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Conspiracy Theory: Google Business Profiles Keywords

Brian Michael West

Sled Master
Jun 1, 2018
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So here's my conspiracy theory of the day!

Has anyone tried posting SEO keywords in Google Business Profiles (GMB) posts and seen a difference?

I have noticed that if you use proper keywords on images they will index pretty quickly. Ideas? Thoughts? Input?

I'd love to hear from you.

- Brian West


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So here's my conspiracy theory of the day!

Has anyone tried posting SEO keywords in Google Business Profiles (GMB) posts and seen a difference?

I have noticed that if you use proper keywords on images they will index pretty quickly. Ideas? Thoughts? Input?

I'd love to hear from you.

- Brian West


View attachment 5820

As Greg said, there's no direct SEO ranking impact by including keywords in your GMB posts.

HOWEVER, keywords in GMB posts can be pulled up and highlighted in the map pack which may positively influence CTR %, which may in turn positively influence your search ranking.

To take advantage of this, we use Google's GMB API to automatically post every customer delivery photo as both a photo and a post on our GMB profile. In the GMB post text, we reference the vehicle purchased and where the customer is from.

You'll see an example in the screenshot below:

1644523318353.png


We were one of the first ones on the GMB Post bandwagon a few years ago back when they were still featured prominently above the fold. We used them effectively to promote our monthly offers and saw great results.

However, that didn't last long because as soon as Google pushed the GMB posts below the fold, our GMB post impressions and clicks dropped off a cliff to basically zero. This is about when all of the OEM's learned about GMB Posts (always late to the party) and pitched them as a miracle solution to sell a ton of cars - which of course is not true.

So we shifted our strategy away from monthly offer posts over to these real-time delivery photos and experienced significant organic growth. Was it because of this? Who knows, but it certainly can't hurt especially with how few people view and click on the average dealership GMB post to begin with.
 
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As Greg said, there's no direct SEO ranking impact by including keywords in your GMB posts.

HOWEVER, keywords in GMB posts can be pulled up and highlighted in the map pack which may positively influence CTR %, which may in turn positively influence your search ranking.

To take advantage of this, we use Google's GMB API to automatically post every customer delivery photo as both a photo and a post on our GMB profile. In the GMB post text, we reference the vehicle purchased and where the customer is from.

You'll see an example in the screenshot below:

View attachment 5822


We were one of the first ones on the GMB Post bandwagon a few years ago back when they were still featured prominently above the fold. We used them effectively to promote our monthly offers and saw great results.

However, that didn't last long because as soon as Google pushed the GMB posts below the fold, our GMB post impressions and clicks dropped off a cliff to basically zero. This is about when all of the OEM's learned about GMB Posts (always late to the party) and pitched them as a miracle solution to sell a ton of cars - which of course is not true.

So we shifted our strategy away from monthly offer posts over to these real-time delivery photos and experienced significant organic growth. Was it because of this? Who knows, but it certainly can't hurt especially with how few people view and click on the average dealership GMB post to begin with.
thanks for sharing this one Ryan
 
Well said,

Definitely no added benefit to SEO but the goal of GMB I think for anyone has got to be increasing engagement as it is definitely a ranking factor with your business and GMB's proximity. I've literally slammed everything I can think of with GMB, I've silo'd posts to an offer but with the latest local update proximity is becoming extremely challenging so I've built out neighborhood pages and started doing posts including those neighborhood names. Definitely seeing some improvements from GPS points and ranking further out in the area I'm tracking.

From my data, the generic offer images that we post don't get a lot of engagement...GMB posts are so similar to social media where you need a personal touch to get engagement like Ryan said.

The posts themselves won't improve your position but with the right call to action and images, people will click and engage which is far more important for GMB (in my opinion) than anything else. In other industries and FB groups, I'm a part of I'm seeing new GMBs rank simply with click-through rate manipulation.
 
@Ryan Everson do you know of any great or even good resources for learning how to use the API? I am not a developer, by any means, but I can hack things together when needed and daaaaaamn this feels needed.
First, you have to apply for GBP API access:

Then you can use a low/no-code API tool to make the calls