Providing the basic information just described is essential. But it is equally fundamental to invest resources and develop strategies to obtain verified reviews from users and customers. Reviews are very important for many reasons: branding, reputation, indexing and, with Google My Business, also the possibility of seeing the stars and the average of the users’ votes on the search network.

This last aspect can be decisive for the CTR purposes. Research shows that 97 percent of consumers claim to read online reviews on local businesses 6 and 90 percent of them allow themselves to be influenced by both positive and negative opinions for their purchasing decision. In this regard, a very smart move could be to set up a notification in the Google My Business account whenever a user releases a review, so that he can monitor the users’ opinion on your business or store in real time.

The Facebook page, for example, is perhaps the most used tool to represent your company on the web. As a mirror of your authority and your popularity and your awareness in the eyes of users, you could also define the proof that your brand deserves to be positioned well on Google too. This is why we must never neglect the care of social channels. Clearly the choice of the best channel will depend on the type of activity performed, the sector and the products or services offered. So, don’t get caught up in the urge to use them all, but choose the most suitable channels carefully and take care of the details carefully.

Google My Business, which is used by Online Branding Companies provides a section on insights to provide data that, if well interpreted, can offer very useful insights for optimizing your local marketing strategy. The first useful data that Google My Business provides regards the ways in which users have searched for your business, whether directly or starting from a search on a product or service.

Obviously, important percentages on the type of direct research will indicate that you are doing a good job of branding and penetration into the local market. Although this will certainly not be enough. In fact, to enhance the awareness activity on the web and to increase the web reputation of your store or your company, it is equally important to work on a good positioning, without neglecting the activity of local SEO.

Cases in which users arrive only directly or only from Google Maps may indicate that you have done a good job on branding, but not enough on local SEO. On the contrary, if users arrive only through “discovery” and from a search form on Google, it could mean that it is necessary, as mentioned above, to increase awareness as shown by Online Branding Companies.