How to Add a New Location to Google My Business

If you want your business to be found by prospective clients, getting listed on Google My Business is a must! Doing so will get your company to show up on Google searches and maps, helping your local audience to quickly learn more about what you do. In this day and age, just about any and every reputable company has a Google My Business listing, lending to the fact that choosing not to take this route will likely have your clients questioning your credibility. Additionally, you should have every location for your business on your Google My Business account. In this blog post, we show you how to add a new location to Google My Business, and the benefits of doing so.

The Benefits of Google My Business

According to Google, each month there are over 5 billion Google searches for restaurants, 3 billion for hotels, 1 billion for clothing stores, 600 million foRewrite & Republish r hair salons, and 5 million for coffee shops, to name a few. However, above and beyond helping your business to achieve maximum visibility, Google My Business offers a lot of additional perks, too.

It’s Free!

First and foremost, GMB is completely free! There is absolutely no cost associated with listing and verifying your business on Google. You can also upload photographs or create flyers to advertise your latest deals, educate your audience on your offerings and help them to understand what sets your business apart from other local competitors.

User Interaction

The GMB platform encourages user interaction, too. It allows customers a quick and easy way to reach your business through click-of-a-button calling and messaging, adding an extra layer of convenience by eliminating the need to visit your website. Plus, you can show prospective customers exactly why they should work with you by asking your existing satisfied clientele to post reviews about your business! People are far more likely to trust a listing with a multitude of positive reviews.

Tracking Business Performance

Google My Business also offers the extra bonus of tracking your business performance. Each month, Google sends a personalized report that offers you valuable insight as to how your customers are finding you. Included in the report is the number of views and searches your listing has gotten in the past month and how your audience has interacted with you (through calls, clicks to your website, bookings, and more). This information can significantly help you to decide the next steps for your advertising campaign.

Ability to Add a New Location to Google My Business

Lastly, Google My Business allows you to manage multiple businesses and multiple locations for one business all from one platform. This allows you to have better time management and to make sure that your business is being uniformly represented across the board. Let’s learn more about how to add an extra location for an existing business.

Guidelines for Adding a New Location

So, you’ve opened up a satellite location for your business and it’s time to start spreading the word and generating some new traffic! The only problem is that your Google listing has your business located in its original city and, perhaps, even a different state. This does not have to cause you a lot of unnecessary stress because there is a simple solution to adding all of your locations to one platform. There are, however, some address guidelines you will want to follow.

In order to list any physical business on Google My Business, it has to have a verifiable location. Make sure to double check your address and to include it in its entirety. A street number and name, as well as a suite or unit number, a floor number, or building number will also need to be considered, when applicable. You’ll need your city, state, and zip code, too.

 

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How to Add Locations to Google My Business

After logging on to Google My Business, the first step to take is to go to the options drop down, and then click the “Create business account” option. From there you submit all your business information, which include the name of your business, the country or region your business resides in, phone number, the category your business best fits, and the link to your website. Once you have all your information submitted, click the “Continue” button for confirmation. After this you give authorization that you manage your business. This is done by checking the box that you accept the “Terms and Conditions.” Next, you’ll need to verify your address is correct. It may take about a week to complete the verification process.

The Cosmetics of Adding Locations

Submitting complete and accurate information about your business is key if you aim to properly represent yourself through Google My Business. Alongside the information that can be read by users, you’ll want to add high quality photos. This shows what your business looks like and why it is appealing to customers. This can make a difference in whether or not prospective customers or clients will consider going to your location. GMB requires you add at least a few images to your business listing, if you wish to have a 100% complete profile. Whatever photos you end up adding, be sure they grab the attention of users.

If you desire to add more photos to your business’ GMB account than the minimum, then you have a few easy steps to follow. First, you log in to your GMB account. Next, you click “Manage Location” for the location you want to make changes to. Third, once you get on to your page dashboard, click on “Manage Photos” to start adding new photos. Then you can update your photos with the Identity Photos option.

