What Are Google Posts and How To Use Them

Learn The Different Types Of Google Posts And How To Best Use Them

In this episode we kick off our second season with one of the most important topics for local SEO…Google My Business. Specifically, we’re talking about the Google Posts feature within your GMB listing (Google My Business listing). There are four primary post types, at the time of this recording at least! Those are Google Update Posts, Google Offer Posts, Google Even Posts, and Google Product Posts. We will explore what each one should be used for, the best practices for each, and what using them properly will do for your business and local exposure online. We will also talk about the new domain name and home for the Local SEO Tactics show!

Don’t miss an episode – listen on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and more!

YOU’LL LEARN

New domain name and home for the show at localseotactics.com
What are the four main areas and types of Google Posts
How to use Google Update Posts
How to use Google Event Posts
How to use Google Offer Posts
How to use Google Product Posts

Here is the transcription from Episode 40 What Are Google Posts and How To Use Them;

Jesse Dolan: This is Local SEO Tactics, where each week we bring you tips and tricks to help your business get found online. Jesse Dolan, your host here, back again with Bob Brennan.

Bob Brennan: Howdy.

Jesse Dolan: And, I’d just like to kick this episode off. It’s our first episode in about a year so, cool to get back on the mic.

Bob Brennan: Yeah.

Jesse Dolan: “hot mic,” you were saying, and just share some stats here real quick, before we jump into it. Just to reset, see where we’re at. First of all, like I said, it’s been about a year since we’ve had a new episode. We kicked this whole show slash podcast off in February of 2018. First episode, worst episode ever.

Bob Brennan: Yeah.

Jesse Dolan: We did 39 total episodes that first season, slash first year, whatever you want to call it. I think it turned out pretty good. Had a lot of good feedback, met a lot of new people. A lot of you out there, listening and watching, have engaged with us. 22,000 downloads. I’m just going to go off some stats here, quick. 22,000 downloads, which I think is pretty impressive.

Bob Brennan: Wow. Crazy.

Jesse Dolan: Didn’t know where it was going to go when we started. Over 300 companies have used our Instant SEO Audit, which we talked about, pretty much on every episode. Totally free. We’ll mention it again here in a minute. So that’s impressive. Over 300 companies. A lot of these companies have used it dozens of times, too. So this thing has gotten thousands of uses. A lot of you out there have, that’s where we get a lot of good feedback, too. Actually people are saying, “Hey, this tool is great, awesome feedback, great checklist.”

Bob Brennan: And we’ve been busy, subsequently, with all those. We’ve got a lot of people that asked for help, and we’ve been working with a lot of companies, too. So between that and our families, and everything else for the last year, we haven’t had time to podcast. But we’re back in the saddle right now, so we’re excited.

Jesse Dolan: Yeah. And thanks for bringing that up, too, because we’ve been wanting to kick this back off for months now. And it just keeps getting kicked down the road a little bit, a little bit. But we’re hitting that one year mark, we figured we’d better get this sucker back up and running.

So, kind of exciting to get back in the saddle again. So let’s just, we’ll just dive in. We’re going to be talking today about something that we’ve talked about extensively before, which is Google My Business, for local SEO, which is what we’re talking about. What you guys are listening for, gals are listening in for.

Google My Business is the number one thing you should be concerned about. It’s the number one area to get found. It’s free, it’s your direct communication line with Google, and it’s really the most important thing you should be doing. So, we’re going to focus on that. Before we jump into that though, let’s go back and talk about one thing I forgot to talk about, which is our new domain name.

Bob Brennan: Yeah.

Jesse Dolan: So, for anybody who’s been paying attention to the show in the past, Intrycks. that’s our marketing agency, intrycks.com, I-N-T-R-Y-C-K-S, that had been the home for this show, the first year. We’ve actually got localseotactics.com now, as a domain name. So for this show, for all the past episodes, everything else related to the show, you’d be able to go there. And that’s also where you’re going to find our Instant SEO Audit tool online, localseotactics.com. Click on the yellow button, Free SEO Audit, plug in your domain, plug in your keyword, you can analyze against a competitor. It’s just a great tool if you’re looking to get a grade on your website, “How am I doing? Where do I need to work on, for SEO?” Use that tool. Totally free. Use it as many times as you want. It’s pretty quick and very, very detailed. Checking out at the new domain, localseotactics.com.

