You’ve done the right thing and set up a Google My Business (GMB) listing.
You’ve filled out all the right areas, including the info tab, so that your website is now linked to your listing.
Great stuff.
What about the other website option on GMB (now called Google Business Profile)?
You’ll see from this image what I mean:
Spot number 1 is where you will have completed all of your normal business details, including your actual website, phone number, email address etc etc.
Spot number 2 though… should we be using that as well, or instead of, or using it at all?
After all, when you use option 1, the info tab, GMB will link to that site, your actual website, on search results, as shown below:
That button links to http://goodoil.marketing/ not my GMB “mini-website”.
So what’s the point of the other one?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and have come up with some answers / points / data that is worth sharing.
👉 We’ve been publishing the sites for our clients, and our recipe for success is working.
We discovered that these sites, when published (they aren’t automatic, you have to click “website”, then “publish” for GMB to publish your site), help us to rank our clients’ GMB sites higher.
Now – our recipe for success has a few moving parts, but we have found lately that getting these mini-sites published helps rank sites higher. Worst case scenario would be that it can’t hurt.
👉 The sites have unique URLS, that are Google owned, which in turn provides links back to your website.
We’ve tested this, and the links are helping the backlink profile of our client websites.
To rank a website on Google, a large portion of their decision making is via the “backlink profile” – or “who is pointing their websites, at this website”.
High authority, reputable websites, linking to YOUR website, is a very good thing.
Here is what our GMB mini-site looks like:
Not bad – in fact we’ve seen far worse business websites, this would be perfectly fine for a main website for a business.
If you look lower down the page:
GMB is populating the website with “updates” much like a blog – these are simply posts from our GMB Listing – giving us links to our website, and email list.
Not a bad idea at all. We have tested the domain authority and backlink profile, these links are coming up as very powerful additions to our website.
So – we suggest people keep posting on their GMB page, as these mini-websites get populated with more and more content – that will be relevant to your business and loaded with links as well.
👉 Google is giving your mini-website a unique URL that is also keyword driven – based on your GMB Listing name.
For example, Drymaster Dry Cleaning in Newcastle Australia: https://drymaster-carpet-cleaning-newcastle.business.site/?m=true
The keywords for this business would be “Dry Cleaning Newcastle” based on a quick look at their GMB listing and website.
The URL Google gives you, for free, is likely to help that site rank higher. Not only the GMB site, but the actual website too.
Looking again at Drymaster – if the business did not have a website already, this would be a very suitable option, it’s got nice clear calls to action, gets straight to the point, and looks okay from a design perspective.
Google does give the option of buying another separate unique URL, hosted, for just $20 per year. I can think of worse companies to manage my hosting! You know the site will be fast and get found.
👉 Using GMB fully, will always give you the best chance of ranking well on GMB.
Google is not in the habit of making features and products for no point, so we believe after discussions with other SEO and GMB professionals, that you should always use the product (GMB) to its full capacity, to stand maximum chance of ranking well.
I think that makes sense right? If we are wrong, the time investment from you is extremely minimal, so you might as well dive in and use it.
👉 Google is rewarding their OWN products more and more.
What we mean here is that over time, the top page of Google search has been taken over by Ads, GMB listings, and feature snippets, and fewer “organic” listings than ever before.
I think that makes sense – in the long run I think Google wants to dominate business search – so I’d always recommend doing as much as possible with their products.
Certainly with the GMB name change coming along (Google Business Profile will be the new name), we can see continual growth and development on the business front. I think you would be remiss to NOT invest time and money into keeping up with the Google changes.
Summary point – we recommend that you do use the GMB mini-website option
👉 Need to ask us any questions? Do that HERE
👉 Keen to rank your GMB listing higher? Enquire HERE
Hi Corey, wow, this was the most interesting post I’ve read in a while about SEO and GMB. I was afraid of duplicate content, no?
Hmm, and it’s a FREE website like the older blogger websites or not? I have one client without a website and this would make a great and easy option for her. Thank you.
Thanks Lisa – like everything, it’s in the testing phase – at the moment, my research is very positive on this, the results are all strongly supportive. If you look at page 1 of Google now, it’s a lot of “Google Properties”, being YouTube, featured snippets, map pack, and ads, so the theory is do all you can to tie together the Google owned properties. I’ve seen no penalties yet for duplicate, and really, I don’t think it qualifies as duplicate because GMB is just taking the posts from the listing, and creating a blog out of it. Cheers and thanks for commenting.
Hi Corey, Oh yes, I do that all the time, take a blog post and turn it into a little GMB post. But I don’t have another Google site as you recommended. That’s what I’m wondering about. Thanks for your response and let me know about the websites themselves.
Right – so if you go to the left hand side of your Google My Business listing, there is a “website” tab down the left hand side, a few spots below the “info” tab. Go to the website tab, and ensure it’s been made live. That’s all you need to do, and GMB creates a mini site for you.