Setting Up Your Initial Posting Strategy For Google Posts

We’re talking about the Google Posts feature within your Google My Business (GMB) listing this week. Previously we discussed the various types of Google Posts you can leverage, but in this episode, we take a deeper look into the “standard” Google posts option. This is a powerful method to quickly communicate to Google the primary services you offer and the geographical area that you wish to be found for. Check out and put it into action, whether you are just getting your GMB off the ground, or if you’re a GMB veteran!

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YOU’LL LEARN

Use Google Posts to communicate to Google the primary cities you do business in
How to identify nearby cities and neighbor hoods that Google will recognize
How use Google Posts to communicate to Google the primary services you provide
How to use these tactics to launch an initial content strategy for Google posting

Here is the transcription from Episode 42 Setting Up Your Initial GMB Posting Strategy;

Jesse Dolan: Welcome back to Local SEO Tactics where each week we bring you tips and tricks on how to grow and get your business found online. I’m your host, Jesse Dolan, flying solo this week, Bob Brennan is out of the office.

This week we’re going to be talking again about Google posts. Touched on this a couple episodes ago, we touched on it very broadly, actually going over all the different types of Google posts that are out there. The standard Google post, offer post, product post, event posts. We talked about how to use those each in their own way and the best practices for checking those out … I’m sorry, the best practices for using those.

If you want to check that episode out, episode 40. It’s great, got a lot of good information. How to leverage those, where to leverage those and how to keep those fresh and the schedule to keep yourself on. This week we’re going to do a deeper dive, specifically talking about just the regular Google posts.

Before we get into that though, I want to mention our instant SEO audit. Using our free tool at localseotactics.com, you can grade any of your own webpages or any of your competitor’s web pages too. Plug it in. It’s real quick. It sends you a PDF with basically a punch list of what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong and gives you an overall grade and things to fix against whatever keyword phrase that you put in.

So if you plug in your webpage along with the keyword, it’s going to give you that back real quick. You can use that to help your own website out. If you want to reverse engineer maybe what a competitor is doing right or doing wrong. It’s totally free, use it as many times as you want. A lot of people actually run the grade, find out what their score is, make some changes, and then run it again to check out the before and after. It’s a great way to use it. Totally free. Whatever you want to do. localseotactics.com, instant SEO audit, yellow button, top right corner. Check it out.

Now back to the topic at hand and today’s episode for Google posts. What we’re going to talk about is how to really leverage Google posts to tell Google more about what you do for your business and get your map pack, your GMB listing in that map pack visibility up, and your ranking up.

Now, this isn’t going to happen overnight, but the tactics we’re going to go over here, really help to communicate what you do for products and services and the geographic areas that you service for your business. So grab a pen and paper, grab a pencil, whatever it is, take some notes and you’re going to want to put this stuff into action.

Now, if you already have your GMB set up, great. If you don’t, again, go back to our first couple episodes. That’s where we talked about how to set it up, how to optimize it, and then we’re kind of doing this to build on that. If you’re just getting started and you’ve never done any Google posting before, this is a great first wave, to not only get used to how to do it in practice but also this is the kind of stuff, before anything else, that you’re going to want to make sure you’re communicating to Google within your posting area.

So the first area that we’re going to tackle is location-based posts. So now if you’re a business that does field service and you actually go visit customers, this is extremely important. Because you want to be found not just for where your business is located, but also for where your clients are located.

Now, if you’re a business where your customers come to you, that’s great too. You not only want to be found in the actual city or town that you’re located in, but you might want to be found for people that are nearby. Maybe there’s a product or service that you offer that somebody in the next town over doesn’t that people will drive to you for, or whatever the reason. If you want your reach to be beyond the exact city that you’re in, this is a very important tactic for you to use.

So the first thing you’re going to want to do is develop a list of all the geographic areas that you want to be found for. Again, whether you service that area or the customers will come to you from that area, you’re going to want to make a list of these geographic areas first. A couple of easy ones, of course, is the town that you’re in, your own backyard. The major cities and suburbs that are surrounding you.

And you don’t want to be greedy on this. You want to start close to you and then expand out from there. But beyond the major cities and towns, there’s a couple of other layers we really want to dig into to be very comprehensive. One can be unincorporated areas. If you’re more rural, you’re going to have more of this than if you’re in a dense part of the city or a suburb.

