How to Create an exceptional Google My Business Listing for Tanzania Safari and tour company
Did you know that having a Google My Business (GMB) listing can improve your website’s ranking on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP)? For Tanzania Safari and tour activity businesses, this can be incredibly valuable.
Google My Business (GMB) is an online tool that allows businesses to create a business profile on Google Maps and search pages. This profile is a mini version of your website, containing all the essential information about your business.
A professional and well-optimized GMB listing can improve your business’s visibility to the 82% of smartphone users who use local search or “near me” tags when looking for local and domestic tour and activity operators. Moreover, by placing your business on Google Maps, GMB can help you reach up to 74% of consumers who conduct weekly local searches and 77% of buyers who use Google Maps when looking for local businesses.
To help you take full advantage of GMB, we’ve created this article that provides practical tips and guidance on creating an exceptional GMB listing. Before diving into the specific strategies and tactics, we’ll discuss your goals for creating a GMB listing.
What are the goals of a GMB listing?
A well-optimized GMB (Google My Business) account can significantly enhance your business’s online visibility. By visiting your website, potential customers can only access critical business information such as location, working hours, quality rating, and other essential data. The primary goals of a GMB listing are to improve local search rankings, increase online exposure, and attract more qualified leads to your business.
Improve your online presence and attract more visitors to your website.
Google gives priority to GMB (Google My Business) listings when customers perform a search, reflecting Google’s affinity for GMB accounts. Relevant GMB accounts are listed first in search results, providing greater visibility and potential sales for tours and activity providers. For instance, a prospective customer searching for a cycling tour in Tanzania will likely use keywords such as “Tanzania” and “cycling tour” on Google search. In such cases, Google lists the local GMB listings with these specific keywords at the top of the search results list. As a result, tours and activity providers with GMB listings can expect to receive higher visibility on Google, thereby contributing to increased traffic and subsequent sales.
Improve your local SEO ranking.
Google’s algorithms play a crucial role in ranking Tanzania safari and tour business web pages, making it imperative for all SEO efforts to focus on understanding and unlocking the secrets of these algorithms. A simple yet effective way to ensure your business appears in relevant searches is through optimizing your Google My Business (GMB) profile. This involves using appropriate keywords and content tailored to your location and activity type. By doing so, your business will rank higher in local SEO, leading to increased visibility and customer engagement. You could miss out on 80% of potential customers searching for your products or services in your area. Optimize your site for local SEO now.
Convert more customers
A Google My Business (GMB) account can significantly enhance your local SEO efforts and provide potential customers with accurate business information. Unlike review sites like Yelp or TripAdvisor, where you have no control over the content posted, GMB allows you to manage and update your business details, ensuring that your data is legitimate and up-to-date.
Having a complete and well-detailed GMB listing can boost your business credibility, increase visibility, and attract quality leads. Studies show that businesses with an optimized GMB listing have a 70% higher chance of getting in contact with potential customers than those without one.
In summary, having a GMB account is essential for any business looking to improve its online presence and generate quality leads.
Rank in the top 3 local search results.
The Local 3-Pack displays search engine results that feature the top three search results based on the user’s geographical location. An optimally optimized Google My Business (GMB) account listing is highly likely to appear in Google’s Local 3-Pack result snippet, attracting more traffic and sales to the business. To increase the likelihood of appearing in the Local 3-Pack listing, companies should establish a robust online presence by enhancing their GMB account’s reviews, maintaining accurate and consistent online business details, forging local links with other companies, and establishing a solid social media presence.
How to create a standout Google My Business listing.
A Google My Business (GMB) account can significantly boost your sales by providing customers with a hassle-free experience of finding the information they need in just a few clicks. It also enables you to engage with potential leads and obtain valuable insights that can help you understand your customers better. If you want to set up a GMB account for your tour and activities business, let me guide you through the technical details and the step-by-step process.
1. Fill out your business information
If you don’t have a GMB account, Google automatically collects and displays your business information from various online sources. However, this may result in incorrect information being shown to your customers.
