DO YOU WANT TO RANK HIGHER ON GOOGLE?
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Video Transcript from Joe Burnich:
I’m going to share two secrets to ranking your Google My Business profile number one in 2023. Now, the reason that I’m calling it a secret is because most marketing companies will not give you the straight scoop. They don’t want you to know this because then they can’t charge you money because it may not apply to you. A lot of small businesses out there will not be able to implement this secret or not be willing to implement this secret.
Now, I’m going to show you some examples in exactly how to do this in just a minute, but I want to make sure that if you’re working with a marketing company or if you’re about to work with a marketing company and they’re not talking about this or acting like they don’t think it’s a big deal, or if they don’t understand it at all, then you better turn and run. That’s a sign that they are taking money from you. Running a small business is expensive enough. We have tight budgets for our small businesses. We don’t want to get ripped off by unscrupulous, unethical marketing companies. I just want to make sure that’s clear before we get into the nitty-gritty of what this secret actually is.
So what is this first secret? It is location, location, location, location. It’s your physical address that you have registered with Google. I don’t care if you’re showing your address. I don’t care if you’re hiding your address. I don’t care if it’s commercial or residential. The address that you register with Google is going to have a huge impact, maybe the biggest impact on whether or not you will ever get to rank in that top three spot on Google My Business or on Google Maps. Now, I can tell you, after working with hundreds of service businesses since 2009, I can tell you that this is the number one issue, the number one source of confusion, the number one thing we talk about with our current clients, and we’ve got over 300 of them, and what that is the physical address.
Now, before I get into examples and show you how this works, I want to make sure you understand that this is not fair. Google has set this up. Google makes the rules, and no, it’s not fair that just because your address is here versus here will determine whether or not you can rank and get the most business in town. I’m not saying it’s fair, I’m just saying it’s the way it is. If it ever changes, don’t worry, I will have videos coming out. If you’re on my email list, I will send you an email, but for right now in 2023, this is how it works.
Okay, let’s jump over to my computer screen here, and you can see that I did a search for chiropractor, Missoula, Montana. I know how competitive it is here in my town in Missoula, so I wanted to use this as my first example. So we got three of the top ranking chiropractors. We got this one, this one, and this one. Now, let’s look and see where they are located in town. Okay, I can tell you right now, this is the center of town right here. Now, Google will usually rank the businesses that are closer to the center of town. Now, if you search in different parts of your town and you’re in a bigger city, then your results will change. But if you want overall the best rankings possible, you need to have a physical location that’s central to your city. The easiest way to do this is to go search your business on Google. Go over to the little map section and then draw a circle around the top three ranking companies. In this case, it’s going to be right about here.
And what I’m showing you here is the circle that has the highest chance of ranking on Google My business. If your business’ physical address, the one you registered with Google, hidden or not hidden, if it’s located within that circle, you’re going to have the best chance of ranking on Google. If you’re outside of this circle, good luck. Is it possible? Are there specific situations where people have been around for 10, 15, 20 years and Google will make an exception? Absolutely. But if you are a new business or if you’re new to the Google game, and you don’t have your address within the circle, it’s going to be very difficult to rank.
Now, if you’re liking this information, I want to invite you to subscribe to my channel because I’ve got a lot more where this came from. All you have to do is click subscribe below, and if you have any questions, ask them in the comments. I will get back to you. Okay, let’s get back to the video.
In this example, we’re looking at divorce attorney Seattle, so a bigger metro area, but the same thing applies. We’re going to look at the center of Seattle, which is probably about right here, and then if you want to rank in the top three, you’re going to have to be right around in this little circle. Now, this is not an exact science, but I think you’re getting the idea.
Let’s look at one more example. Now, in this example, we’re looking at roofers in Denver, Colorado. Once again, let’s make our center point right about here and you can do your own research and find out where the center point is for your city. And then we’re going to do a little circle that’s right about here. You’re going to see all the top three people ranking over here fall within that circle. It’s going to apply to your city, it’s going to apply to your business as well. These other guys out here, especially if you’re in Aurora or one of these other suburbs, you’re not going to rank. You are not going to rank in the top three in a competitive city like this that has a competitive service like roofing.
Now, if you’re in a smaller town and you have less competition and there’s only a couple people in your area that even have a chance to rank at all, yes, Google can pull you into some of the outlying areas or widen that circle for you. But if you’re in any kind of competitive area, competitive business, then you’re going to have to fall within this circle to have the best chance of ranking. Now, like I said, this is not fair, and I know most people don’t want to hear this because uprooting your business address and moving somewhere else can be very expensive.
Let me give you some caveats here. Number one, do not fake your address. If you use a PO box, a virtual address, shared offices, all these cheap ways to get offices out there, Google will not like that. And I want to tell you also, Google does prefer commercial locations that are visible and have signage over residential locations that don’t have signage and are hidden from the search engines. You can still rank with a hidden home address. It’s just much harder than if you have a visible commercial address.
Now, like I said, this is the first secret. I’m going to show you the second secret in the next video, which I’ll display right here at the end, so you can just click on it and start watching. And I want to say if I was going to start a new business in a new town, I would pay more attention to the address than anything else. And then second, I would pay attention to what I’m going to show you in secret number two. So watch that next video.
Now, other than the address, once you get that taken care of, there’s lots of other factors that can go into ranking on Google My Business or the Google Business profile as it’s now called. What I want to do is give you a free opportunity to download this cheat sheet. This has all the top eight things that you need to do that you need to understand in order to get to the top and really start making your phone ring or bring clients into your door. You’ll see this one-pager has these little clicks to videos. You can go watch and get deep on each one of these. And if you have any questions, like I said, I am available in the comments below. Once again, m