Also, neighborhoods or districts, if you are more dense. Usually, more urban areas, not only are you going to have the name of the city but also what this neighborhood is called. Or what this section is called, what’s it referred to. And some of that’s going to be maybe local slang. Some of it’s going to be actual geographic references. A cool way to check this out is to use Google maps or just do a Google search for that city town or neighborhood reference in Google. And then click on the maps and go from there.

And what you’ll see is Google, the more you zoom into a city, the more cities, towns, and labels you’re going to see. And then the more you zoom out, you’re just going to see those bigger cities, right? So we’re located in the Minneapolis, Minnesota area. If I did a search for Minneapolis and zoomed in and out of that, as I zoom out, Minneapolis will stay. Those smaller cities will fade away and Google will only keep that Minneapolis and St. Paul and some of the other major cities shown.

And that’s how you know what the most important and what the bigger cities are. It’s not an exact thing, don’t get me wrong. Don’t exact quote me on that. But that’s just a good way to corroborate what’s an important city, what are the bigger cities.

Inversely, as you zoom into your area, Google will show you these neighborhoods. If they have it in their logic and in their system, they’re going to show you what some of these residential areas and neighborhoods and urban areas too, are called. So if you’re a finding what you’re putting on your list on that Google map view, you’re pretty much guaranteed that they’re going to understand the proximity and the geography of those areas.

If you’re not seeing that, all is not lost. You can do a Google search for that exact area. See if it pops a map, see if Google recognizes it. If there’s a Wikipedia page maybe, or just some other legitimate references to it, then it’s still in play. And quite frankly, even if it’s not, go ahead and do it anyways. This is free. Google posting is free. It’s just your own sweat equity that’s going to be doing it. Or, of course, if you’re paying somebody.

But still, if there’s a chance people call the area by the name that you’re putting down and are going to search for it, then you might as well put that in there too. I would just put that at the end of my list. I would start with the biggest cities and go from there.

So first things first, develop your list of the cities, towns, and neighborhoods that you want to be found for. And then identify your primary product or service that you offer and what you want to be found for. And we’re going to merge those two together, and we’re going to use that to create a bunch of Google posts.

Now with that, you’re going to want to have an image as well. Like we talked before, this image can be a photograph, it can be a text image, it can be a combination of both. Whatever it is, you’re going to make it relevant to either the cities and towns that we’re talking about or the product or service that we’re looking to offer.

So if you use the example here of oil changes for auto repair shop and Minneapolis, I’m going to want to make sure this image either evokes Minneapolis or oil changes or both. And when I save this image or this file, I’m going to want to use my keyword dash city. Now if you create a unique image for each combination of your city and product, great. If you want to use that same image over and over, that’s fine too. But you’re going to want to make sure you resave it with a unique file name each time.

Because what we’re going to do here is we’re going to do one Google post per day for each combination. So on day one, I’m going to do a Google post for oil changes in Minneapolis. And I’m going to upload a photo with that post that’s called oil changes dash Minneapolis. Or whatever your service keyword is dash Minneapolis.

Now I am going to want to craft an actual post, whether I type it up uniquely right there, or an easy cheat is just copy and paste a nice paragraph or two of your website. Change up a few words to make it a little bit unique. And then, making sure as a primary rule here, that within that first sentence you’re using your keyword and the city in that first sentence of that post.

The rest of it should be relevant and is going to be provided to Google for what you do. But make sure you’re not talking about other services and products that you offer. You can talk about your team, your history, years you were established, other about us type information. But you’re only going to want to talk about that one city and that one product or service. Your primary product and service and then the one city for this post.

So just to reset, we’re attacking one city, one product, and service. We have an image that graphically makes sense with that. And the file name of that is service dash city. And then in my first sentence in this post is going to be my product or service keywords and my city mentioned in that.

Now from there, I generally, on these, don’t worry about linking them to pages within your website. You can. And the option when you’re creating the post, you can have a learn more button, and you can link that to your homepage. Or if you’re a multi-location business, you would link this to that primary location that you’re focused on for this. But I would not go into, like my oil changes page and link it to that, or something to that effect.

If you have a page about that city geographically, then link to that. Otherwise, just your default homepage or your default location page for these. But for me, I don’t even link them to anything. I just put these ones out there with no link back to the website, usually. And you’re going to have a list. Maybe you have three cities, maybe you have five cities and neighborhoods. Maybe you have 35 or 55, that’s fine. What you’re going to want to do is one per day.