So that being said, get that out of the way. We’re going to jump into the Google My Business area, and we’re going to talk specifically about the Google Posts. It’s, I want to say, like a micro-blog, or even a social media type of a deal. But it allows you to create posts, which are like little mini-articles, right within your Google My Business listing. If you don’t have a Google My Business listing right now, if you’re not set up on the GMB, as we call it, go check out… I think our first two episodes, if I’m not mistaken, of the show were focused just on that.
What is Google My Business, how to get set up for it, how to leverage it. Take care of that, if you don’t know what we’re talking about. First things first.

Now, if you are set up on that, the Post area is a very powerful, free communication area, right within Google that you’re going to want to take advantage of. First thing we’ve got to say about it is, “Why should you use this?” You’re feeding data and information to Google. Google is the file cabinet, for all things. When we mention your business, information you want to put out there. Context, what it is you do. Anything you can do to provide that information to Google, to put it in their file cabinet, is good. Within your Google My Business, they give you this area called Posts, you just fill that sucker up.

And we’re going to go through the four main areas right now, today, within Google My Business to do that. It’s always changing, always evolving, down the road, they may add to it. We cut an episode about this topic, as one of our first on, the first year of the podcast? Here we are, about a year and change later. It’s time for an update, and it shows you that it evolves, it changes. So even if you’ve already done this, check this episode out, there’s probably going to be some things in here that are going to help you out and maximize even further.

So, the first area that we want to talk about is the Update Post. So, actually, I’ll recite real quick, the four areas. There’s an Update Post, an Event Post, which is like it sounds. If you’re posting about an event that you’re having at your store or your business. There’s Google Offer Post, which is like, a promotional offer. And then there’s a Product Post, which is literally like it says, it’s about a product.

So, Google defines these four areas because, when you’re creating these posts, they give you a slightly different field of information. So if you’re doing an Event Post, that’s date driven. It’s not an update about your business, it’s an event. So if you do an event post, you’re going to have dates. If you have an Offer Post, a promotion, you can have dates on that for when it might expire, if you will. So, that’s the reason they have four different categories. We’re going to jump into each one real quick, talk about some highlights of them and how to use them best. And, some best practices.

So, the first one is the Update Post. It’s a very generic, general post about your business. It’s almost like a blank slate. It doesn’t have to be an offer, it doesn’t have to be an event or an individual product. It can be about something that’s going on within your company, maybe some news. But it sure can be about any of those other fields, or category types, if you want. The thing to know about that is, it does expire in seven days. So if it’s information that you want to have out there, be permanent, don’t use the Update Post. You wouldn’t want to have that be the spot that you feature your A-one product or something like that. Because it’s going to go away, after seven days. We’ll get into the, why that timeline is important here, in just a minute.

The Event Post, it’s like it sounds like we mentioned earlier. It’s about an event. If you’re having maybe a big sale, an anniversary, a party, an open house, something like that, you’re going to want to put that out there as an event. You can tag locations, put the dates in there, any information you want. A photo, obviously, to help highlight it. And not only is Google going to categorize that different, they understand the context. Somebody who’s searching for an event, or doing a search that’s relevant to an event, versus just a general Update Post.

So if people are looking for, maybe, things to do in your area. Or, things of that nature. Google is going to recognize this post from you as an event and offer that up as a relevant result.

Bob Brennan: Oh, wow.

Jesse Dolan: Yeah, which is pretty cool. The Offer Posts, that’s probably my favorite, to be super nerdy, of the whole deal. That’s probably my favorite type of Google Post because we find… This is not scientific, here. But we find that Google gives a little more weight to that Offer Post than other posts. If you do a search, you just go to google.com and do a search for a local service, you’re going to pop that three-pack like we call it?

Bob Brennan: Right.

