How to Make Sure Your Damage Restoration Business is Showing Up on Google Maps

Hey Jamie here, welcome to this episode of the Restoration Success show. This episode is a little shorter than usual. It only will take a few minutes. Um, but I cover some good stuff and we want to talk about some a few things that could be hurting your google maps, rankings or the, you know, your google business profile ranks in the map pack, right. We like to call it the money box because you can generate a ton of jobs and leads once you get ranking there, that’s a whole other conversation, we’ll save that for another episode. But in this episode specifically we’re going to cover a few things that you guys might have accidentally done or your current marketing company or the person in charge of your google business profile is doing, that could be hurting your results. Um and this is, I think all online marketing channels are extremely important and we see leads and revenue coming from a lot of these different facets that you can do on google in particular. But if I had to pick one, getting your google business profile straightened out and ranking and converting is one of the most important and we see the most business for our clients in particular coming from getting this set up properly um and ranking and optimized etcetera etcetera. So in this episode, like I said, this is short and sweet but I’m gonna be going over some things that you guys might have done or currently doing, that could be hurting your ranking. So you wanna make sure you listen to this episode and get these things straightened out. Um If you come across anything that you have done wrong in the past, that’s okay, just go ahead and get it fixed and you should be good down the road again. If you do have to fix any of these things or not, you’re not going to be ranking overnight. This isn’t, you know, 10, 15 years ago. Google obviously understands the game. Um, but listen in, hopefully you’ll get some good gold nuggets and, and as always, you know, I would don’t just listen, I would take action to any insight I relay through this message because in the day we will help you guys get better results and grow your restoration company to the next level. So enjoy this episode. But here’s some things that we come across a lot that could be hurting your rankings in the mouse, right? And, and, and some of this is more of a strategy and long term approach, but You need an office and whatever your main target area is, you need an office located there. Now, what we see is you can kind of rank anywhere from 15 to 20 mile radius. I mean sometimes it’s a little tighter depending on the competition. Sometimes we see that pushed out about 30 mile radius around your office location but you know, we have clients that do this if you’re truly trying to dominate a market, you know, like Houston for example, or Miami, you know, in Miami, you got Miami Fort Lauderdale. Like if you’re truly trying to dominate, like we’ve had clients like, hey, let’s, once they’re dominating in Miami, let’s open up another office in Fort Lauderdale because you know, there’s a 15, 30 30 mile radius to where you can rent. Um, so I just want to point that out, like if you’re in Miami, but you want to focus or get most of your work from Fort Lauderdale, then keep that in mind as you set up a new office or as you think about your expansive strategy about where you’re gonna put it. Um, if I was gonna open up a restoration company, like I would be very strategic about where the office is located, where, where areas, I want to grow it out too because it will make your life a lot easier when it comes to rankings uh, into the three pack. Um, and I kind of already touched on this, but don’t, you know, don’t do P. O boxes anymore. Um, fake addresses, Google is catching on to it and like it might work, but the risk is not worth the reward right? Because it’ll, it might help, you know, for a couple of weeks, but as soon as google, they’re gonna catch it, you’re gone and you don’t want to lose that business overnight and then, you know, inconsistent name, address, phone number, profile, this is, you might hear it called nap for short, you know, name, address, phone number, nap that’s basically a citation or directory listing. And all that is, is just your name, address, phone number. And just as an example that if you’re on yelp your your yelp directory listing is a is a citation right or directory. Um but if you know for our clients and if you’re and if you’re wanting to rank in the google map, you want a lot of relevant citations, but you want your name, address, phone number to be consistent across those properties. So it makes google, it’s easier for google if you think about this, this bot, you know, crawling and stuff, it’s all relevant to that business. This is easier because if you think about it, it sees this name, a different address, different phone number a bot. You know, it’s gonna be like, why don’t you know what business this is talking about? Um I mean, it kind of makes sense if you step back and look at it from that perspective, um don’t spam your city name. Uh And actually I thought I was gonna show up on a second. Don’t do you know bob’s restoration and then put hyphen water damage. Um Yeah, I’m actually gonna show you this now because this is interesting. I was looking at this because we we had a we ran into this with one of our clients and you know, it was kind of bothering me because they were getting beat out by spam. But then, you know, we stick to our guns. We do white label, you know, S. C. O. Google my business stuff which tried. It’s proven over time, Right? Well, they hopped the guy that was getting spammy and I don’t know. It just made us feel good. But just just don’t do it because, you know, we not on any of our clients, but I’ve tested, we have our own probabilities and profiles and we’re testing things on just to make sure we’re always in the know what’s working. Um, and that stuff will get taken down. So that’s why don’t guys don’t do it. You still, you still come across it. And also it still works sometimes, but long term. I would not recommend that. Um, and here, and that’s why I’m gonna show you guys real quick. Um, we’re gonna look at an example in Denver. Uh, and this is this is Denver colorado. If you’ve been around the restoration world for a while like this isn’t, this is top five competitive, most competitive markets in the country, right? It’s your, your Houston L. A. Miami. Denver. So, I’m gonna do an example search for here and um, you know, water down. So look at this and that, you know, and if, you know, this is a uh, we actually know all the all these guys, but this is a great company to nothing against them. But I would not recommend this right here. You see, google smart enough like and and they have had better better recognize we watched this, I watched this, just make sure, but look here all pro we were able to get them to jump to number one by doing it the right um because when I see this, you know, it always crosses their mind because this is a new strategy is just working now, but google knows long term, this is not their business name and as you can see doing things the right way, what I’m talking about today in the webinar by the white label, it’ll prove it’ll because they weren’t number one for this term for a while, right? And it takes a little time sometimes to kick in and then boom they jumped jump these guys to number one by doing it. So yes, like you will see people with the keywords in the business name for a long term solution. I do not recommend doing that. So it’s just a little side note rant. But you know, that’s because that that you know, a couple of years ago it worked well and then you know, people kinda quit doing it, you know like last year 2019 and then I am kind of starting to see it more and more now. Um but again, google is always changing, right? So that’s why you got to kind of see but again, just we we just went through a whole process with the client on that and doing it the right way um seems to always win long term, so just keep that in mind if you are trying to gain, gain the system with your google my business name, I would, I would think twice about doing that and then reviews right like reviews are becoming more and more important. Um If you’re not just get google my business reviews, you should have active um plan and strategy in place to be there because it is a ranking signal to get into the three pack is not the only, you can’t rank solely on reviews alone. Um but once you get into the three pack, you know, the reviews is a huge conversion aspect, it’s, it’s you know, I know how all this works and whenever I need a home service provider and you know my market here in charleston south Carolina, like I look at the google map Frankie’s, I look at the reviews and make the call and I just showed you that apparently 75% of our clients leaves, they’re getting per month, it’s happening for them to write. Um And and a lot of people, you know, they look at the three pack first and then whoever gets the call a lot of times just because you’re number one doesn’t always mean you’ll get that call a lot of times it will be based on the number of reviews and the review rate. Um So obviously I would, well you want to focus on reviews as you go, but you gotta get to the, you know, people have to find you first and then, you know, the reviews will will kind of follow. But I think he was starting out getting five star reviews. Taking care of your clients should be a part of the process as you go along.