Optimizing your Google My Business Information is a lesson in restraint. You should fight all the urges to overplay your hand with flourishes about what you do and who you do it for, as it can, and in many cases does, come back to bite you.
Optimizing Business Name & Description
Your business name should be your actual licensed name, try to steer clear of any added flourishes for what you think (or worse – have been told) will help with SEO.
For your business description, you are given a maximum of 750 words. Again stick to simple language that describes your business.
You are not allowed to have hyperlinks in your description, so don’t bother with this.
Pro Tip: My advice is to try to get a really good 250 character start to your 750 character limit as this is what is shown in the open view, the other 500 characters are after the more link.
If you are not sure about what to write, do a Google search for businesses like yourself in other areas and get ideas.
Alternatively, there are also professional Functional Medicine Writers available who can also do it for you.
Optimizing Google My Business Photos
The photos you upload should present what you do, where you do it from and the team that delivers your products and services. Below are the guidelines from Google.
Google’s Photo guidelines,
- Format: JPG or PNG.
- Size: Between 10 KB and 5 MB.
- Recommended resolution: 720 px tall, 720 px wide.
- Minimum resolution: 250 px tall, 250 px wide.
- Quality: The photo should be in focus and well lit, and have no significant alterations or excessive use of filters. In other words, the image should represent reality.
Pro Tip: Your cover photo is perhaps your most important as it is the one that is shown in your Google Profile Snippet on Maps and Search.
You should also include all key staff and also professionally shot indoor photos and some of the exterior.
Identity Photo
Your logo/profile photo is the one that appears next to images you post, reviews you create or reply to. This section also includes your cover photo.
Google My Business Profile Photo Size: 250 x 250 pixels (minimum 120 x 120; maximum 5200 x 5300) Google My Business Cover Photo Size: 1080 x 608 pixels (minimum 480 x 270; maximum 2120 x 1192) Format: JPG or PNG. Size: Between 10 KB and 5 MB.
Optimizing Google My Business Videos
If you can create videos for Instagram, then creating them for Google My Business should be a breeze.
Just remember, with Google My Business you have 30 seconds to tell your story and they must be compressed to under `100 megabytes.
Google My Business Video guidelines
Make sure your videos meet the following requirements:
- Duration: Up to 30 seconds long
- File size: Up to 100 MB
- Resolution: 720p or higher
I suggest creating a welcome video, for services and some frequently asked questions (FAQ’s) videos