October 28, 2022 in Webinar
Optimize Google Business and get found online. We're looking at better organic search results for RV parks, campgrounds, and resorts. We're going to go ahead and jump right in and want to remind everybody that as we roll through this, if anyone has questions either live or afterwards, feel free to jump on there and ask.
All right, so who are we? We're exclusively partnering with RV parks, resorts, and campgrounds. We do have a membership with ARVC, and we talk a lot about M5 and how that is a RV park centric marketing system. You see a little mountain here where we focus on these four areas of reputation, resell, reach, and retarget.
That's a little bit about us moving along, a little bit about me. Here I am. That's actually down in Pigeon Forge. That's a sweet shot. I grew up on a campground over in West Virginia. It was also a sheep farm, so that's a pretty common story. I studied comms at the world's most exciting university. That's what they called it.
Actually, Liberty won the Virginia State championship for college football. I guess they beat all the teams that mattered in our state this year. Exciting. I married my college sweetheart Jenny, in October 2000. We just celebrated 22 years marital bliss.
We got four amazing kids Elena Kay, Cassia, Josiah and Addie. One doggo, Holly. All the kids are in this age where they're all doing all kind of stuff, so we're running around all the time. I've been helping companies with their online presence for more than 20 years. All right, that being said, move right along.
What we're going to leave with today, three areas. We're going to improve Google Business Profile. We're going to have some actionable information that people can leave with today, good stuff. If there's any questions, we're ready to answer them.
The reality is Google business profile is an opportunity to be found. Google holds the vast majority of the search in your market, and that has been that way for a long time, continues to be. The other thing to realize is mobile is where most of the searches are happening these days, and 84% of these searches are discovery searches or you couldn't say near me. That's people trying to find stuff near where they are at the time.
Complete listings when it comes to Google Business Profile are seven times more likely to get clicks than those left unfinished. A lot of room for improvement there. For many folks, the average number of views on a Google Business Profile is 39. There are people that have a lot more than that, and there are people that have very few. That gives you an idea where most people are at. If you have less than that, you have work to do.
If it is broke ... We have our friendly broken down RV. Can't go anywhere with that. And you can't go anywhere really online if you don't have a great online presence. Most parks are not taking full advantage of the resource that is GBP.
Over 50% of GBP visits produce website visits. When someone finds you through this venue, they're also going to visit your website, more than likely. Here's some common issues that we run across. See out there an Internet wild. There's no listing whatsoever, so that's not too good, or the business is not verified.
They have no or less reviews than their competitors. There are multiple NAP listings. Now, this has nothing to do with taking snooze its name, address, and phone number. You'd have multiple listings that are not all the same. That's not great. Or they're in the wrong category, or they have wrong categories listed. Those are some things that are issues that can cause problems.
All right, so let's dive a little bit more into defining this. The GBP, as we're calling it, allows you to manage your online presence across the entire Google excuse me platform. Once you create and claim ownership of that profile, you can access, edit, all that information appears in your listing from business hours, location, to any photos. Got a little sample here of Lake Ray Hubbard RV Resort.
Google business profile stats. I'm going to throw some more numbers at you. 97% of users primarily learn about local companies online. Average GBP receives 33 calls per month. They find your business, they call you from that.
64% of consumers have used it to find contact details for a local business, and then 88% look for online reviews before choosing local services. And I think we could all attest to that. We all use it. We're understanding that others are using it when it comes to our business as well. Why is this important?
Well, it's going to show potential customers, first of all, that you exist. That's a good thing. Then you're going to garner credibility and legitimacy by having that done correctly. You can tell your potential customers about what you have to offer. I'll definitely hit that more later.
This is huge. You want to show what days and hours you're open. For whatever reason, there might be a closing or different hours for some reason, especially when it comes to office and things of that nature, make sure that's accurate. Of course, traffic to your website is huge as well. That's a big part of why it's important.
Today we're going to get three main areas. We're going to talk about how that's set up properly and how we can optimize that. Eventually, you want to make sure you're posting. We'll touch on each one of these today.
Here is the setting up process. The add, claim, verify. If you happen to catch one of our previous webinars, we did touch on this. We will review. This is what you can do with your actual GBP. You can do it on Google Maps. This is a newer feature within it used to be when it was Google my business, it's changed a lot over the years.
They change the name every couple of years or so. There was business.google.com now you're just in a search or in the maps. You can still do all this. You can add the business if it's brand new or for whatever reason there's just no listing. Of course, if it's out there, it's been spidered by Google, then you can claim it. This next part of that would be verifying it. There are different ways you can do that through phone, text, email or even video. In some cases you may need more than one of those verifications.
It could take a few weeks. I think nowadays typically it's quicker than that back. It used to be like cards, they would send you a postcard to have to verify. I think they moved more away from that nowadays.
When you add the new business, we got a little gif that's showing you how you do it, but we'll walk through as well. It's going to be to go into that once again, maps.google.com, you're going to type that name or address in and then you got your little hamburger menu that we all like so much. Click on that and then you can add your business from that point, fill in your information, and then you claim the business. You can see here on this example where you would find that same type of process of going to maps.google.com. Type in that address and or name, click that listing and you can see claim the business. Then you will walk through the whole verification process that we mentioned earlier.