Jesse Dolan: And if people don’t know we’re talking about, that’s the top three results you’ll see a letter in like that map pack area, on the search results? Sometimes listed as A, B, C, but usually with a map with icons, of the businesses. If you have information in your Google Offer Post that’s relevant to that search, then you’re going to see a little snippet. Kind of where your reviews are, for the company’s? People are familiar with that. Name of the company, then how many reviews you have. If you have something that’s relevant to that searcher’s phrase that they put in, it’s going to show that, right in that same area as a snippet in the map pack.

And that’s super powerful because as we know, we’ve talked about reviews, in the past. How important reviews are. Even if you’re ranked third in that map pack, but you have the most reviews, you’re going to get that click.

Bob Brennan: So for instance, if you’re a garage, auto mechanic shop or whatever, and you had asked. “Okay, what are the top three or four services that we provide?” And let’s say one of them is, obviously, oil changes. You’d want to put, “Oil changes at $39,” or, “Starting at,” whatever price point. So that shows up in your snippet.

Jesse Dolan: Correct. And so then if somebody, if you do that, and somebody is searching for oil changes near me or whatever it is, not only is your business going to show up in the map pack, with your stars and everything else, but it’s going to grab that sentence with that word oil change in there, and also put it in your listing. That’s just going to make you stand out even more, from everybody else.

So in that case, for the offer, it does two things. One, Google understands the information you’re putting in that Offer Post, right? That you do oil changes. So it’s giving you some SEO juice with that, right? Secondly, it’s then incorporating some of that text right into that listing, to help you convert more people. So it’s a double whammy. Helps you get found with the SEO signals, and helps you convert, from a user standpoint, off of the Google page because they’re seeing some text, that’s related to what they’re searching for. And Google will even bold, or make those exact phrase matches, like oil change. They’ll put that in bold, in your snippet. And it’ll really stand out for people. So, of all the post types, that’s my favorite. And, that one sticks around for a year. Once you-

Bob Brennan: Oh, really?

Jesse Dolan: … You can make it expire sooner, but timeline, up to a year. So, if you have a really good offer that you want to put out there, it’s… Do it once, it’s good for the whole year, and you’re going to get that impact.

Bob Brennan: So it’s really a tactic. You sit down, with your team, and just say, “Okay, what are the six or 12 things we want to be found for?” And this is, again, the Offer Post-

Jesse Dolan: Yep.

Bob Brennan: … that you’re going to put this in.

Jesse Dolan: Yep. Yeah, and you can have it be, generally, you’re going to get, I think it’s a couple hundred words of text in that post?

Bob Brennan: Yeah. T.

Jesse Dolan: The first 60, 70, 80 depending on the words you’re using, are going to be the ones that are going to be showing up in the search results when you see the little snippet for the post. I’m not talking about that snippet in the map pack I was referring to but just when you see the post on the page. So if you’re having multiple things in there, make sure you’re front-loading all that, so people can see everything. Google is going to see and understand everything you’re putting in that post.

Bob Brennan: Right.

Jesse Dolan: But from a user standpoint, for human eyes, you’re going to see, usually between that first 60 and 80 words, that you put in that post? So yeah, if you’re doing oil changes, brakes, and mufflers, let’s say, right? For your garage? Make sure in those first couple sentences you’re mentioning all those, some people will see that, and they’ll pop. But absolutely you could use it just for one of those things, or cram them all in there. Your top three, five, six, whatever it is.

Bob Brennan: Can you go nuts? So, can you do like, 20 things? Or does that kind of muddy the water, should you just stick to? Any ideas there?

Jesse Dolan: Yeah, look, if you’ve got 200 words to play with, let’s say?

Bob Brennan: Yeah.

Jesse Dolan: Do whatever you can fit in there. It’s, absolutely. You’re going to get a graphic, an image with that, that you can upload. That image probably can’t cover all 20 things that you can cover in text, per se. Maybe it’s a picture of your garage, maybe it’s, like a coupon-looking thing. And that’s actually a good point to bring up. Your image can be two things. And you can play with how these convert. Just like everything else in Google My Business, they’ll show you how many times this gets seen, how many times it gets clicked. So you can know, “Was this offer successful or not?” And maybe you try the offer for, let’s say a week or two, with a picture of your garage in this case.

Bob Brennan: Sure.

