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Google My Business is now known as the Google Business Profile. You need to get this verified with Google if you’re going to have any chance of ranking and showing up in the map section. This video is all about how to get verified. If you’re struggling with verification, not getting the postcard, et cetera, we’re going to get deep into that as well. Let’s get started now.
So real quick, before we get into the details of how to get verified on Google, I want you to understand that you must have a good address that Google approves, that Google will not verify every type of address. So make sure you have the correct type of address that Google likes before you move on to the next steps. So let’s look and see what that looks like real quick.
So I’m jumping over here to this screen here called the 10 Best to Worst Address scenarios for Google Map 3-Pack ranking. I made this little document to help our clients understand when it comes to the address, what Google likes and what Google does not like. So let’s start at the top. Number one, Google loves legitimate commercial addresses where customers can actually go and visit. Second, they like offices that have signage. If you could put a sign with your logo and on your branding, your phone number, et cetera on the front door of your office, take a picture of that and upload it to Google, Google loves that as well. Third on the list works great, but not as good as the commercial address is a residential address. So if you work from home and you want to hide the address so nobody else can see it, that’s absolutely fine. You can still get rankings that way. You’re probably not going to have as much of a head start as if you had a commercial address, but it still works fine. So feel free to use your home address as needed.
Now you can also use an apartment, and we’ve worked with lots of clients to get apartments ranked up on Google. But it is not as easy as a house that we have found across the board. So not ideal, but if that’s all you have to work with, no problem. Let’s move forward with an apartment.
Now where it starts getting kind of dicey and where Google doesn’t really like it is when you start working in an office that doesn’t have signage or a warehouse that does not have signage where you can’t put a sign out front. That’s a little sketchy to Google. Google doesn’t always believe that you actually have a business location with an address like that.
Now we’re moving on from number six to 10, and this is where people really try to game the system and trick Google. And yes, people do get away with it once in a while, but if you’re in this for the long game and you really want to get ranked up on Google and use this as a main way to get clients for your business, then I’d recommend do not do any of these. Do not play the games. Stay above board. Work with Google’s guidelines, and you should be okay. What we’re talking about are virtual or shared offices. Google does not like those. They don’t like it when you use an address that is occupied by another business. So I had a client that wanted to use his father-in-law’s dental practice and put his carpet cleaning business within that office and tell Google that’s where he’s located. Google knows there’s already a dentist in there, so bad idea. Do not do that.
The last three are pretty obvious, but still a lot of people don’t understand and they still try to game the system using local mailbox services or UPS stores or the worst is a PO box. That’s the easiest one for Google to shoot down. Do not use a PO box. Use a legit address. Whether it’s your home or a commercial address, you’re going to have the best bet of getting verified and getting ranked up on Google. We’re going to talk more about ranking as we go through the verification process. Let’s get started with that right now.
Real quick, if you like what you’re hearing so far and this is helpful information and you’re learning something, I highly recommend that you subscribe to my channel because I come out with this kind of stuff on a weekly basis and I also will answer any question you have down in the comments below. So subscribe, like, leave a comment, and let’s get back to the lessons.
So the easiest and most common way to get verified by Google is when you fill out all your information and you get started, Google will send out a postcard. It typically takes a week to three weeks to get out to your location. And once you get the postcard, it looks something like this. Let’s jump over to the screen here. This is what the postcard will look at, like something very similar to this. And notice there is a verification code down at the bottom and then they tell you to go to google.com/verifymybusiness. When you go to that website, it’s very simple. You’ll just enter this code and click go, and that should be the end of the verification. And then you can get into the optimization side, which I have in a different video. It’s all about how to optimize your Google My Business page. But for now, let’s just stick with the verification.
So it’s not very common, but once in a while Google will let businesses verify with a simple phone call and you don’t have to worry about the postcard. It’s not as common as it used to be, but I know that if Google has a lot of trust in your business for whatever reason, then they may allow you to do a phone verification. Let’s jump to the screen real quick. So let’s look at this example here. So you can either verify by mail with the postcard like normal or sometimes they give you the option to verify by phone. Like I said, you can’t force this to happen. You can’t do anything specific to get the phone verification option, but you may find that if Google has a lot of trust already built up with your business.
Now, the third and final way to get your business verified by Google is by a video verification. This is where you’re going to take your cell phone or your iPad and you’re actually going to do a walkthrough of your location to prove to Google that you are the real deal. Sometimes they’ll even be on the phone with you live while you do this to verify that you actually have a business in the location that you say you do. So if you’re having problems with getting that postcard mailed out to you or Google just won’t verify it once you do get the postcard, the video verification has been a backup that’s worked for a lot of our clients up to this point. Let’s jump back over to the screen.
Here’s what it’s going to look like if you have the option to do a video verification. You’ll have the postcard option at the top, but then you see down here there’s a little picture of a video camera and it says, verify now through live video chat with our operators. You click connect and that’s where you’re going to go ahead and do this through your phone. Like I said, you’re going to actually walk through your location with the phone. Sometimes Google will even let you do it on your own and then you could upload it. But this is the most common way that I’ve seen people when they can’t get the postcard verification or no option for the phone verification, they end up doing the video verification.
Now, what if you’re having problems and Google doesn’t give you this option? I’m going to show you a little trick, a little secret here on how you can get in there and request it from Google directly. So we’re back on the screen here, and what you want to do is go to this specific url, support.google.com/business/gethelp. I know it’s a long url. I’m going to put it down in the description below. Hopefully it doesn’t change over time, but this is what we’ve been using to get that video verification request started.
So you’re going to come to a Contact us page. What you’re going to do is you’re going to select your business. I’ll just use mine as an example here. And then what can we help you with? You’re going to put verify. You’re going to type that in. You’re going to click next. Now you’re going to say fix postcard issue, and you’re going to click next. You’re going to skip this stuff here. You’re going to click next again. Now, right here is where you’re going to put in your email, and I’m going to stop right here. I can’t go through it because I’m already verified, so I can’t complete this process for you. But you’re going to fill this information out here, all the specifics to your business, and then you’re going to talk about what it is you’re trying to do and you’re going to actually request the video verification as you’re filling this out.
So little bit of a long drawn out step to get that video verification going, but we’ve done it several times for our clients and it’s worked every time so far. Does that guarantee that it’s going to work for you? No, but at least now you have a resource you can turn to when you want to get this process started. And like I said, most people don’t know about that. That is a secret.
Thank you for watching. I hope this was helpful. I also have something else that’s free for you, which is this Google My Business Cheat Sheet. This is everything we do to get a business up on Google, optimized and rankings. This is everything we do for our clients. It’s a one page cheat sheet you can download for free. All you do is click on the description below and it even has little links to videos. So once you have the PDF in your hand, you can link to these little videos if you want to go deep and learn step by step, how to do every little thing that we do for our clients, everything you can do for yourself. Once again, my name is Joe Burnich with BigWestAcademy.com, and I will see you in the next video.