Before you do that, you would hit manage. Now, last step. What's new? There's things that constantly change on internet stuff all the time. Call history is eligible for select businesses and I think that's going to be rolled out over time to more and more.
You can go into your Google Business Profile and see what's been going on as far as phone calls, messaging, that's been around for a little bit, but it can be done through Google Apps, the browser or an amazing website like we have or app that we have. M5 allows you to integrate that and manage those messages too. You can control message, read receipts and insert and maps and then edit directly from search results, which we talked about. That's a newer feature. You don't have to go to business.google.com to take care of your profile.
The ability to edit. The other thing is if you have multiple locations, it's probably still better to go to business.google.com because then you can go and select different ones and edit those as needed. If you're dealing with a singular property, the ability to edit right in search results would probably be fine most of the time and just simplifies it. I know for us, we're dealing with multiple locations within our business and different things. We still use full on business.google.com.
Now we're talking about optimizing this. What are the benefits of this? We're going to walk through that. You can edit your listing and speak for yourself. You want to be able to say whatever you want to say that's accurate about your business and put out the message that most connects with your potential guests. It is practical and easy to manage. They do have premium options, and it is all for free. Gracious of Google to give us these free tools and then you can understand and expand your presence within that.
Here's how to optimize some more examples of what it might look like. You want to include every detail you can about your business. These are kind of one way to look at it is search terms as well. You're going to add those keywords once again. SEO friendly type of thing.
The operating hours, we mentioned that earlier, whether that's something that's your regular operating hours versus like holiday and all those kind of things, make sure that those get updated accordingly. Make sure you get good photos. We've seen this where because Google is kind of free wheeling and dealing as far as photos are concerned. Other people can post on and tag you and they'll show up on your profile. It could be completely wrong. It behooves any business to be active on making sure the photos are correct.
If someone does do that, for whatever reason, they start posting. For example, we had a business where someone was posting like baby shower photos and it was just all the main photos of dealing with this particular location were completely wrong.
Manage and respond to reviews. That's always huge. We're always talking about that when it comes to our partners. Make sure that you respond to reviews, whether good or bad. It's always best practice.
Enable messaging. We're a big fan of that. Do you want to make it easier for people to get in contact with you and then use the post feature? We will have a whole section on that, so hold tight.
Track phone calls is another way to optimize what you're doing through your GBP. It actually allows for two phone numbers, so you might have one that you always had at your physical location, and you could slot that into the second slot. You can track a number in the first slot. To record and things of that nature to help streamline the process that you have for whether it's getting bookings or what not.
When you have that number that you've always had in the second slot, it doesn't lose the SEO juice, so to speak, that people always have known that number is connected to the business. But you get to accurately track and report on calls when you do this and you can do a cool feature which is another part of the M5. If you were to enable Missed Call Text Back and your particular location is all about making sure the phone gets answered and for a reason it doesn't. This is really cool feature because you don't lose that opportunity. The conversation continue to go even if you weren't able to pick up the phone on that particular time for whatever the reason and the person that was trying to get a hold of you doesn't go to the next place or whatever because did not get answered.
That's another great way to utilize GBP and the messages. You can turn that on directly from search once you're logged in. Some of the benefits of this is that you can integrate and automate your guest touch points when you're doing GBP messages. You're available when the guests need you. It provides personalized on demand support and reduces response and resolution times and ultimately increase split traffic and revenue, which you like all those things.
Here's some common mistakes when it comes to this. We talked about a little bit unclaimed listening, just don't not claim it. Super good grammar, anybody? That's a closed business or just completely wrong. Maybe the location was something different previous.
Make sure that business that was there before, I know I talked to someone that it was a different type of property before and so it's not going to be the same thing, but the old information was still out there. It's a totally different business now. Of course missing or bad information is bad. Ignored reviews don't do it wrong or no photos talked about that and unanswered Q&A's, that's another thing. People can pose questions and if they do that on your profile like, "hey, what's the nearest attraction" or something and no one ever answers it, that's a problem.
Then you can put map pins as well related to your profile and it could be in the wrong location. Some people are not going to the right place based on that, so don't do that. Best practices would be review your NAP information, which is that name, address, phone number and make sure your business description and category is added correctly. Like I said before, respond to those customer reviews. Especially if it's not so great, you want to make sure that you have a response that addresses people's concerns.
Then you want to make sure you're adding whatever products and services that are related to your location, do amenities and things of that nature as well. Make sure you're uploading great pictures of your business and everything that's there so people have a good idea what to expect and then once again use that post feature which we're about to get into right now. Posting to the old Google business profile looks like this. We showed a couple of our examples because we do that, we practice what we preach. They are the microblogging elements in the listing and it can include a photo, a video, text, call to action and a URL to your site.
There's been different lengths of post over time, but I believe this is accurate. 1500 characters and no minimum. You could have like one word or up to 1000 characters in that post.
