DO YOU WANT TO RANK HIGHER ON GOOGLE?
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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Joe Burnich:
There is one thing that almost nobody is talking about when it comes to ranking your Google My Business account, now known as the Google Business Profile. But as far as ranking, nobody’s talking about photos and how they affect your rankings. Let’s get into that right now. Photos can actually be a very powerful part of ranking your business. Of course, there are lots of other factors that we’ll get into later, but what I want to talk about right now is adding photos or uploading photos directly to your Google My Business account can have a very positive effect on your rankings, but it can also protect you against suspensions or being marked as spam.
If you don’t know this, there’s a lot of businesses out there, a lot of fake businesses or fake listings that people create for lead generation purposes, and they’re not real businesses. Google’s trying to get rid of those. Google is trying to mark them as spam and get them off of the internet. It’s your job to make sure you do not fall into that camp. You do not want Google to accidentally mark you as spam and take your business down. It happens all the time to legit good businesses. One of the reasons is is because they’re not putting good photos into the account. First, I want to make sure you do not use fake photos.
Do not buy stock photos off of websites and put them onto your account. Do not take photos from other people’s websites or other places on the internet that you did not take. Do not put those on your account. That’s a surefire away to flag your account that it may be spam. Do not do that. Only post photos that you have taken or somebody on your team or your staff have taken. Now, let’s jump into what we do want to have in the photos. You don’t want to just have any photos. That’s what most people do. If you want to separate yourself from the competition and get that little extra edge to push you above a competitor in your town, then make sure you have better photos than they do.
What makes a good photo? What does Google My Business really like when it comes to photos? Number one, they love it when you include the logo. Google can actually see the logo in your photo and match it to your website or your Google account. Number two, if you’re using tools or equipment within your business, make sure that that is visible in the photos. Google can actually detect what’s going on. I’m going to show you an AI program, a little bit scary, a little bit creepy. In just a minute, I’m going to show you how crazy Google is when it comes to determining what is actually in your photos.
Another thing to make sure you do is add people. Make sure there are people doing the work. Don’t just take pictures of stuff or products or things being done. Make sure there are actual people showing up in those photos. We’re going to show you a couple examples in a second here. And then of course, if you have a service business, show people doing those services. If you have a product-based retail business, for example, have people using those products, handling those products, admiring those products, whatever it may be. It can also go for food as well. Don’t just show a picture of spaghetti with meatballs if you’re a restaurant.
Show people eating that. Show people actually enjoying and eating that plate of spaghetti. Real quick, let’s jump over to this AI program I was talking about. If you go to cloud.google.com/vision, you can check this out yourself, but we’re going to drop a photo of some construction work being done and then we click over here to labels. Now look how crazy this is. Look at everything that Google can tell is going on in this picture within a matter of seconds. They can see there’s tradesmen. They can see there’s wood, construction workers. They’ve determined that it’s a carpenter building. They’ve determined that there’s a ladder in this picture.
Let’s see what else they got, a hat. They’ve got a beam. They can even tell that this guy is wearing a vest. They can tell that there’s machines, construction. I think you get the idea. Google can look at a picture and automatically their software AI is so advanced these days and it’s only getting better, they can tell exactly what’s in your photo. If you have all the required items that I just told you about, then you are going to get Google’s attention and you are going to get that competitive edge and start ranking higher in the Google My Business rankings. Now, real quick, if you like the information I’ve given you so far and these little secrets and tips that I’m giving you, then please subscribe to my channel.
I have a lot more of where this came from. I have new videos every week, and I’m also answering any questions you may put down in the comments. Comment, like, and subscribe. Let’s move on to the next lesson. The first example I want to give you is electrical contractor Kansas City. This is a very common local search when someone’s looking for an electrician, right? Let’s go ahead and look and see what these people are doing. Mister Sparky, I’m going to skip that because that’s a franchise, but let’s go to Jeremy Electrical, one of the top rankers here, and see what his photos look like.
I can tell right up the bat that this guy knows what he’s doing. He’s doing it right. Let’s check this out. First of all, he’s got his vehicles with a logo right there. This one not so great. This one is awesome. This is exactly what you want to do. It’s got a person in the picture doing work that they state they do. They’re an electrical contractor. They’re doing electrical work. Google can see that. And then very important here is he’s got his logo on the back of the shirt. Google’s going to match that logo up to the website into the logo that’s uploaded into the Google My Business account. This is very powerful.
The next example I want to do, Italian food Indianapolis. Now we’re going to look at some restaurants here. Let’s look at number two here. Let’s see what kind of photos they have. Very good. I can already tell. Like I said, it’s not bad to put a picture of the plate with nothing else in there. That’s good. That’s showing Google, but also what you want to be doing, let’s see if we got it here, perfect, a picture of their sign. Once again, the logo is showing up, their location is showing up. Let’s see if they have any people eating food here. There’s a setting there. There we go. There’s some people in there eating. I wish we had clearer pictures of people eating.
What I would recommend if I was doing work for this company is I would recommend take pictures just like these here, but have people at these tables eating this delicious Italian food that you guys provide. That’s just an example. Let’s jump onto the next one. Let’s do Chiropractor Bellingham. Here we go. See what kind of pictures we have here. Okay, I can already see a mistake they’re making on one of them, but that’s okay. Let’s check it out. Okay, great. They’re showing the logo and the storefront. Absolutely perfect. You need that. See, Google can see that this is a table here, some sort of table.
Whether it’s a massage table or a chiropractic table, Google can see that stuff. Now, this is a stock picture. I can tell you right now that anybody can go buy this picture. If I was this company right now, I would take this off and replace it with an actual human being that they take a picture of with their phone sitting at a desk with a hurt back. Not too bad there. I’d love to see some people in here. Let’s see, oh, here we go. This is perfect. Here’s a picture of the chiropractor doing some chiropractic work on a human being, and it’s obvious that it’s a chiropractor office. Google’s going to love this photo right here.
I hope you get the idea. I gave you some really good examples. I gave you a checklist of what to have in your photos, and I also told you what not to have. But how often do you think you should be posting these photos? You’re running a business. You don’t have time to do all this. Well, I highly recommend, number one, you use a cell phone. Google can tell if it’s a real photo and if it’s taken with a cell phone or if it’s taken by a professional photographer. Google likes to see things that are real and authentic. It’s not going to hurt if you use a professional photographer.
But if you can use a cell phone, it’s going to work better, and it’s also going to work better for conversions because humans also like to work with other humans. They like to see things that are real, especially in this over polished advertising world that we’re in right now. If you can set yourself apart with simple smartphone photos, then you are going to be ahead of the game. But let’s talk about the frequency. How often do you need to be posting these photos? Well, I’m going to tell you right now, it depends. All you need to do is search for the top competitors in your area. Find out how often they are posting photos.
If they’re posting photos once a month, then I recommend you do it twice a month. If they are posting photos once a week, I recommend you do it twice a week. If they’re posting photos once a day, I recommend you do it twice a day. Do more and better photos than your competitors and over time, if you follow all the other stuff in my cheat sheet on how to rank your Google My Business account, you will get that edge. Speaking of this cheat sheet, if you want to get this for free, I put a link down in the description. It’s BigWestAcademy.com/gmbcheatsheet. Go to that website or click on the link below.
Get this. It’s absolutely free. It has everything that I teach when it comes to Google My Business rankings. If you want details on each one of these little categories, click on the little red play button there and it’ll take you over to a video so you can go deep, you can go in-depth on exactly how to do this. Once again, my name is Joe Burnich with BigWestAcademy.com and I will see you in the next video.
