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Here's how you can operate your client's Google My Business profile without having to go through a clunky transferral process.
As an SEO or marketing agency, you know how important it is to have the right tools to scale your business. By ditching the manual approach, you can find smarter ways to grow and scale your agency (and help as many business owners succeed as possible).
That’s what makes the Google My Business Agency Dashboard so exciting. It’s an all-in-one suite for managing your client’s Google My Business profile, no matter how big or small your client portfolio.
We know that creating a Google Business Profile is so important to optimize your client’s visibility on Google search. That’s why this Agency Dashboard is so powerful: it helps you create and manage GMB listings on behalf of your clients with speed, efficiency and ease.
Ready to find out more about how to claim GMB listings on behalf of your clients as an agency? We’ve pulled together everything you need to know.
What is a Google My Business Agency account?
Before we go any further, let’s get a few things straight. Google My Business (now known as a Google Business Profile) is a free listing on Google that helps businesses to reach new audiences, promote their physical store locations and boost their local SEO.
It includes a stack of information, including a businesses’ opening hours, address, contact details and more. Essentially, it’s designed to give businesses greater opportunity to rank in the Google ecosystem (specifically in Google search and Google Maps results).
Typically, these Business Profiles are set up by business owners and are linked to their Google accounts. However, many businesses choose to engage an SEO agency to manage this process for them.
That’s where the Google Business Agency Dashboard comes in. Launched in 2018, this portal allows agencies to manage Google listings on behalf of their clients with Google My Business.
One of the biggest benefits of this dashboard is that it allows agencies to manage thousands of local business locations within a single account. Previously, agencies were capped at 100 locations per account (which made it difficult for these agencies to scale).
What are the benefits of registering for a Business Profile as an agency?
As an agency, you want to find the most efficient way of operating and supporting your clients. That’s what makes the Google Business Agency Dashboard such a valuable tool: it allows you to easily set up Google My Business accounts for your clients without having to go through the clunky process of requesting access or transferring ownership.
Let’s run you through a few of the core benefits of registering for the Google Business Agency Dashboard:
- It allows you to manage all your client locations in one account: the Agency Dashboard acts as a centralized hub for all your client’s GMB information. This makes it faster and simpler to manage each listing, update business information, respond to Google reviews and optimize their accounts for top performance in local search results.
- Easily send and receive invitations to manage listings: to help agencies manage multiple Google My Business pages, this dashboard makes it easier to send and receive invitations to manage these pages from clients. Within this portal, agencies can view the status of all their requests and assess access permissions with ease.
- Simplified management and verification processes with Location Groups: all locations managed within an Organization account are contained within a location group. That means agencies can easily request access to manage a small businesses’ GMB listing or businesses can invite an agency to co-manage their listing with ease.
- Smarter internal workflows with User Groups: the key to succeeding as an agency is to ensure you have the right systems in place to onboard new customers and manage their digital marketing activities. With User Groups, agencies can easily manage teams and control access across each Google Business Profile.
How can agencies manage the Google My Business listings for their clients?
As we’ve mentioned, the most efficient way to manage Google My Business listings for clients as an agency is to set up an agency account with Google.
Also known as an Organization Account, this type of Business Profile is specifically designed for third parties who are managing locations on behalf of their client or other business owners.
Here’s how it works: your organization can only manage a location once that location grants your the right level of permission. Then, users within your organization (a.k.a. your agency employees) are able to manage these Google Business Profiles on behalf of your clients.
Ready to set up an organization in Business Profile? Here are the steps to take:
- Head to the Google Agency sign up page
- Enter your agency’s website URL
- Sign in with an email address on your agency’s domain (make sure your email address matches the domain of your agency’s website!)
- Confirm that this is your agency’s primary Google Business Profile account
- Enter some extra information about your agency and add additional owners
- Follow the prompts to create your organization
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What kind of details can agencies manage for their client on Google My Business?
You might be wondering: as an agency, what can I do to help optimize my client’s Google Business Profile?
The good news is that with an agency profile, you can gain the same level of access as your client. That gives you the scope to make smart and strategic edits to their business listing to ensure it gains maximum visibility in Google search and maps.
In more specific terms, here’s what you can manage for your clients as an agency:
- Editing contact information: it’s important to make sure your client’s contact details (such as their phone number and email address) are accurate and up-to-date. Customers in their service area need to be able to easily get in touch with them, which makes these details essential to driving sales and store visits.
- Optimizing the client’s business name on Google: your client’s profile name needs to accurately reflect their business and be easy to search.
- Adjusting a client’s business address: having the correct physical address saved on a client’s GMB listing is key to helping direct shoppers in the right direction. So, make sure their storefront is easy to access with an accurate address.
- Amending a client’s business description: this profile description is your chance to showcase what your client does best. Just like a bio on social media, this description needs to be short, engaging and injected with strategy SEO keywords to boost their chances of scoring organic website traffic.
- Updating a client’s business hours: does your client’s business change its operating hours in different seasons? Are they closed on holidays or open late for special events? Make sure to update these business hours in their Google My Business listing.
- Ensuring their listing displays the correct business website: maximize website traffic from a client’s Google My Business listing with an up-to-date link to their current website.
A Google My Business profile is a powerful way to help your clients get in front of potential customers in their local area. By making these strategic edits to their listing, you can boost their place in the world’s biggest search engine (a.k.a. Google) and elevate their online presence.
How to claim a Google My Business listing for your clients
While anyone can add a listing to Google, it’s important to ensure your clients actually own and control the data of this account.
If someone has already listed your client’s company on Google, here’s how you can go about claiming this listing:
- Find their business on Google Maps
- Select ‘Claim This Business’ on the lower right-hand corner of the map
- At this stage, you can also update the business name or amend any incorrect information
- Then, you’ll simply have to verify that your client is the business owner (usually via email verification) and finalise the claim of this listing
Offboarding clients: How to transfer ownership to their Business Profile
If your clients choose to move on or go elsewhere, you need to know how to transfer ownership back to them.
This is known as transferring primary ownership of a Business Profile, and is done to ensure your client has total control over their own profile.
Plus, because your client will already have access, it’s a quick and easy process to ensure they’ve got full access.
Here’s how to do it:
- Sign in to manage your Google Business Profile
- Open the profile you want to manage
- In the left menu, select Users
- Select the User you want to be the Primary owner. To the right of their name, click the box
- Select ‘Primary owner’ (this will display if you’re currently the Primary owner of their Business Profile)
- Click Transfer than Done and this transfer will shift over immediately
When it comes to using Google Business Listings as an agency, having the right account set up is key to your success. That's why you should use tools like Sked Social which are built specifically for the needs of agencies who need to manage multiple client accounts across social channels - including Google My Business.
Sign up for a free 7 day trial of Sked Social to find out more.