Jesse Dolan: Maybe then you do another test later, the exact same text, but maybe it’s a picture of a coupon, that says, it doesn’t even have to be a coupon. This is something we’ve talked with a lot of customers on. The offer doesn’t have to be a discount, or a special price, even. You can just use this Offer Post to make a statement like, “We do oil changes, super-fast oil changes,” so that graphic-

Bob Brennan: Synthetic oil changes, or whatever, yeah.

Jesse Dolan: … Yeah, exactly. So that graphic doesn’t have to be a coupon like, “50% off,” but it can look like a coupon and just say, “Synthetic oil changes here.” So playing with a straight picture versus some text or artwork, to see how that converts too, is something that’d be interesting for you to try out.

So again, we’ve got the Update Post, Event Post, Offer Post, and then the last one is Product Post. And this one is pretty powerful, too. A good rule of thumb on this is, you’re going to want to do a Product Post for every product that you offer. It might sound a little intimidating or daunting, there. But if you think about it, this is your direct way to tell Google about every product that you offer.

Bob Brennan: Right.

Jesse Dolan: Like, okay, even if it takes two days to do it, or four days to do it, or whatever.

Bob Brennan: Right.

Jesse Dolan: Do it. This is your direct communication that’ll tell Google, “This is everything that I have, to do.” With that, just like the other posts, a couple hundred words of text, an image, and some other details. With all of these, you can have them link to specific pages of your website, too. Like, “Read more. Buy now.” They have different options you can make for a button. So not only do you put this content out there, you also associate it with pages on your website.

Bob Brennan: So of all these posts, you think this is the most critical?

Jesse Dolan: Most critical? Yeah.

Bob Brennan: And let me run this question by you. Oftentimes they’ve done… We’ve all done this, where we’ve searched for something. And, obviously, three packs get occupied. And it’s a rare, let’s say you’ve got a rare exotic car, like an MG or something like that. And you’re looking for an MG mechanic. These three show up, you call all three. And Google throws these in the three pack, and you call all three. And none of them work on MGs.

Jesse Dolan: Sure.

Bob Brennan: Do you think that’s because they’ve loaded that product deal with all the different types of vehicles, and MG was one of them? If somebody else did the work for them, you know what I mean? Where like, “Yeah, we’ll do your GMB,” and they put Ford and Mercedes and everything else.

Jesse Dolan: Mash all the brands in there.

Bob Brennan: … Does that, is that the logic, or?

Jesse Dolan: Yeah.

Bob Brennan: Okay.

Jesse Dolan: Yeah, definitely, it’s an area. If you’re going to get spammy, in any of these, the product is the one.

Bob Brennan: Right.

Jesse Dolan: And when we say every, put up a post for every product. If you have a chair, but there’s five versions of that chair? Get all five in there.

Bob Brennan: Get all five in, right.

Jesse Dolan: But, do an individual one, for each one. So you’ve got five different product posts that look very similar, but slightly different. So within that, that could be something that would cause that in the map pack, if somebody is doing that. It’s also if you’re on mobile, it’s even more prevalent, I guess. Or pronounced.

If you were to do the same search on desktop versus mobile, you’re going to see more real estate on mobile, given to those posts. They make them more visible, I guess, is the way to put it. Just because of the nature of the screen size and everything else, and how they display them.

But that being said, the Product Posts are very important. My favorite, I would say, is still the Offer Post. Just because it’s pretty powerful, and it seems like it trumps everything. When we’ve experimented with it, we can have Update Posts and Product Posts out there, and it’s when I talk about it pulling that snippet into the three-pack? For that sentence, and making the text bold? Google seems to favor the Offer Post for doing that. Which is why it’s my favorite. It just has a little more power to it.

But as far as painting with a broad brush, and if you’re only going to do one of these areas, then I would definitely side with that Product Post, because that’s where you can, again, every single product that you have to offer, you’re putting that right into the GMB. You can’t do that with the Offer Post, or these other ones, because you get one Offer Post at a time. So, in that sense, a Product Post is probably the most powerful.

So with these, some real quick best practices. That’s the quick overview of what these things are. Use all of them for your business. So, this is my favorite, Bob is saying, “Is this the most powerful?” We can, we give you that information, but, do all of these. If you can. You don’t have to pick and choose, just, do all of these.