The types of posts that you may want to do within your profile, an offer that you would have going on, talking about the amenities that you have, the attractions that are close by, what you got new going on with your park, river events, you have music, holiday things, whatever, make sure people are aware of those. And of course if there is a change in like hours, make sure that gets notified to the folks. Does it help SEO? There's a little bit of mixed information out there but we can see that GBP signals is the largest local pack ranking factor. The local pack or some people call it map pack would be those usually three listings when someone does RV park near me and they're going to get three.
The signals that are coming from your profile count for the whole package of ranking factors for that. Making sure that it's all built out correctly is just going to help you be listed. When people search with direct CTAs, it can increase website traffic. When it comes to SEO, that is a benefit. One of the factors in that the more people come to your site, the more that your site will rise in the rankings.
Making sure you're using those call to actions can help people keep moving on to where you want them to go. There is a higher purchase intent with GBP. Now this is in relation to just a regular Google search organic result. Organic results could be parks, it could be other things, but when they are going to a GBP, their intent to purchase or to book, that's a good thing, are much higher and then that's a higher value. Obviously.
Then you can also within posts have links to a specific page on your site with improved rankings, essentially doing some form of a backlink if you're familiar with SEO terminology. Of course, talking directly to a customer creates more engagement. Anytime you can have engagement on profile and then of course ultimately your website, that's huge.
Voice search, a lot of people are using that. Got a hipster here using it in this photo. After performing a voice search, 27% of users will visit a local businesses website. This is an interesting study. The study was actually a regular. The study showed four times higher for GB posts with posts related to voice search.
If it was not voice search, it was lower. The reality is when someone searches and hits your Google Profile, their interactions much higher. Once again, I think you're speaking to the intent that people have as opposed to not using voice. Think of the question that phrases guests will use in search. You may be using this yourself in your own Google searches.
The idea someone would say, find the best RV park near me. How to get to ACME RV Park and then make sure you're including a good CTA when it's relating to these things. Marrying the idea that people are using voice search technology with how you present your information and your posts can be very valuable. All right, so there's some best practices when it comes to these posts. This guy's excited.
Only the first 100 words are visible. We said 1500 characters, but you have to see more in order to get the whole post. Just get your just like every other content they do online, make sure the important stuff is at the top. Use 750 x 750 images ... That's your DPI. Less than 250 x 250 will not be accepted. Just keep that in mind. Link it to the correct page. Wrong links are bad for SEO. Make sure you're doing that correctly.
If you have multiple things you want to post, don't mix it all together. Google uses carousel and the first two are visible. You can do multiple posts. Like, I have a lot of different photos about this one thing, that's fine, but you're only going to see the first two unless someone wants to actively scroll and keep your headlines and posts meaningful. Short to the point it's going to help you convert better. Here's some stuff to avoid.
This guy doesn't like what he sees. Don't over explain. When it comes to these posts, you want skin like the headlines. Keep it concise and effective. And I kind of referred to this earlier, don't post about multiple things at once. Each subject matter should have a post.
Talking about an offer versus an event, someone smash it all together. Keep it focused on one thing. Avoid silly spelling and grammar mistakes. We all do it, but just double check that sort of thing. Don't spam people.
Which leads us to more things to avoid, which is really related to Google's content policy. These are things that they specifically say to avoid the misspelling. Once again, gimmicky character used gibberish. I'm sure, a lot of people want to use gibberish, but don't do it automated or distracting, content blurry or poor image or video quality, so avoid all those things. I know I see folks that try to do some of their own stuff with social and different things.
Sometimes the photos not so great, but try to get the best quality as possible. Don't want to make it unrecognizable. Also, don't post about these. Google has very high morals. Gambling, tobacco, alcohol, recreational drugs, weapons, fireworks.
Don't mention them. I know some parks have gambling available in the area and they might mention it. Obviously people use tobacco and alcohol and all those kind of things, but guess what? Just like a lot of other social media related things, you can't really post about those things. They will remove those. You don't want to get knocked for maybe talking about things that they don't like you to talk about. There is the content policy. If you search Google Business Profile content policy, you'll find even more information beyond this.
What we went over today was how to set up that profile, how to optimize it, and how you can post effectively to it. That pretty much wraps up our content for today. But if someone has a question, obviously you can drop it in the chat. We'd be glad to talk to you. If you're watching this at a later time, thanks for dropping in.
You can get that in the comments as well, and we'd be glad to answer any questions that someone might have. Want to make sure everyone knows that you can't connect with us online. You can go to our Google profile and send us a message that way or through Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, our website. Our next webinar, and probably have to determine we've been doing this basically the last Thursday of the month, and that's pretty much Thanksgiving. I know most people would want to come on a webinar about social media on Thanksgiving, but I don't want to do one. Anyway, we'll let everybody know exactly what date the next one will be on.
We might do it a week earlier than we have been, but it is about driving more visitors and bookings with social media. That's what we'll be focusing on, how to maximize that, to just hopefully help people get more bookings. Feel free to join us on that next webinar and if you want to talk to us beyond what we chat about today, we are all about that and you can visit book.restrelaxroi.com and we'll open for a conversation any day as far as that goes. Thank you all for being here today and or watching this later on. We want you to have an excellent remainder of whatever day you're having right now and happy trails all.