Now, these Google posts do expire after seven days for public visibility. Again, they still stay in the Google file cabinet. They don’t go away and they still are part of your catalog and your data for your company. They’re just not public-facing after seven days. That being said, if you don’t have a lot of ideas for other content for Google posts and you want to do one of these every seven days, then that’s fine.

You can do that too. Just keep in mind the primary purpose of what we’re talking about here is to just pump that file cabinet full of information about your company. You want to let Google know, in this case, this segment we’re talking about all the locations you serve. So that primary service multiplied by the number of locations you have, you’re going to want to communicate all that to Google.

I would not do them more than one per day. I know there’s some stuff out there. People might say, just do all of these on one day. I like to do one a day just to make sure you’re kind of a steady drip of information on these to Google. I don’t think that there’s anything that urgent where you’d have to mash all this out there right up on the front side. But if you wanted to do that, I don’t think there’s any harm in that. I just like being able to have this dripped out to have continual content for that three, five or 35 days. There’s nothing wrong with that.

So do one of those per day. And then we’re going to turn our focus to your primary services. So that first section where it’s communicating to Google the different cities, basically, that you service. Now in this, it’s going to be kind of similar in that we’re going to create a lot of different posts doing one per day. But here we’re only going to be worried about your top, call them your money keywords, your primary niches, your primary revenue streams, things of that nature.

So again, you’re going to start with a list. You’re going to jot down all the primary services that you offer. And with these, it’s not your industry speak. The keywords that we’re going after here are what people are searching for as it relates to that product or service.

So if you have some variations, those are all in play. We’re not looking just for one keyword or keyword phrase to describe a certain product. If there’s three, five, or seven different phrases people might use to search for the same product or service you have to offer, if that product or service is your cash cow, your big money maker, you’re going to want to make a list of all those different phrases or keywords that people will use to describe that and that they will use to be searching for that. And once you have that list developed, now we’re going to start posting.

Now for this, again, just like the other posts, you’re going to want to have an image. And for this, it should be a unique image for each one, because the purpose of this is there’s uniqueness. So if there’s seven different ways to say for a keyword or keyword phrase, seven different ways to say your product or service, you might want seven different images. If the phraseology evokes something different.

If you want to use that same image for each seven, again, that’s fine. I would recommend trying to be a little unique. But the important part on this, more importantly than the uniqueness of the image, is the file name. You’re going to want to make sure you name that thing, the exact phrase that you’re targeting. Now with this, we’re not making reference to the city. That sounds weird compared to what we’ve just said earlier. The thing we were doing earlier was communicating to Google the cities that you service or that you want to pull service from.

For this, we’re just communicating to Google the primary products and the services that you have to offer. So you’re going to create that post very much in the same manner, making sure that first sentence contains your keyword that you’re going after for this one. That’s your file for the image has that exact same phrase and that the image itself, again, conveys and makes sense towards the same topic.

Create that post. For this one, we do want to link it to your website. And if you don’t have a specific product or service page about this product or service, link it again to your homepage. Or if you’re a multi-location business, link it to that location page. But ideally, you’re going to want to go to an inner page. You’re going to want to link to that exact product page or that exact service page. And if you’re a multi-location business, hopefully, you have product and service pages listed by location. And you’re going to want to list … I’m sorry. You’re going to want to link this post to that inner page for that location.

So if we’re talking about oil changes, if I’ve got multiple locations throughout the Minneapolis area, if this post is where my Minneapolis location about oil changes, I should have a page under my Minneapolis section about oil changes and I’m going to link directly to that. If I don’t have multiple locations, I’m going to link just straight to my oil changes page on my website. If I don’t have an oil changes page on either of those, I’m just going to go right to my homepage for a link or I’m going to link it to my location page.

But for this one, you definitely want to link it back to your website, as opposed to the other one where … I usually don’t, but you could call it optional. This one it’s important that you do. And just like the location posts, for this, we’re going to drip out one per day.

Again, if you want to go cowboy on it or cowgirl on it and do them all at once, go for it. Nothing’s going to stop you. But again, I just like this to be a continual drip and a continual feed of information. If you mash these two together, all of your locations and your primary revenue streams, you should have upwards of 20, 30 or even 50 or 60 posts right out of the gate. If you’re doing one a day, that’s one to two months, using that math, worth of content for you to get out there.

It really helps you get familiar with the process, kind of get it into your flow and really develop that habit of regular Google posting. If you don’t have that much, and again, you want to pull back to just doing this one every seven days or somewhere between one and seven days, that’s completely fine too. Just remember that the quicker you put all this out there for Google, the quicker they’re going to understand these things about your business.