Why should you do it? This gives you more relevancy. Not only are you communicating all this information straight to Google, filling your file in that Google database, in that Google file cabinet. You’re providing more relevancy to your GMB. So you’re making it known to Google, you’re being more relevant about these topics. Because to your point about, what was it, the MG? Is that the brand you used, right?

Bob Brennan: Yeah, yep.

Jesse Dolan: Google understands, that’s a vehicle. So even if you’re not putting a specific brand, but you’re posting about auto repair, if there’s no other repair shops that seem relevant to, let’s say, European auto repair? Even if you’re not mentioning that specific brand, but you’re posting about similar brands, Google understands this now. So that’s where that relevancy comes into play. Even if it’s not explicit. So, use them all, use all the products up. You get more relevancy, it helps your SEO juice.

And the last but not least, at the end of the day is, you use up more real estate on the results page. If you don’t have posts, you’re not going to have them show in your profile with Google. If you do have posts, they’re going to show them. So that’s going to bump out that section, right? There’s either nothing there, and they bring the rest of the page up, or over, depending on what’s desktop or mobile. And if you do have posts, they’re going to expand your visibility area in there, with that box. And show a little scroll, for your posts, and things like that. So this is very valuable real estate, that we want to take up.

Bob Brennan: And so, the end goal of this obviously, is to get in the three-pack, with all this, right?

Jesse Dolan: Oh, yeah.

Bob Brennan: And by getting, just so everybody understands and follows along with this, the objective is to get in that three-pack in that GMB. And the implications of that, if you’re a service business, it’s probably going to be 40 to 50% of your calls, if you’re in that three-pack. If you’re out of that three-pack, you’re going to see your calls drop by at least 50%. So it’s an easy, quick win versus, natural SEO for what we call the SERPs, that’s a longer play. It takes time. It can take time, depending on the market and the type of service that you’re providing. But, it’s just a much longer play, where GMB is a pretty quick win. Sometimes you can get in that three-pack, anywhere from three to four, three to six weeks, maybe? If you’re good, and you’re putting time into this. So to that end, what, can you talk about the time that you’re putting into all of this? I mean, how much time, and how often, and?

Jesse Dolan: So, there’s a couple of ways to go about it. If you wanted to sit down and just kind of write new, unique content, you’re talking, each one of these posts is 100 to two or 300 words, right? It’s in that range. It depends on your creative writing skills, or how inspired you are, what kind of news you’re working with. It’s, I don’t know. Maybe it takes somebody five minutes or 45 minutes. Depends how perfect you want to be. With that being said, in these Posts area, don’t worry about being perfect.

Bob Brennan: No English majors, just get it done, right?

Jesse Dolan: This is not an essay. This is not something that’s very frontal, like 80 to 90%… Again, very unscientific numbers here.

Bob Brennan: Right.

Jesse Dolan: 80 to 90% of the reason of doing this, is to just communicate this information to Google. Not for human eyes.

Bob Brennan: Right.

Jesse Dolan: For Google to know. You’re filling out your card.

Bob Brennan: You’re not trying to win an Oscar, you’re just trying to get it out there.

Jesse Dolan: No. Right. So just mash the content up, and get it out. That’s how we roll. There’s some people out there, I’m sure, that would say, “Oh no, you’ve really got to craft it and control your brand,” which, I’m not going to argue with that. But from a time standpoint, we’re talking about wanting to do as many of these posts as possible. We’ll get into some frequency stuff here, in a few minutes. Bang it out. Just get it out there.

I would say your image, well, with regards to your text, making sure your certain phrases are in there, from an SEO standpoint. That’s where I’d give some thought. Crafting the other 150 words? As long as it reads good English, and makes sense? Publish, let’s go to the next one.

Your image, would be something that I might give a little more attention to, because, image is worth a thousand words, right? Like we say. Or, a picture is worth a thousand words. So having the right image, making sure it looks good and it’s attractive. Just like any other approach to an ad or an image, understand what the results page looks like on Google. If it’s all, it’s not. And this is a stupid example. Warning, stupid example ahead.

