Why Google Business Walking Tours are Crucial to Local Marketing

What’s the best way to gain serious exposure for your local business? You can invest in costly direct mail campaigns or pour your entire budget into a geo-targeted SEO strategy. However, the easiest option might be simpler than you think. Optimizing your presence on Google business with relevant contact info and high-quality images can allow you to build an instant rapport with visitors, long before they set foot in your brick-and-mortar store!

Why Google Business?

There are over 5 million searches on Google each day. Google maps is the most commonly-used smartphone app in the entire world, employed by a full 54% of Apple and Android users. As the world becomes increasingly mobile-oriented, Google’s made it clear that they intend to be the search engine that’s poised to keep up with demand. In September, the search giant rewrote their algorithm to provide lighter and more answer-oriented results to meet the unique need of generation of consumers who rely on their tablets and smartphones more, and their PCs less. There’s little evidence that Google’s hold on the search market is going anywhere quickly, either – they currently handle 66.9% of the world’s searches. There are few marketing activities you can take that offer more exposure than enhancing your company’s presence on Google.

What is Google Business Street View?

There’s a pretty good chance you’ve been taking full advantage of Google map’s street view for years. The handy-dandy images of residential and industrial streets provide an awesome 360 degree view. Most recently, Google’s started offering walking tours, a glimpse into the interior of companies. While street view images are taken by Google, interior images are taken by a select group of Google Trusted Photographers – individuals who are carefully vetted and certified by the search giant for the quality of their images and equipment. The results of walking tours look something like the image below:

image credit: SEORoundTable

What’s the benefit to your organization? Well, for starters, your search results pop much more when an individual types in a query for your company category or name in their local community. The added benefit of the thumbnail images at the bottom enhances your results far beyond Google’s standard offering of a streetview image, map, and contact information.

Furthermore, there’s some serious benefit behind the use of visual content for marketing. Humans process images 60,000 times faster than text. Search users’ eyes aren’t drawn toward your hours of operation, they’re immediately pulled toward the provided pictures. The addition of images of your company’s interior allows you to establish the trust and credibility that’s crucial for converting web searchers into actual customers.

Most importantly, Google actively rewards organizations who take the plunge into optimizing their presence with walking tours images. According to the search engine, interior business images are among the best kind of SEO money can buy, and they reward organizations who offer this service to their prospects and customers with improved search rankings. The details of Google’s search algorithm are a closely-kept secret, which is why even the most well-intended SEO strategies don’t always pan out as you’d hoped. Google business walking images are a pretty rare exception to this rule; and you’ll be rewarded with a critical first-page ranking.

Digital marketing is a rapidly-changing field, and there are few proven tactics that offer as much bang for your buck for small local businesses as interior images. It can be challenging to track and prove the ROI of marketing, but you’ll reap the benefits of this tactic with improved trust, foot traffic, and search visibility.

Have you purchased interior photos of your local business for your Google presence? What results did you see?

via Business 2 Community http://www.business2community.com/marketing/google-business-walking-tours-crucial-local-marketing-0698773?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=google-business-walking-tours-crucial-local-marketing