Getting Started: Setting Up the GBP for Your Solar Company

Not sure what a Google Business Profile is? You’re not alone! While this profile is a free tool from Google, you have to actually go in and claim/verify your business and set it up to be able to control the information Google shares about your business. But never fear, we’ve created a short, straightforward video to show you exactly how to set up your Google Business Profile to start getting more visibility on Search.

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!

The first of our 10 steps here is verifying or claiming your Google business profile previously known as Google my business. And this is the first step, because if you don’t have your Google business profile, nobody can find you online.

One of the worst things that can happen is somebody Googling your solar company’s name, and not being able to find a Google business listing with information with photos, with reviews, contact info, all that stuff, they can’t find it. Suddenly you’re on the back foot and you’re not looking quite as legit as some of your competitors.

So the first step is verifying or claiming your Google business profile. I’m going to show you basically how that works. So first step is right understanding why you’re doing. Okay. People need to know all this important information about you, how to contact you when to contact you, where they might find you, if you’re open or closed.

The way that you can tell if you have a Google business listing or not is by going to business.google.com. Okay. Business dot, google.com. And if you’re logged into Gmail already, you’re going to know right away. If you have a Google business profile or not.

So assuming that you do not have that Google business profile for your solar company, the next is to actually get that process going. So if you go to business.google.com, there’s also other YouTube videos and stuff you can check out that, walk through this process. You can begin to get the verification going, meaning Google’s got a double check and make sure you’re a real company before they give you this Google Business Listing.

Okay. So you must have a physical address where you can receive mail. You cannot do this with post office boxes. You cannot do this with, like Regis and other shared office spaces. You might be able to get away with it short-term but long-term, this listing is going to get flagged by your competitors, it’s going to get suspended by Google and you’re not gonna be able to get it back. So even if your place of business is not a place that people wouldn’t come and visit, but it’s like maybe a home office and you do things virtually, whatever it is, you have to have an address to send that postcard. And then you have the option later to hide or to show where that postcard has been verified.

All right. So you need a physical address to receive the mail and you need a Gmail address that is going to be tied to this particular listing. You’re going to start that verification process, Google is going to walk you through it. You’re going to fill in all the information name, address, phone number, the city state, zip code, all that stuff.

So once you get the postcard is going to look like some spam mail. Okay. It’s going to look like junk mail, but inside, it’s going to say from Google and you gonna open it up and there’s gonna be a verification code that looks something like this. You gonna take that number. Come back to business.google.com, plug that number in, and then it’s going to verify your Google business listing.

Now we talked about claiming listing as well. It’s the same exact process. So sometimes it’s the case that either a previous staff member or maybe another marketing company created this listing for you, you can also follow this same process to claim it back from them. And Google will walk you through that process, whether it’s a postcard verification or something else, they’re going to walk you through what you need to do to get that to come to you.

Now at the time of recording this video, Google was just having some issues with their postcard system and they have been for some time, in many cases, we have to request these cards two times or three times from Google in order for them to actually show up. So be patient, if it doesn’t come within a week request it again, if it doesn’t come within another week request again and just keep going, I promise it’s tedious, but it will work and it will get your listing verified or reclaimed for you.

Okay. So that’s really the key. To getting your business verified on Google.

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