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Google My Business is the perfect tool to drive more in-store traffic to your local business. Local search studies conducted by the experts have shown that a complete Google My Business listing has the best chances of ranking in the local pack.
If we look deeper into it, we’ll find that business categories are one of the most important ranking factors.
The primary category that you choose has a great impact on your visibility. Choosing the right primary category based on the products/services that you provide is unquestionably the best choice. Connectify Hotspot MAX Crack
It’s obvious, in many cases, to just pick who you are. However, it’s a little bit more complicated than that in some cases. For example, a divorce attorney who has a single location business can just pick ‘divorce attorney’ as their primary Google My Business category and be done with it.
But, what if that one location has more than one divorce attorney under the same roof, and every attorney has their own Google My Business listing?
Google’s Terms of Service has a specific section regarding practice and practitioner listings, but only for certain entities. This raises some serious issues. How do you choose a primary category keeping in mind that you’re not intruding or creating a competition within your own team?
It gets even crazier when that single location local business has a wider range of services (plumber, HVAC, drain cleaning, pipe repairing, for example).
So…
How to choose the primary Google My Business category for a business that provides services for multiple categories?
Let’s look into some of the scenarios.
Narrow-focused single-location business
Let’s take the divorce attorney for example here. This one’s very straightforward. The primary Google My Business category here should be ‘divorce attorney.’ Your primary Google My Business category should be the most specific about what you do. You can specify other provisions in secondary categories.
Broad-focused single-location business
This can get confusing. Let’s suppose you run a business that provides services like HVAC, plumbing, air conditioner installing, etc. This business can be called broad-focused. In cases like this, you have to prioritize the services that you provide on the basis of what you want to attract the most customers for.
Let’s say your primary focus for the GMB is to attract customers for HVAC, that will be your primary category.
Having said that, your job won’t be done there and then. Improving your local rank for those services will need you to focus on landing page content to be in alignment with your primary Google My Business category. Building some quality links and citations for the same would be a cherry on top.
Practice/practitioner or agent/agency listings
In certain scenarios, where the employee or agent has their own customer base, both the business and the ‘agent’ or ’employee’ can have their individual Google My Business listing. This is called ‘practice/practitioner’ or ‘agent/agency’ relationships.
Let’s take an architecture firm for example. The company’s listing here, will have ‘architecture firm’ as their primary category and the architects working in the company will put down ‘architect’ in their primary category.
Having the practice/agency and the practitioner/agent both ranking for a single category is a huge bonus. Divorce lawyers for example. Both the employees and the firm can put down ‘divorce lawyer’ as their primary category.
However, using the same primary Google My Business category for both the practice and the practitioner can also complicate things a bit. Depending on the local competition and the proximity, it can work differently for all. So, the best option here is to test using the same Google My Business categories as well as different categories, and see which one works best for you.
Additionally, if there is a listing of a practitioner that ranks better than the firm’s listing or has more reviews, you can give it the ‘divorce lawyer’ category and focus more on that particular listing.
Multiple-location businesses
Generally, businesses with multiple brick-and-mortar locations don’t face the problem of competing internally.
Secondary Categories
Primary category is the most important setup of the whole Google My Business category scenario. But, we shouldn’t forget secondary Google My Business categories. While the primary category justifies a great deal about a business listing, secondary categories also do great by chipping in with other services that a listing offers.
Let’s take a phone repair shop for example. The primary category for that business will obviously be ‘phone repair service.’ But let’s say they also fix computers and sell cellphone accessories. You can put down ‘computer repair service’ and ‘mobile phone accessory shop’ in the subcategories and make your services more visible on Google.
Seasonal Updates
Google My Business categories need to be updated according to the changing seasons. Many businesses have different demands based on the seasons. Let’s suppose you’re an HVAC contractor. You’ll get lots of queries for AC repair shops in the summer, whereas in the winter, you’ll get more queries for furnaces.
You don’t want the customers looking for ‘furnace repair service’ to see ‘AC repair shop’ as your category and skip you. So, updating your categories seasonally is a good habit to have.
Google My Business categories exceptions
Internet algorithms are extremely complicated, so is Google My Business categories algorithm. The practice and practitioner listings have some issues with it and there are cases where Google isn’t perfect with it.
For example, a hairdresser and the beauty salon they work at can’t have their individual listings, even though they both have their own clients and require specific skills.
Final Words
As it is with almost all questions related to SEO, the answer to Google My Business categories is also the same, it depends.
It’s hard but that’s the truth. The best you can do is to keep experimenting with different options and track your progress with the help of automated tools. The best strategies start to build after a certain investment of time and investment.
It’s understandable that not everyone has the resources and time to get involved in it, which is where digital marketing agencies step in.
Digital Daisy is a digital marketing agency in India that specializes in digital marketing services like local SEO services.
We can help you build the brand that you desire to create. Connect with us, we promise you won’t regret it.
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