If the Google result page was yellow, don’t make your image yellow. It’ll blend in, right? Just make sure you’re contrasting, looking different, whether it’s colors, text, however you’re doing it. But I would definitely give my attention to the image, more than the actual creative writing side. Now, that being said, a nice shortcut for people? Just go to your website.

Usually, if you’re going to post, let’s say you have 10 products, just to have a small number. If you have 10 products, you probably have them mentioned on your website. Maybe you even have 10 pages on your website, one for each product. Or you have a brochure that was made, at some point. Just take that information. Just copy it. You don’t have to write brand new content. Don’t worry about duplicate content or any of this.

Just take the page off your website, copy and paste the text. Maybe rearrange those first 10 to 20 words, to make sure, those first 10 to 20 words are going to be the first words Google reads, and the first words humans read. So make sure your SEO phrases are front-loaded, where applicable.

So I’d copy some text off my website, maybe rearrange that first sentence or two, get a good image and hit publish. With that kind of a process, you’re talking minutes, right? I mean two or three, four minutes, to do that. And I don’t think you need to do too much more than that, quite frankly.

Bob Brennan: Okay.

Jesse Dolan: With that, for your posting strategy, we’re getting to this next phase here, about how, when and things like that. Back to those Update Posts, that’s a generic, not an event, not an offer, not a product, but everything else, type of post. Those expire within seven days. Now, they still stay with Google. People can go back and look at those posts, but Google doesn’t show that upfront, so to speak. After seven days, they put him in the archive.

So, still very important to do, but understand that you should probably be doing this once a week. You, somebody on your team. Within your GMB, you can invite other people, and you can give them manager or slightly less access, so they can get in and do this stuff without screwing up the rest of your GMB. But you definitely want to have on your calendar to do one of these per week. You can do more than one. There’s no problem with doing that. But if you’re not at least putting out one a week, you’re going to lose that visibility, after seven days.

Bob Brennan: So the theory is, is Google’s really, with all this, I think Google is really trying to see how engaged you are, right?

Jesse Dolan: Yeah, for sure.

Bob Brennan: How engaged you are in your business, how engaged you are with Google. The more content, and valid content, you can put on there in all those various posts, they’re saying, “Hey, this is a valid business.” And sometimes you’ll see, in the three-pack, you’ll see a business with no reviews, but somehow they’re in the three-pack. And they’re there, forever. Well, they’re missing out. They should be getting reviews, but they haven’t done that. So, they’re missing the boat, but that’s their problem. But they are putting more content on there than other people, that are not in the three-pack.

Jesse Dolan: They’ve got to be doing something.

Bob Brennan: They’re doing something. They’re not doing everything right, obviously. So that answers some of those questions. “How do you get in the three-pack?” Well, Google wants to know you’re engaged, you’re posting your hours, you’re doing all the various posts. So it is worth time spent, working on this, to whatever extent.

Jesse Dolan: And I had a customer phrase it like this, I don’t, this isn’t perfect, but it’s a really a good analogy. Like, what a blog is to your website, it’s just different posts and different things?

Bob Brennan: Yeah.

Jesse Dolan: This is to your GMB.

Bob Brennan: Yeah. That’s pretty good.

Jesse Dolan: Not exactly. But it kind of fits, it fits pretty close there, as a good way to think about it. So like you’re saying that that freshness, how often you’re in there, how active you are. Definitely, it’s something Google sees, they track it.

And we know that’s important. Even though Google doesn’t come out and say, “This is an important SEO factor.” Here’s the bottom line is, we know that they incorporate these results into search. They’ll pull out the snippets. They’ll include certain amounts of text. They’ll show different types of posts, depending on your search, for the same company.

So, all these different post types that you’re loading in there, if you’re searching for a company for a specific product or service, they’ll give more or less relevancy or showing different posts to you. So they understand your posts because they’re showing different posts. They understand your posts because they’re showing different characters of text within them.

Excuse me. And they use this to, for your Product posts, to create a shopping scroll, if you will. So, even though they haven’t come out and said, “This as a direct SEO signal,” they’re using this in many different ways. They understand it all. They understand how fresh the content is, how engaged you are. And really, I guess last but not least is, they show you the stats. How many times people have seen this post of yours? How many people have seen this Product Post of yours, engaged with it, clicked on it, things like that? So there’s no way this would not be valuable.

