that loads fast and gives good interaction you do have videos on there that are actually useful and people want to watch you'll get people to stick around and that will help you rank number 12 Google rewards consistency have you ever heard of the word nap now it's an acronym and it just means nap name address phone number and there's a few other things as well you could add to that but ultimately what does that mean well it means that Google's looking

8:23 for consistency Google just wants to make sure that when it's got information about your business and then it scours the webs it scours citations indexes links whatever your brand is mentioned online it should be consistent if it's consistent it builds trust and trust is a factor that Google rewards in its rankings number 13 is the truth about Google you know there's one basic truth is that your Google business profile is a massive profit engine it can easily bring in lots of leads lots of customers and one of the key factors behind it is you need to make sure that your website loads fast particularly on a mobile so if Google sending customers your way and

9:09 then they're not getting a great interaction on a mobile and you'll find that when you look at your your insights on Google it will tell you whether or not your visitors visit Via Mobile or via a desktop and if more than 50% of them are on a mobile and the mobile experience is poor it l slow you'll find that you'll drop in the ranking so if you want to understand how location works and how you can make sure your business also loads quicker and you want a stepbystep process then this video is going to show you what to do next and it's going to help you rank your business so that it really does become that engine that leads engine that it can become so I'll see you on this next video