What Are Google Posts?
Google posts is Google’s ability to place all relevant information regarding your business directly into your Google My Business profile. You can see it as a kind of blog / activity book. It’s a phenomenon that was quietly released around 2017 for the Netherlands, since then still too little known. It is in fact a fantastic opportunity to place an offer, update or Social Media post (news) , new product, event or Covid – 19 update directly in the search results. These are the official categories – however, you can put practically anything in here.
Google posts are thus an extension of marketing for a local business or even charging station – all relevant information can be placed in them and become instantly visible to potential customers. The 10 biggest benefits of Google Posts:
- Immediate better visibility
- Fresh content in Google
- Faster conversion for local business
- Updates, events, products directly visualized
- Claim more space in the search results (less left over for competitors)
- Opportunities to trigger customers with multiple call to actions
- More information for potential customers, even without a website visit
- Better quality traffic on the website, customers are better informed in advance
- Insightful data
- Differentiate from competition – is still underutilized
- Tracking via UTM possible (especially mobile important – GA sometimes has trouble)
- Adding VIDEO’s is possible – how easy do you want it to be?
- It radiates care and actuality
- Free advertising space 🙂
As point 10 indicates, it is still underused. The reason for this is often twofold: it is too unknown, which in turn makes it seem like too much work. Under the motto: unknown makes unloved. However, with Erli the posts can be automated from social channels such as Facebook and posted directly into your Google Company Profile, in order to take full advantage of all the benefits of Google posts!
How do I utilise Google Posts?
You can use Google posts in practically any way; the different formats actually offer unlimited possibilities; with a range of possible CTAs:
- Books
- Online purchase
- Buy
- More info
- Register
- Call now
To do this, go to your Google My Business profile. Under home you will already see ”Posts”. Click on it; you will immediately get the option:
Press that. You will come to this window:
Here you have the option to choose from the following ”formats for posts” as mentioned above:
- Covid-19-update
- Sale
- New
- Event
Here you select what is applicable. Pro-tip: don’t use covid 19 updates; the options limit and are distracting. Choose new, offer or event. The best is to use all three yourself – so you understand what the possibilities are and why something is / is not effective for your specific business. By the way, you get a maximum of about 1500 characters to get the message across (this still fluctuates).
Offers also have a direct ability to use coupons. Where events have dates. Convenient; because a post basically stays up for 7 days…unless, you guessed it: you create it as an event. Then it stays up until the event is over.
Or automate it with Localium and automatically post for example all Linkedin, instagram or Facebook posts through!
What is the effect of Google Posts?
The benefits as mentioned at the beginning of this article are of course nice – but what are the actual effects of Google Posts in terms of data and best practices, since Google doesn’t give anything away anywhere about what is actually a ranking factor?
Posts, especially on mobile, have a tremendous visual impact. Visually, it is an enormously strong means of activating customers early on to take action towards your business.
- Increase in Conversion: Basically, when the company profile is activated there is already a local result. So the ”purchase intent” with this is already many times higher than normal. With the right targeted CTAs, this is high-quality traffic; this ultimately leads to better rankings.
- Google posts: more traffic to specific parts of your website – better signals to Google and thus ultimately a better ranking
- With the rise of voice search and the use of posts as mini ads – up to 4x better results are being achieved (think commands like: find the nearest charging station). 46% (and rising) use voice search for local purposes
- Google posts creates engagement and behavioral signals towards Google – with the high intents from the Google My Business profile this contributes to rankings
- Clicks to call, like point 4, is a behavioral signal – an important element that indicates whether a company is relevant
- Met Google posts stijgt de zichtbaarheid van je bedrijf – posts worden 7 dagen getoond, maar langer gebruikt. Er zijn cases dat er passages uit 2 maanden oude posts gehaald worden en onder het GMB profiel worden geplaatst.
There are many more connections to be made in this way – what matters – as with SEO and Local SEO – is relevance. Adding Value. So when it is clear that Posts add value because they are seen a lot, actions are taken on them – these are positive signals, which in turn improves rankings. It is planned to run a large A/B test in this, to also support this with the data.
Also want to use Google Posts automatically? Check out the features & possibilities or contact us via below.