Bob Brennan: Right.

Jesse Dolan: If they’re doing all those different things around it, they wouldn’t invest into those abilities.

Bob Brennan: So we’ve been gone for almost a year now, off the air or off the podcast, here. And part of the reason we’ve been gone is we’ve had an influx of businesses, asking us to manage their GMBs.

Jesse Dolan: Yep.

Bob Brennan: How many GMBs do we manage, at this point?

Jesse Dolan: Oh, right now I think it’s probably between 135, 140. 140 listings. Yeah, probably.

Bob Brennan: Yeah.

Jesse Dolan: Yep.

Bob Brennan: And that’s a service that we don’t really tout. We can do it, and it’s just kind of a byproduct of this podcast is, people are like, “Hey, I don’t have time to deal with this. Can you deal with it?” And so, if that’s something you need help with, feel free to reach out. We can manage your GMB, or help you manage your GMB. But this is, I think, is a critical piece for small business, really all business, but small business, small local service businesses, you’ve got to get it right.

Jesse Dolan: And it’s something, just to expand on that, not to turn this into an infomercial about ourselves, but a lot of the customers that we’ve worked with doing this, where they like having us do their GMB services for them is, we don’t have to touch their website.

Bob Brennan: Yeah.

Jesse Dolan: I mean, as a marketing agency, doing both is the best. To have a symbiotic relationship between your website and your GMB, your posting all this, makes the most sense. But sometimes people have somebody else that’s doing their website, and they don’t want to disrupt that.

Bob Brennan: Well, it isn’t always that case. There’s some of that. But really what it is, is trust. Right?

Jesse Dolan: Yeah, that too.

Bob Brennan: So we earn their trust with the GMB, and then over probably three to six months, it evolves into, “Okay, yeah. Can you handle our website?” Because nobody has crazy amounts of money, to throw at their website.

Jesse Dolan: Yep.

Bob Brennan: I mean, we all do, as businesses. But we just want to know it works. And GMB is kind of dipping your toe in the water and an easy way to see how we move the needle in that area.
Jesse Dolan: For sure, for sure.

Bob Brennan: But yeah, that’s where it really all begins, is that GMB.

Jesse Dolan: Yeah, it is. Like I said, at the beginning of the episode here, this is why we keep talking about it. It’s the most important part. So, bar none.

Okay. Just to round this area out. So those Update Posts are good for a week. Offer Posts, which again is my favorite, those are up to 12 months. You can set that to expire whenever you want. You can run it like an actual promo, you can say, it doesn’t start until next week. And then, it ends the week after. Or leading up to Black Friday, or whatever the case is. We generally put it in there, and just set it to expire in one year. And set up a reminder, somewhere in your calendar, whatever your system is, to put a new one out there 11 months later. That way you’re never without one. And even if you just repost the same thing, just do a fresh version of it. But that’s good for up to one year. Very, very powerful. The Product Posts, they really don’t expire. If you have a new product, new variation, just be aware. Usually, people will do this in one big, swooping publication. Put them all out there. Your business is going to change. Just make sure you have some kind of mechanisms set up somewhere. If you bring a new product on, that you incorporate that into your posting strategy here, too. That it’s not disconnected from that end of the marketing. And then your event posts is self-explanatory. It’s event and date driven, so it’s just, whatever. That makes sense, right?

So, a couple other quick things. Again, that first two, three sentences are the most visible, the most important, from an SEO standpoint for converting people, for catching the eye. And Google seems to always give more weight to the beginning of text. Whether it’s a headline on your website or a paragraph in your post here, put your most important words at the front. That’s where they start reading from, just like humans do, left to right. In the United States here, at least.

Use good SEO practices. Put the most important keywords and phrases in the beginning, in those first few areas. Include an image, something that’s relevant. Usually a square, is the aspect ratio that we’re looking for, here. Minimum of 250 by 250 pixels. When you do upload your image into the post, you can crop it if it’s bigger. If it’s rectangular vertically or rectangular horizontally, you can crop it.

