Extremely.
A client started a new business in September 2017. She hired me after the site was built to do her SEO. I researched POSSIBLE keywords, added some to her content to increase density and built the meta tags. Was I done? No, from there, I dug into her relationship with Google. You see, for years, I felt if you didn’t get on Google’s bandwagon, your site and business would not go very far. Plus, why ignore a free service. So much data and free marketing? The relationship was analytics, but nothing else. At this point, I became her digital marketing, support, strategist and webmaster. Each week, I had her post a blog, then shared it on her FaceBook page and Google Business. To help with indexing the new post, I went into her search console, had the site fetched, rendered, reindexed, checked for errors, and made sure Google could index the entire site. I knew deep down if Google could index the site without issues, the site would gain visibility and move up in the searches organically.
Just how important is Google Business? My client wasn’t in favor of doing the posts back in September, she felt it was a waste of time and didn’t know what to write about. I gave her lists of things, even keywords to work into the posts. The results in just a few months are proving it is worth it.
Here it is the first of January. Her website, based on Google Business, in a month, she has had 76 views to her Google business listing. These are organic searches. No Pay Per Click at all. From the data, I can tell what the queries were, What actions were taken, calls clicks, or asked for directions via the business listing map. There is comparison data showing how often the site is viewed. Granted it isn’t much, however, because of it, and the relationship with Google, her site, is increasing presence and improving placement in the searches.
We haven’t taken full advantage of Google Business as of yet. What the data does say is that it is worth the effort to get listed on Google Business and if it’s good for Google, then it’s good for Bing and Yahoo.
Data came out from Google themselves stating some of their own ways of ranking sites. Among the list was their own Google Business. So why ignore what they value? Though my client’s numbers are not in the thousands, three months ago, Google didn’t know she existed. In 2019, Google will know.
