How to Get Your Business on Google Maps in San Antonio

Click on Create Account.

Enter the business owner’s first and last name.

Enter your email.

You can also create a Gmail account by selecting Create a new Gmail address.

Either way, use an email address that you have access to and use regularly.

Create a password.

Use something harder than “cat123”.

Verify access via email.

Check your email to confirm the verification code and enter it in the Enter Code field.

Enter your phone number.

You can always change this number, but for now, use the phone number of a phone you have access to right now.  Google will text you a code so enter that in.

Enter in the business name.

There’s lots of talk and speculation on how best to name your business so it shows up on Google Maps in San Antonio as often as possible.  I’d recommend putting your actual business name minus “LLC”, “Company”, etc.

Search engines look for this consistency to help verify that your business is valid.

Enter your business category(s).

Another GBP topic that people can get passionate about is the Business Category.  This tells Google what industry you’re in.

Frankly, the business category your company falls under may not be one of the options, so just find the closest one.

Not sure which one to pick?  

Local search for your competitors in San Antonio and check out their business category.

The cool thing, is you can select multiple categories, you just want to make sure they are relevant.  Again, you can get ideas by search for business categories in Google Maps to see if any of your competitors come up.

Add your service location in San Antonio.

The service location is simply the address where your customers can visit you and do business in San Antonio.  If you have a location where customers can see you (whether retail, walks-ins or by appointment), then click Yes and add in the address.  Your address will be posted publicly and used for the search results.

Suppose you work from home or you go to your customers’ locations (ie. plumbers, movers, decorators, etc.) and you don’t need or have a physical location, just click no.

Add the service areas.

Besides the service location (the physical address), you can select areas that you service as well (the geographical areas). Enter in all cities and counties you serve near and around San Antonio.

Enter contact details.

Enter in your business phone number and website.  Don’t have a website?  No problem, you can skip that, but you should really enter in a phone number.

Verify your Google Business Profile (Claim).

Remember when I said, Google might mail you a physical postcard? 

Sometimes they will allow you to verify by text or phone call or you may need to upload a video.

The security protocol to claim your Google Business Profile changes.  

You may be able to verify by phone, but typically it’s a mailed postcard.

You should get this screen.

Ultimately Google decides the verification method and it does change from time to time.

If you need to verify by mail, you should get this screen after you request verification.

Add the business hours.

Add the business description.

The business description is very important factor in Google’s decision on when and where to show a particular business in maps.

Google will “crawl” the business description and look for words and phrases (keywords) that it thinks should be there relative to your business category(s) and business name.

Make sure the business description has lots of benefits, some features and definitely the keywords your customer might use including “San Antonio”.

Let’s say you have a water softening company.  One of your core keywords might be “water softeners San Antonio or “water softener companies in San Antonio”.

So your opening line might be…

“Awesome Water Softeners is a water softener company in San Antonio.”

Follow this content pattern:

• Keywords ( a few, avoid “keyword stuffing”)
• Benefits
• Products/Services

Add photos and videos

Adding photos is one of the most important steps.  Photos are a great way to convey your business, staff, products and services to your customers.

The more pictures the better.  Try to add in exterior and interior photos as well as pictures of your products.

Make one of your best pictures, the “cover” photo. This is the image that will show first on your listing.

Add in videos as well.   The video file size is much smaller than youtube for example so you expect a video run time of about 10-20 seconds.

Add products.

Adding products is especially powerful to help peek interest for e-commerce products, restaurants, bakeries and just about any physical product.

Add services.

Under each business category, there will be some existing services.  Click the ones that apply.

Add custom services by clicking the link and manually typing it in.

Note: “Going live” doesn’t mean your listing will instantly appear on maps all the time.  Google has their own internal methods for deciding when and where to show a business.  Typically, it should start showing up about a week after verification.

How To Maximize the Google Business Profile / Google Maps Listing for Local Search

Ask customers to leave reviews.

Apart from setting up the business profile properly, the next most important factor in showing up on Google Maps is customer reviews.

The three factors are:

Amount The more reviews you have the better.  Google correctly thinks that the business with the most, and most recent reviews is probably a real business that’s been around a while and does good work.

Frequency Getting regular reviews every month can really help your marketing.  I’ve seen listings with lots of old reviews show up on maps, but over time it can fall off.  Make it part of your sales process to collect reviews regularly.

RatingThe average rating for your business is probably more important to your customers than to Google rankings, but your customers are paying the bills.  The higher the average rating, the better chance you have of showing and getting clicks.

Tip: Respond to all reviews both high scores and low scores.  Be consistent and respond to all of them.  This will show your prospects that you are listening to your customers.  It also tells Google you are actively managing the listing.

Create posts for Google Maps at least weekly.

Posts can be anything you want your prospects and customers to know about.  Typically posts will stay live for about week and then disappear.

There are four kinds of posts:

Offer Use this for coupons, discounts and limited-time deals.

What’s New Any new info your customers should know that you can link to your website to learn more, buy, sign up, etc.

Event Have a special event coming up?  Place it here.  It will stay live until that day passes.

Product You can a new product here.  It’s a bit redundant.

Tip: If you do a social media post, you can add it as a post here as well.  Prospects find businesses in different ways, so don’t worry about showing the same posts on different platforms.

Conclusion

The great thing about getting your business on Google Maps is that is free and the fastest way to get your business to show on Google Search.

Once your business listing is live, the main ways to get more customers is to collect reviews and post updates weekly.

With regular management, your Google Business Profile is a great way to get free, local marketing for your business.