Photo & Media Google Business Optimization for Solar Companies | Solar SEO

Does the idea of uploading photos to your Google Business Profile stress you out? In this video, we break down which kinds of photos you should upload and where to upload them so this can become a seamless part of your process as you do new solar installs. Google (and potential customers) love all the photos—so don’t sleep on this important marketing step.

Download Our Free Guide to Google Business Profile Optimization for Solar Companies: https://digitalharvestsolar.io/GBP

Below, you will find a transcript of this entire video. Enjoy!

Step number six and our Ultimate Guide to Google Business Profile Optimization for Solar Companies have everything to do with the media and the photos that you add to it. This is a place where you can make huge strides above and beyond your competition, because most of them are not putting up enough media to both increase the visibility in search results for the Google Business Profile, as well as create more trust and credibility so that the searcher actually gives you a call schedules time for an appointment and getting a quote from you.

So let’s talk about why, when we talk a little bit about, you know, why this is important, but we also want to give you some examples of what to do and what not to do and so on and so forth. So when you put up photos that have pictures of your staff, have pictures of your installs, pictures of your office space, and things like that, that adds legitimacy to you as a business.

And when people are spending tens and thousands of dollars, even if they’re financing it, this is a big decision for most homeowners, and they need to know that you are a business that they can trust. And if you don’t have this information, people’s minds start to go into all the reasons that they shouldn’t trust you.

So putting this stuff as a priority and putting it ahead of other things is important because it will help transform multiple areas of your business, including every step along the sales process. So that’s why this piece is so important and it has a lot more to do than just the Google Business Profile and its effectiveness.

Okay. Has these overarching qualities that affect other parts of the business? That’s why it’s important. Now, some interesting data that we found in putting together this particular piece for you is the number of people that actually find your Google business profile as a result of the images that you put up there.

So businesses with a hundred images or more get found 700% more than businesses that do not. So most solar companies I’ve seen it done the research, they’ve got 10, maybe 20 photos and a lot of them are stock images and stuff that don’t make any sense and are not real for the business.

And then the folks that are crushing it that are showing up in the map section when you do a search for like solar companies in your area, they got tons and tons of photos. So it’s not true everywhere, you’re going to find exceptions but more often than not more photos are better.

On the flip side, businesses that had like one photo were found 65% less than others, so the proof really is here in the numbers.

Next up, we have a great example of a company who’s doing it, right? This is Pep Solar and I forget where these guys are located out of, but they’ve done a great job, their Google business listing because they show their team members, they show the owner, and they show some of the installs. They show their office space, they show some of the awards that they’ve received. Some of the actual equipment that they’re putting on houses. This is what you want to do with your Google business listing you want to showcase everything that you can to make your business more real. Now, there are a lot of places where you can upload photos, videos, and other media, maybe that’s all the media.

Okay. And I’m going to go through some examples of each of these things here, and then we’re going to talk about some do’s and don’ts, if you’re wondering about what size files you can use, what types of photos maybe you can’t use, we’re going to go into more detail on that.

So inside your Google business listing Manager, you’re going to see under the photo section overview and a couple of other categories that you could fill and put information into.

Okay. Did you get to upload photos now, depending on if your listing is shown as a physical address or the address is hidden, you might have different stuff that pops up here, but the goal is to get at least 50 to a hundred photos on here, so you can hit the ground running?

So on the overview tab, this is where all the photos are going to show up and you’re also going to be able to select in there the photo that you want to be front-facing to the public, and then Google will decide if it wants it to be that photo or some other photo. They will kinda like arbitrarily decide, but that’s the main photo that’s going to show up and you’ll select that under overview.

Videos are pretty self-explanatory, you can put any kind of videos in here at the time of recording this video, you can put up are up to 60 seconds in length, and that has changed a lot over time.

The at-work section is where you would include office staff, as well as folks in the field, people who want to see your team in action. So wearing company garb, all that’s important there. The team is exactly what it says. It’s where you’re going to put photos of the team and pictures of the people that customers will be contacting and interacting with.

Interior is only going to show up if you have a business listing, that includes a physical location. So this is where you want to showcase parts of the office. You can take photos of the lobby. You can take photos of things that are on the wall. Sometimes you can prove more legitimacy. If you take photos of the compliance posters and things that you might have and the location, I know it sounds cheesy, but it really is true people do want to see that stuff.

The exterior is also self-explanatory you want to show pictures, moving up to the location. You might also take photos of the location from the closest crossroads intersections and parking lots that surround the actual place of business. So that folks will have a better idea of where they’re heading if they’re choosing to go to your location.

So could say a lot more about this, but we’ll leave it at that. And go into some more depth here on the next slide on some do’s and don’ts. So what you do want to do is have professional photos, if you do have them, if you don’t have them, that’s okay. A smartphone will do, just pay attention to lighting making sure that things aren’t just too dark in showing up in ways that people can’t actually see them.

And then you want to read the specifications from Google that are always changing. About the guidelines of what you can put up, including the size. Give you an example, if you download a photo from your Instagram and try to post it under Google is not big enough. The pixels are simply not big enough. It’s not sized well enough, and you can learn more about the minimum size that you need to upload to your Google Business Profile on that link that’s here in this video below and the presentation and so forth. So in general, smartphone camera photos will always work. Well, you don’t want to use stock photos because Google will just filter those out in some cases and take them off your profile, and in other cases, you won’t really get the credit for having it because Google already knows this has been used thousands of times and other places on the internet. It’s not actually yours. And you don’t want to use photos that have a bunch of texts or screenshots of things, because Google will also strip those off of your profile.

So think about things, folks will want to put testimonials on as photos, but there’s got too many words in it. So those oftentimes don’t work less than 10% is the common rule of thumb. So in summary, get as many photos as you can use all the different categories you have available and then follow these do’s and don’ts, and you should be in a really good place when it comes to the photos and media that you’re uploading to your Google Business Profile for your solar company.

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