Take control of your profile by claiming it.
To create a Google My Business (GMB) account for your business, the first step is to claim your business profile. This allows you to enter accurate and helpful information about your business. To complete this process, you must log in using your Google account and provide your business address if you have a physical store. You must provide your mailing address if you offer online services only. You can avoid unwanted visitors by selecting the “I deliver services and goods to customers” option. You can hide your address and specify a service location outside your business’s radius for remote tour operators.
Choose the category
Select a specific category when adding your business information and input your website URL or phone number.
Update your business hours.
It’s essential to ensure that the business hours listed on your listing are accurate to avoid customers contacting you when you are unavailable. Such mix-ups could lead to a negative customer experience, adversely affecting the reviews. Additionally, if you have specific dates or holidays when you are unavailable, adding special hours to your listing is recommended to ensure everything is clear.
Write your business description.
Google My Business now offers a description section that has been expanded to accommodate up to 750 characters. Utilizing this space effectively and incorporating relevant keywords is essential to improve your business’s search visibility. Notably, the search results will display your description when your listing appears. However, only the first 250 characters of the description will make it to the Knowledge Panel, a snippet appearing on the search result’s right side. The Knowledge Panel provides a brief overview of your business, and optimizing the first 250 characters of your description is critical to improving your business’s online visibility.
2. Upload multiple quality images
Optimizing your Google Business listing is crucial for increasing click-through rates by 35%. To optimize your listing, you can add engaging and high-quality images. However, it’s important to seek approval from identifiable clients before uploading any photos that feature them.
Your business logo and a cover photo that depicts your services well should also be added to your listing. Regularly uploading new images will help you achieve the best local SEO results. Deleting any of your image uploads is possible by using the delete button. If a customer uploads an unpleasant image to your business profile, you can flag it and ask Google to delete it.
Businesses often neglect image SEO using inadequate title tags like “OMG_000786”. To optimize your images for SEO, rename them with relevant keywords and add descriptions and tags to organize your files better. Remember to include the location for local SEO. These strategies can improve your online visibility.
Google My Business (GMB) lets customers upload images, including reviews, to their accounts. This helps Google to create authentic user impressions of your business. To maintain a credible online presence, monitor your photos and encourage customers to tag themselves in their uploads. This can help enhance trust with your audience.
3. Ask for Google reviews
Google My Business listings, with multiple five-star reviews, can significantly enhance an online business profile. Encourage customers to leave reviews for your business to establish trust and reliability. GMB reviews are so crucial that they are often called Yelp killers. Facebook Business Pages are the only other review platforms that can compete with GMBs regarding display and review management. Since 56% of all searches currently display local intent, reviews are a crucial element of domestic marketing. Effective management of negative reviews is critical to review success. It is essential to respond to reviewers politely, even if the review is negative.
4. Create short videos
To enhance your customer outreach through your GMB profile, have you considered utilizing GMB’s simple video upload features to implement your video marketing strategy? By uploading a brief promotional video, approximately 30 seconds in length, you may improve your local SEO outcomes. It is recommended that high-quality virtual tours and video content be generated that capitalizes upon customer FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) to heighten engagement.
5. Leverage GMB posts
Google My Business (GMB) posts are a practical yet underutilized tool for brand promotion. These posts can be displayed at the bottom of the Knowledge Panel and offer a free and simple way to market your brand. A consistent weekly GMB post schedule is recommended to achieve optimal SEO results. These posts can cover various topics such as updates, events, new packages, or promotional offers. It is important to note that GMB posts have a character limit of 1,500, making it critical to create compelling and concise content. Additionally, incorporating videos and photos can create more engaging posts and enhance the overall effectiveness of your GMB strategy.
6. Monitor progress with Insights
The GMB Insights tool is helpful for tour and activity providers seeking customer engagement metrics. It provides in-depth data on listing views, customer behavior towards your listing, and analytics on direct discovery or branded search impressions. This information can help you optimize your keywords, posts, and descriptions to improve the visibility of your business.