And then, also just be aware that those edges, different devices might have a slightly different cropped version. So whatever your image is, make sure it can be centered. Like, if the top or the bottom gets cut off slightly, even after you manually crop it? It shouldn’t be something where that outer 10% edge is extremely critical. Because that can get clipped off sometimes, or changed a little bit. So, just be aware of that.

And then definitely, link to an important page on your website, to a relevant page I should say, on your website. If you’re doing oil changes, don’t link to your muffler page, and vice versa. Try to be specific and relevant. You can always just link right to your homepage, too. There’s nothing wrong with that. But where it has it, definitely link to it. Why not? You’re just connecting those dots to Google more, and for the customers. If they’re interested, they click on it and then they roll from there.

Bob Brennan: Yeah, if you’re working on Mercedes and, people want to see the… You know what I mean? It’s all about the best way to do it, but it’s just, convincing the customer that you actually work on Mercedes. And having that link go to, a Mercedes-

Jesse Dolan: website.

Bob Brennan: … visual, of some sort.

Jesse Dolan: Yep. So, that’s pretty much it. I don’t know if you have anything else to add on the topic, Bob, but yeah, if you’re not using Google Posts, get out there right now. If you’re only going to have time to do one thing today, I would start with that Google Offer post, that’s the one we always start with. Literally, if it’s relevant, you’ll find that thing in the search engines within five minutes, after you hit publish. Google really absorbs that really quick.

And then, get around to doing all your Product posts. If you had to set these out in a priority order, then do all your Product posts. One for each product. Then leverage the other ones once a week, for the Updates. And if you have an event, then use the Event Post.

So, I’d like to mention again real quick. If you do want to do an SEO audit on your website, go out to localseotactics.com, click on the yellow button, Free SEO Audit. Again, plug in your page. And when I say page, I mean page like, you can do your home page, but if there’s a specific page you’re trying to get ranked, that’s the page you’re going to want to put into the tool.

Bob Brennan: Right.

Jesse Dolan: It analyzes the page, not the website entirely. So plug in your page, plug in the keyword you’re looking to get ranked for. Let it do its thing, and it’s going to give you a great report. Totally free. When I read one of our reviews from iTunes, oh, that was another stat I forgot to share. 65, all five-star reviews on iTunes we’ve gotten since we started this thing. Which is just, stellar.

Bob Brennan: Tim Ferriss, lookout.

Jesse Dolan: Yeah, right? Right. Robin Leach

Bob Brennan: Exactly.

Jesse Dolan: … We’re hanging out with all kinds of crazy people. That’s why we’ve been away for a year.

Bob Brennan: That’s right.

Jesse Dolan: We’ve just been so busy. Okay. I think it’s Geiger 97? I hope I’m saying your name right, username. The review, five-star review says, “Such,” such. I think it’s supposed to say, an. It’s throwing me. “Such an important topic. SEO is something that I find so challenging, and the Local SEO Tactics podcast is so great at demystifying it. Great, easy to implement tips in every episode.”

Thanks for the awesome review, and I think I say this pretty much every time, but that’s exactly what we’re trying to accomplish.

Bob Brennan: Yeah.

Jesse Dolan: Just quick tips, something you can implement. We’re not trying to speak like we’re some huge, late-breaking SEO industry analysts here. We’re not talking to the SEO community. We’re talking to business owners, local marketers, people that want to get found locally.

So, if that’s what we keep hearing from people is, “Awesome show, awesome episode. I can actually take action on your tips,” that’s the whole reason we’re doing this. So, I appreciate the feedback. Everybody else, go to localseotactics.com. There you can find the link to the show. Leave us a review, drop us some feedback.

If you’ve got an idea for a show, if you’ve got questions you want answered, and again if you can leave us a review, that’s how we get that direct feedback. And it helps the show out too, to get more exposure. So, really appreciate that and then as you know, we read them on the shows every time. So, that’s about it for this week. Glad to be back in the saddle and stay tuned.
Bob Brennan: Bye, now.

Check out the show notes below for resource links, guides, and a link to watch the episode in video format!

To share your thoughts:

Send us a comment or question in the section below.
Share this show on Facebook.

To help out the show:

Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and we read each one.
Subscribe on iTunes.
Subscribe on Google Play.
Subscribe on Stitcher.