Have you ever wondered “What can Google do for my business?”
While search engine optimization for organic listings and Google AdWords can be very effective ways to market your business, the Google My Business platform is a relatively easy way to start getting new customers from Google.
In this article I will show you how you can do the verification of your GMB listing.
How to verify your business on Google My Business
Open https://www.google.com/business/ in your browser and sign in with a Google Account. You are welcome to use any Google Account, but I prefer to create a brand new Gmail account for each business I create a GMB listing for. I usually create an email in the form of businesswebmaster@gmail.com (where you would replace business with the name of your business).
Once you have signed in, you will be presented with the page below. On this page you will enter your business name, address, telephone number, category and website address.
For the category, you want to enter what your business is (e.g. plumber, photographer, dance school, computer repair service, etc).
The last section that states “I deliver goods and services to my customers at their location” will vary from one business to the next. The plumber will select Yes, while the dance school would say no. If your business delivers goods and services both at your own address, and at the customer’s location, I would recommend that you select No.
After you have clicked on Continue, you should see the page below. Check the box that says “I am authorized to manage this business…” and click on Continue.
On the next page you will have a choice of how you want to verify your listing. Actually, if you are a South African company, you won’t have a choice. It is by mail, or not at all. If you are one of the lucky ones that can verify by phone, I would highly recommend you choose that option.
If you are only presented with the Mail option, click on the blue Mail button.
This will bring you to the page shown below. Here you can enter a contact person name (not required) and then click on Send Postcard.
Google will then send you a physical postcard that should arrive in 1-2 weeks. I have had times where the postcard arrived in 4 days, and I have had the odd occasion where it took 3 weeks. I also had one customer where the first postcard didn’t reach their address at all.
Don’t fear, Google has processes in place to deal with all these scenarios. My recommendation is to set a reminder for two weeks from the day you request the postcard. If you haven’t received the postcard by then, you will have to request it a second time. If the postcard fails to reach your address twice, you can give Google a call to verify on the phone.
Once verification is done, the times comes to optimize your GMB listing so that your customers will find your business on Google. Keep an eye out on the next post in this GMB series where I will give you my tips for optimizing your listing to increase your visibility in the search engines.
This process is easy enough that anyone can request the postcard. If you do feel intimidated, or just do not have the time to get this sorted out, drop me an email here and I can give you a hand.