Using Google My Business Posts To Step Ahead Of Your Competition.

Posting content on your Google My Business listing regularly can really help to get your business found online, improving your local search engine rankings and boost your relevance to the topics you post about!

To create Google My Business posts you will first need to create and optimize a GMB listing for your business. 

So what are Google My Business Posts?

Google My Business Posts are as the name suggests posts on your Google My Business profile. 

There are 5 types of posts you can create, they are:

• What’s New
• Events
• Offers
• Welcome Offer
• Products

You can use these posts types to vary content that you post and attract traffic to your business through Google My Business. 

How to Create a Post On Google My Business

To create post a post you need to be logged into your GMB account, once there you will see this screen:

Clicking on “Posts” Just below the “Home” category on the left hand side bar will take you to this screen.

Clicking on “Add Update” in the menu across the top of any previous posts will bring up a screen like this.

Publishing your post is as simple as uploading an image for your post and adding your content!

How to use GMB posts to influence local relevance 

Your website and GMB Listing should both be setup to do a great job at telling Google your niche relevance and you should continue to enforce that through regular posting on your website blog and through your GMB posts.

Using a tool called Local Viking we are able to send precise Geo relevant signals to Google about our business and influence our rankings – it’s a very cheap local SEO tool at just $20 / month! (Approx £16 as I write this post)

We are able to check the rankings of our website with incredible precision at the hyper local level, meaning we can check & track the Google local rankings for any website, in any location – in increments as small as 100 meters! 

Yes, rankings really do variate in such short distances because of the three key local ranking factors, relevance, proximity and prominence. 

We first check where we need to work on influencing rankings for, then post content for that exact location alongside Geo-Optimized images which are uploaded via the Google Maps api using Local Viking. 

This is the only tool available (to my knowledge at time of writing) that uploads images complete with the EXIF Data (photo data containing the geo tagging data) – using any other method of upload, including via the GMD dashboard strips the EXIF data to reduce the image file size. 

You can also download your geotagged images to use on other web properties including your relevant location page on your website. 

Discover Exactly Where You Need To Build Local Relevance…

Signup with Local Viking & Login.

In this example I’m going to use a business that is ranking number 1 on maps for the term “Skip Hire” London.

Select “Geogrid Search” from the top menu, then select “Live Search” from the dropdown menu.

First we need to find the business who’s rankings we are going to check and enter the relevant details. 

Most businesses will appear by entering the business name slowly into the “Enter Business name” field. If yours does not you will need to click on “Map url” to the left of the “Enter Business name” field. 

If you need to find your GMB Maps url, simply head over to Google Maps (maps.google.com) and enter your business name in the search bar like so:

Clicking on the name of the business will take you to its Google Maps URL, like so:

In the image above I have highlighted the URL string with a purple box – copy the url string and paste into the “Enter Business name” field of Local Viking. 

In the image below I have set all of the other settings for you these are:

Distance between grid points

The software will check rankings for you at these exact locations. You can choose as small as 100 meters through to 10 miles.

Grid Size

The size of the grid you would like to use, ranging from 3×3 to 13 x13

Search Term

Enter your search term, without a location.

Now you are ready for the Viking to check the rankings, simply press the blue button with the magnifying glass icon on it.

Local viking will do the search and tell you when it is ready for you to view the results.

The search results look like this:

The numbers show where this website is ranking for the search term “Skip Hire” with a search carried out from the exact longitude & latitude of the number. 

Clicking on a number brings us up a screen showing us which websites are ranking, in which order and also provides us with the longitude & latitude for that exact location like so:

The longitude & latitude are displayed in the top left of the page, while the current ranking results for the search term from that location are displayed. 

Doing this for your own business will precisely show you where your business is and is not ranking in the top 3 results. The top 3 results are the ones that show in the main google search results (exactly where you need to be!) 

Let Me Show You How To Increase Your Local Relevance…

Always start increasing local relevance where your biggest gains will happen the quickest. 

Remember the top 3 results for any search/location combination are already showing on the Google Search results – so start building relevancy for locations where your business is in positions 4/5/6 first, before working on those that will ultimately require more time and effort to see rankings.

You can nail this to to pin point the exact locations where you rankings are falling by repeating the search with smaller distances between the grid dots in combination with using a larger grid and dragging the map like so:

In this search I have used a 13×13 grid with a distance of 0.5 mile between each search location (grid point) 

So we now Know that we need to increase relevance between our business and the longitude / latitude of locations with numbers higher than 3, select the location of a 4, 5 or 6 that borders a 1,2 or 3 and get the latitude and longitude for that location as detailed above. 

You then need to create a GMB post and use a geotagged image and include the area and even relevant postal code in the post. 

This can all be done directly from Local Viking. 

Like so:

Under the “Locations” navigation tab on the top menu you will be able to connect your GMB listing to Local Viking – this will enable you to manage your GMB listing via Local Viking. 

Once connected Navigate to your business management page by clicking on “Locations” in the top menu and then selecting your business from the screen. 

You will then be on your GMB location page within Local Viking and see a menu like so:

Select “New Post”, then “Single post” from the dropdown menu.

On this screen is where you can create your new GMB post and upload / geotag you image.

Here you input the content for your post which ill give some tips for below but before that I’ll show you how to geotag your image to force relevance with to where your rankings need a boost! 

Geotagging an image for Local SEO

Click on “Choose from Gallery or Upload” 

Then select “Browse files” on this screen to select an image to upload into the editor. 

Once you have uploaded you will see the following:

Select “Exif” and you can edit the Exif data before uploading your image to your post, like so:

Select “Edit Exit”, then “Recommended EXIF”. 

You will then be able to edit the exif details. 

Edit the following Details:

• The Title
• Description
• Keywords
• Subject
• Artist
• Owner Name

For Artist & Owner Name simply enter your business name. 

For all the other fields I suggest editing using keywords naturally, remembering the geographical name of where this post is bringing relevance to.

Further down there is a field called Software – I always remove Local Viking from there.

Then we get to Geo Tag the image like so…

Uncheck the use gps from the location check box, you will then be able to edit the longitude and latitude of the photo!

Insert the longitude and latitude of the grid square you are forcing relevance to, remember it was shown at the top of the rank checking results screen when you clicked on a number. (further back in this post) 

Copy the latitude & longitude exactly into their relevant fields, and then click “OK”

Your image is now ready and you will be taken back to the screen before, ready to write your post.

Writing A Geo Optimised Post For Google My Business

When you write your post remember where you are trying to create a relevance link with and include locally relevant road names, postcodes or landmarks in your post naturally. 

A great strategy is to publish an article on your blog that links your business to that area, in this example it could be about a building company that found themselves in a tricky situation, needing the same day skip hire and how your company came to the rescue! That post would be written following local on page optimisation principles. 

Then write a shorter teaser post for GMB which links to the blog post and your closest geographical area page – make sure this area name is listed on that page too! 

Now watch over my shoulder as I build GMB posts to increase location relevance and give you even more tips in the video!