An integral part of picture management in Google My Business is the element of controlling which photo is the first one to appear next to your business name on Google Maps and Google Search. It is best to use pictures that other people use to recognize your business online when adding new Identity Photos. The three dots in the top right corner of the Identity Photos section of the dashboard is where you will click to choose which image will appear first.

Setting Up Fewer Than 10 Locations

If your business has less than 10 locations, adding them one-by-one is probably the simplest way to go. Adding your locations individually allows you to manage them separately, as well. This means that if one of your locations happens to be offering a special or promotion while another is not, you have the flexibility to only post it to the first location. The steps to add a new location to Google My Business are as follows:

1. Find your Google My Business dashboard.
2. Click the “Manage Locations” tab.
3. Click the blue drop-down tab on the right that says, “Add Location” and choose “Add Single Location”.
4. Follow the prompts, entering the information for your new
5. Optimize your new business location by getting positive customer reviews, using targeted keywords, videos and images, including your business hours and verifying that your address is showing up on the maps feature accurately.

Go through this process for each location you want to add.

Setting Up More Than 10 Locations

If you have more than 10 locations, it will probably be relatively time-consuming to enter each one individually. In this case, there is a simpler protocol that you can follow to make sure that all of your listings show up on Google! Here are the steps to follow:

1. Find your Google My Business dashboard.
2. Click the “Manage Locations” tab.
3. Click the blue drop-down tab on the right that says, “Add Location” and choose “Import Locations”.
4. You will be prompted to download a file (which is actually just a spreadsheet supplied by Google).
5. Open the downloaded spreadsheet and fill in the requested information. You will need to have access to store numbers, addresses, phone numbers, store hours, and more in order to fill it out in its entirety.
6. Once the file is completely filled out, upload it back to Google My Business by following the same process. This time, however, you will click on the blue “Select File” button instead of downloading the template.
7. Lastly, verify your new locations by clicking on the verification icon located in the top right corner of your dashboard homepage. Fill out the requested information and Google will do the rest!

Adding Account Managers on Google My Business

Obviously, multiple locations mean extra management duties! You don’t, however, have to manage each location on your own! Google My Business makes it simple to add new owners, managers and site managers for each of your existing locations. Just follow these steps:

1. From your Google My Business dashboard, click the “User” tab from the menu on the left-hand side of your screen.
2. Click the add user icon at the top right corner of the screen that pops up and choose, “Invite New Users” from the drop-down menu.
3. Enter the email address of the person who you would like to invite to be a contributor to your listing.
4. Choose their primary role from the drop-down menu provided.
5. Click the “Invite” button and let your new site administrator know that they should be on the lookout for an invitation in their inbox. Once they’ve accepted, they will have instant access to your GMB listing.

Other Best Practices

Although managing your GMB account is relatively simple once it’s set up, there are some practices you will want to follow.

1. Keep your web addresses, contact information and office hours up to date!
2. Continually ask your clients to post new reviews. The more positive reviews your business gets, the higher it will rank in Google searches.
3. Respond to the reviews that you receive. Every single one!
4. Consistently upload new, quality images.
5. Post about your upcoming events, promotions or contests so that your audience has access to all of your best deals.
6. Use video.
7. Choose the correct categories when you submit information about your business.
8. Make sure your business description is unique and engaging.
9. Add your locations on all your social media profiles. This includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Google Plus.
10. Highlight your local information on your website by using schema.org. Your website must be knowledgeable enough to speak the same language as Googlebot.
11. Don’t use any other name aside from the actual business name to avoid confusion with consumers.

What is the Goal of Your Business?

Google My Business offers simplified solutions to issues you may experience concerning locations. It generally comes down to how many locations your business has. If you have fewer than ten locations, adding them one by one would be the preferred method. All edits that you need to make for each location will be done separately. On your GMB dashboard, go to your Locations tab and on the pop-up window that says “Import Locations” click on the “Add a single location” option. After properly optimizing this new location each location will be allowed to be edited and managed by you separately.