As a business owner or someone who works in marketing, you want to make sure every bit of information about your business online is 100% accurate, especially in the coveted Google search, but what if Google itself does a little double-cross and LIES about your business, its hours, or even says that it’s completely gone? How, you may ask? Let’s dive in.
How You Introduce Your Business Is Essential
Take a minute and try to remember the first thing you tell people about your business. Most of the time, it’s the niche, the services, and how long it has been operating, but how often do you tell people your opening hours? “What?! How is that important?!” you may think, but trust us, it’s far more important than you realise. The fact of the matter is that having your opening hours public can be a major boost, as people who search for your business will be less likely to contact you or visit your premises if they think you might be closed.
Google Lying and My Lost Package: An Anecdote
To give you an idea of just how important it is to update your working hours and availability on Google, here’s a funny story that happened to me a while back. So, I ordered a fancy guitar pedal online and waited eagerly for it to arrive. A few days later, I got an email confirming its delivery, but something was wrong: I didn’t get anything delivered to my address! I tinkered around with the order and found out that I had mistakenly had it delivered to the address of my old business premises instead of my current one. Now, it had been years since I’d been to that building and I had no idea what was there. I knew that something must have replaced my old business there because apparently, someone had signed for my package.
My first instinct then was to do what anyone else in my position would – I Googled the name of the company that’s apparently in that building now, but to my surprise, the Google knowledge graph popped up and said ‘PERMANENTLY CLOSED’. Something was fishy, so I decided to drive down there and to my greater surprise, there I found a fully-functioning, bustling business that WASN’T permanently closed like Google says.
Anyway, I went over to the first person I saw there, made small talk, and found out that they did in fact have my guitar pedal; but being an SEO person, I also mentioned the fact that Google says they’re permanently closed to which they replied, “Yeah, someone told us…” I tried to tell them it’s an easy fix and they just completely ignored it.
The takeaway is, how many customers do you think that business is missing out on daily because Google says they’re permanently closed? This means they’re relying solely on repeat customers and not on any prospective ones, which seems completely illogical. It means no phone calls, emails, texts, carrier pigeons, anything. Regardless, you don’t want to have the same mindset, so how do you protect yourself?
How Do I Make Sure Google Is Telling the Truth About My Business?
Thankfully, you can use Google as a weapon against itself when it comes to your business information like opening hours, phone number, location, whether you’re open or closed, etc. Just go to business.google.com, search for the name of your business or company, and follow the easy steps it will give you to update everything. It’s critical that you claim your Google Business profile so you own your data, but more importantly, if you don’t, Google will just roughly guess what it is you do. For example, if your company is called Parrot Beaks, Google could make a guess that you’re an air conditioning company.
Google Reviews Can Make or Break Your Business
Just like in high school, horrifying, disturbing rumours can kill your credibility. These rumours come in the form of every business owner’s nightmare: bad reviews. It’s natural for anyone to look at reviews as the first thing before thinking about contacting a business, and if you see a 1-star or 2-star rating, you’ll likely dismiss that idea. An even worse reality is that some (very evil) people will leave bad reviews on businesses they’ve never even worked with.
Luckily, Google again has the answer with business.google.com. When you sign up for a Google Business account, it will give you this little link that you can send out to customers, and when they click on it, it gives them a blank page with a box where they can add a star rating and leave a review. But, there is one trick here that’s entirely dependent on you: asking nicely!
There is nothing wrong with asking a customer to leave a review, but it’s all about the way you do it. “Please, would you mind doing me a personal favour and leave us a review? We have been working really hard and would appreciate your feedback” is more likely to get results than a heartless “Leave us a review”. It’s all about having a warm, personal conversation about it and make the review process as easy as possible for them. You can do this by using a redirect URL, something akin to parrotbeaks.com/reviews redirecting to that special review URL, which you can put on little cards to give out and also include it in emails. Again, though, it’s all about the language.
The truth is, you can’t stop bad reviews, but you can overwhelm them with positive ones. With reviews, it’s never a case of one bad apple that ruins the bunch, but more of drowning out that bad apple in a sea of good apples that smell and taste very nice. Once again, go to business.google.com, register, get a review link, make cards, and ask for favours. It’s that simple!
Your Domain Name Is the Lifeblood of Your Business
Your domain name isn’t just the cool name you picked out to enter into the address bar, it’s responsible for so many aspects of your business. It used to be that when domain names expired or were in need of renewal, the website would just be down for a bit, but now, so many things hinge on it. So, find out when your domain name is due for renewal and do it now. It’s also best to renew it for a long time because we theorise that Google recognises websites with longer registration periods as being a bit more trustworthy, so it’s definitely worth doing immediately.
Protect Your Business With Two-Factor Authentication
Two-factor authentication isn’t just for protecting the credit card information stored on your Google or Apple account, but it’s also important to turn it on for your domain name registration. Again, you want to protect your domain name and website as much as possible, and two-factor authentication is an essential way to do it.
Takeaway
All-in-all, you want to provide Google with as much accurate information about your business as possible. This includes updating all the information regarding your business on Google Business by creating an account, renewing your domain name, and turning on two-factor authentication. While you’re at it, make sure your customers are leaving the best reviews you can get, and you’ll be on your way to a prosperous business journey.
Last Updated on December 20, 2024
