In a word – extremely.
Being found online is one of the most effective ways for painting contractors to bring in new customers and/or secure better paying jobs. Unfortunately, there’s not just one thing you need to do to be found when potential customers search for painters, there’s multiple things. However, one thing you definitely want to be sure you do is to claim and build out your Google My Business profile.
Google My Business is the business profile that shows up on the right side of the screen on a desktop or laptop computer when you do a search for a business. It also appears within the search results on a smartphone and on Google Maps. Here’s an example:
Claiming and managing your Google My Business profile is free, and it has been proven to affect your search results. Businesses with fully-completed Google My Business profiles will most often search better than their competitors that have not completed their Google My Business profile.
So what do you need to do to maximize your profile:
- If you haven’t already, claim your business at https://www.google.com/business/.
- Fill out as many of the fields as you can on the profile – hours, phone number and website are particularly important. You want to be sure they match your listings on other digital properties.
- You’ve got two options for your address. If you have a storefront or have an officially listed office at your home, you can include the address. However, most painters will get more benefit from having Google consider you as a service-area business and to be able to include your entire service area. For more information on how to do that, go to the Service-area businesses on Google web page.
- Choose the category that best fits your business. There are not a lot of options here. There is not an official Painting Contractor category but there is General Contractor. Painter may be the most appropriate category. This is important because what you specifically search well for will be affected by your category.
- Add as many photos as you can. And keep adding them over time. Google likes this because it shows you are an active business owner.
- Encourage your customers to review your work on Google. Those reviews will be included directly on your Google My Business profile, as you can see in the above example. Respond to those reviews. Thank those who give positive reviews. Handle negative reviews diplomatically.
- If you’ve got time, start to use Posts. Posts are a new feature Google rolled out for Google My Business in June. You can now post something on your profile for a week. You may want to post info about a special you are having, seasonal advice or even congratulations to a pee-wee softball team you are sponsoring that got a big win. You can access posts on your Google My Business account.
A strong Google My Business profile will help your website rise in the search rankings. It will also help you pop up in the map area when potential customers search for painters in your area. If you have not yet claimed your Google My Business profile, or are not using it to its fullest potential, today is the time to start.
To learn more about how ProPainter Websites can help you attract new customers, call us at 1-855-385-1134 or email us at Team_PPW@ProPainterWebsites.com.