Promoting your business via Google without investing in paid advertising.

Free advertising on Google? Is that even possible? Well, advertising doesn’t necessarily mean you have to pay for it. Especially when you know how and understand which platforms you can use to do this. Google is no exception but there are techniques to apply.

Google Business Profile (aka Google My Business)

This is part of the maps listing that appears underneath the Google Ads and before organic rankings. Predominantly for businesses with physical addresses, but you can often create an account if you are service-based too. This is a great way to promote your business and have your listing show up along with your competitors. To get the most out of this listing, you can optimise the account with all your business information, photos, regular updates and encourage customer reviews (and respond to them!). If you keep up with monthly updates then you can increase your ranking in the search results, getting seen before your competitors even. Local SEO is a must and you will need to coordinate your map listing with your website local landing page.

Website Search Engine Optimisation

Google ranks your website based on relevancy and helpful information presented to the target audience. It’s important to update your website regularly so that Google sees that you’re active and up to date with the information you are providing to your website visitors. How do you demonstrate relevance? By creating content that appeals to your target audience, that’s specific and helpful. As much as you are discouraged from keyword ‘stuffing’ – which is where you include keywords relevant to your business and services as much as possible – to the point of adding lists, it is common sense to include high performing keywords. For example, if you provide graphic design services, you would need to include terms and phrases that relate to your business – also known as keywords. However, if you’re smart about this, you will conduct keyword research and see which ones are most relevant to the services you offer and also receive higher searches. Obviously the higher the competition, the more sought after these keywords are – because they are popular with your audience. There are plenty of tutorials and blogs about keywords that you can refer to. It’s important that your website structure is optimised, that includes the sitemap that’s presented to Google, your images, meta descriptions, meta titles, and headings such as H1, H2 etc. The other optimisation that will help to rank you higher in the search results, is ensuring you build up your citations on local directories and get great reviews and mentions. If this all sounds too hard or mysterious – you can always engage an expert to help with this and you can make it one-off or a monthly exercise.

Google Shopping

Did you know that this service is now free? Apparently Google Shopping has been free since 2020. All you have to do is create a Merchant Centre and list your products there. Your products will then be listed in the results, along with sponsored retail Ads (paid advertising). 

Owning the search results page

The idea is to obtain as much visibility on the search results page as possible. Although I’ve listed a few ways to promote your business through Google for free, if you combine these efforts/investment with actual paid Google Ads, updated social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, you could rank highly for relevant keywords and reach your target audience over your competitors!

If you would like to get help with some of these promotional strategies, get in touch.