Now, once you have those two primary areas done, there’s kind of a fork in the road. From here you can do a little bit deeper dive and do more of the same. What we were talking about right there is like your primary product and service, your big moneymakers, your money keywords. If you wanted to take that same strategy towards some more nichey things, some things may be that you want to develop, maybe they could be your big money keywords next year. It’s a product or service that you’re just launching, same thing. Take the same tack.

Look at the variations of that. Develop a list, get your image, frame up your post and your sentences accordingly. Maybe make web pages on your website that you can point these too if necessary. But you can use that same tactic. Drip one a day or one every seven days, on the long side of the timeline, and continue to feed this information to Google.

At some point you’re going to hit an end of, all your cities have been added, all your products and services have been added, whether they be your big money, your upcoming, or anything in between. And now you’re done with this initial injection and this initial dump of all this information into Google. At that point, you’re in maintenance mode. And you’re going to want to go back to that just standard every seven days, making sure you’re posted on Google.

There is nothing to say, you can’t post more frequently than that. But at least every seven days, because again, these posts expire after seven days. And you want to make sure you are posting every seven days at least because if your competitors are and you’re not, that’s just one more signal to Google that maybe they’re more relevant or more authoritative than you are.

So what you’re going to want to do for that ongoing … maintenance is develop a list. So it can be very similar to what we just did here. If you want to take some of your lesser, or not your big money keywords, and pair those with some of your other towns and suburbs and neighborhoods, great. Using the same strategy.

If you want to go after maybe another tier of suburbs, something further out, you can take that same strategy there too. Pick a product or service keyword, make an image and name the file appropriately. Grab your geographic location. Make sure that’s in your first sentence, and just schedule it out accordingly.

Another great inspiration for what to post is if you have a blog or social media, whatever kind of stuff you’re putting out there for that, make sure you’re putting that same stuff in your Google posts. There’s no harm in duplicate content about … I posted this on Facebook. Can I post the same thing on Google? Yeah, absolutely you can. And it makes your job a lot easier, quite frankly.

So that’s pretty much it for this topic. Again, Google My Business is completely free. If you’re a local business and you don’t have a Google My Business set up yet, stop everything. Do that right now. The quicker you do that, the quicker you’re going to get into that map pack and get some visibility. And then if you do have a GMB set up already, use this tactic and you’re going to provide a lot of information to Google very quickly about the products and services you have to offer. And the areas that you serve or customers you know in that area that would come to you.

And the last thing on this is for those of you who maybe are part of a team or have some delegates that you had to delegate this job to, this is a real easy way to train somebody too, about how to get in there and do Google posting.

Maybe you set up your GMB, but you’re not going to be doing the day to day, quote, maintenance or posting in it. You’re going to have somebody else do it. This is a great way to have a list for a couple of weeks or even a couple months, what it is they should be producing. And again, if you take the advice of doing one per day, they’re going to develop some really good habits over the course of that time. You’re going to be able to jump in, take a look at their work, and really keep a good eye on it. And just a real easy way to train somebody or train yourself to do this.

Hopefully, that helps you guys out. If you want us to cover any other topics, dive any deeper into any GMB areas or website areas, let us know. Go to localseotactics.com, we’re always looking to get your feedback. Also looking for reviews. If you haven’t left us a review yet, we’d love to hear what you think about the show. And we’d love for you to share that with everybody else. I’m going to read one of the reviews here as we do each week.

This week we got a nice five-star review from our RWB Arts. It says, great podcast for small business. Awesome content. Super valuable for those attempting to navigate the mysterious world of SEO. Thanks for the great feedback. We hope that’s what we’re doing. SEO can be a little bit mysterious if you don’t know about it. Hopefully, we’re helping to peel back the layers and show that it’s not super mysterious once you get into it. It’s just a process and you’ve got to have a good strategy. And you got to be disciplined about it and do it, on purpose. It doesn’t happen by accident. Unless you get really lucky, I suppose.

That about does it for this week. I’ll mention one more time, if you haven’t used our instant SEO audit, go on out to local SEO tactics right now and check that out. Plugin your website, the individual page that you want to grade and get audited if you will. Plugin the keyword you want to run that audit against, and it’s going to give you your great scorecard. Things you need to fix on your website, things you’re doing good on your website. And use it as often as you want, totally free. localseotactics.com. Thanks for tuning in everyone. We’ll see you next week.

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