Our data study – 36% increase for Google My Business
How important is it to claim your Google My Business listing for your home care agency?
A lot, we found out.
The Google My Business feature has been around for a few years. Our data study found that it makes a whopping degree of difference – 36% – in your website getting found.
(Transcript is below)
It is the search giant’s feature for businesses and has a lot to do with the success of your website as a sales funnel. Google will include information on every business out there, whether the businesses participate, or in other words, claim their listing.
So it is good to claim your listing. This is so you can put up your own pictures, your hours of operation, your photographs, and, especially, you can invite those happy clients of yours to leave positive reviews. In other words, you have control over it.
Google My Business for Home Care
Let’s dive right in. Some of you are no doubt familiar with Google My Business, others are not. So, here is a quick review. When we search for Home Care Lake Forest, Illinois, for example, we come up with three listings, here, that are below the map. This is called the map pack or the three-pack.
Let’s click on this website right here: Maggie’s Home Care Providers. This business has a picture of what looks like the outside of the building, a residence perhaps, in the city. It looks like this company has not claimed their Google My Business or GMB listing. If they did, they would be able to put in the pictures that they want.
There is not a whole lot of information either, here. Now, here it says, “Own this business?” So, if this is you, you would click here and see it says, “manage this business to reply to reviews, update information, and more.”
When you click this, you go through a certain process. Google has a way of verifying whether you really are the business owner. They can do it by mailing you a postcard, or by using a cell phone, and so forth.
Why is Google My Business important?
First, why is Google My Business so important? Tech Radar has an article called “Taking Advantage of Google My Business.” They say, “GMB listings are slightly different to organic listings – they’re influenced by the user’s location, unlike organic results.” So, prioritizing local ranks rankings is very important. Now recently, Google My Business makes up for 25 percent of the top local ranking factors on Google.
Here is another listing: Harmony Home Care. This is in Barrington, and it came up in a search for “home care barrington il.” Once again, we click on “Own this business?” and it says this listing has already been claimed. Now, let’s say, if you hire us at Savvy Senior Marketing to work with you, we would request access right here, and then you would give us permission to get involved with the listing and improve it.
Here is another one: Always Best Senior Care Services. It’s located in Glenview, Illinois. Once again, it has “Manage this listing.” One great thing about a Google My Business listing is that you get reviews. And you can see here, there are five Google reviews. They have gotten a five-star rating. That looks very good for your home care agency. Here, they have various ways to manage this location.
Informal study finds GMB helps ranking
We at Savvy Senior Marketing did some research, and we investigated our database of a sample of home care agencies to find out which ones really did their homework by claiming their listing. We wanted to see whether this would improve their ranking for home care searches in their community.
We found 25 agencies that claimed their Google My Business, and another 27 did not. So, it is split about evenly down the middle. The small numbers here mean that they ranked in the top ten of the Google map pack. Many of them did rank in the top ten. For those who did not claim their GMB, here you have a lot of high numbers.
We put the numbers all together and found that among those who did not claim Google My Business, 12 out of 27, or in other words, 44%, did rank in the top 10. Among those who did claim Google My Business, 15 out of 25, that is 60%, ranked in the top 10.
We’ve researched the way home care agencies market their services. And this is what we’ve found that the best home care agencies are using.
Click for your free guide, “5 Top Marketing Methods Used by Home Care Agencies.” Keep up with best practices. Don’t get left behind.
Claim your Google My Business!
The difference is that if you do not claim your business, you only have a 44% chance of getting in the top 10 ranking. However, once you do claim it, you have a much greater chance at 60%. Now, that is an increase of 36%!
So all you have to do is claim your listing, improve it, and ask for reviews from your happy clients, and you have a jump of 36% or greater chance of ranking in the top 10.
That means that you will get more phone calls, emails, and contacts from people who need home care services.
You can see the importance of claiming the Google My Business feature on Google. If you go to an agency like us here at Savvy Senior Marketing, that’s the first thing we would do to improve your search ranking.
There are a lot of other factors involved in search rank optimization as well, such as inbound linking and content. There is a lot more to it, but this is an important first step. It’s not too difficult of a step.
As a matter of fact, we can do it for you. We have a small package in which we will claim your Google My Business ranking for you, claim your website, and do everything for you!
There is no need for you to bother by doing a whole lot of studying to figure all this out, you can simply go to an agency like Savvy Senior Marketing. Call us at the number on the top of the page, or contact us.