← The Kate Show
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
People will write bad, untrue reviews of my business, but I know I should still have a Google business profile. So what should I do? Crazy people in this world who will write a bad review even if you did everything right as a business and even if they were the problem, because if they were the problem when you were working together, why wouldn't they just continue to be the problem, right? Hello everyone and welcome to episode 305 of the Kate Show. Today I'm talking about maximizing your Google business profile because to be honest, most of us aren't using it correctly. In fact, Google's core update in March of 2026 penalized a significant number of local business listings for making several mistakes, most notably keyword stuffing. But that's not all. Websites were impacted as well. Thin, low quality, often AI generated content with no obvious human oversight resulted in rankings being downgraded. So in today's episodes I'm sharing hands on practical ways you can improve your Google speed business listing in minutes while avoiding that penalization from their core update. And I also tackle the nagging question, what should I do if my business doesn't have a physical location and I want my home address kept private? And also what should I do if Google insists that I include an address anyway? And the biggest one of all, I'm scared that crazy people will write bad, untrue reviews of my business. But I know I should still have a Google business profile. So what should I do? We're going to get in to all of that, but first let's talk about Google's core update they made in March of 2026. Well, this update took about 12 days. It started on March 27th and it completed on April 8th. And it was a broad global change that hit every type of website. So your website was absolutely, yes, definitely impacted. Here is what you need to know. Google is now even better at spotting truly useful, high quality content. And they are rewarding websites that can bring something fresh or what they call information gain basically original insights that your readers can't easily find somewhere else. And they have an even bigger emphasis on the eeat or experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. So showing your real world interior design experience, experience, client results, your personal expertise is more important than ever. And they now have what's called or Google has what's called a helpful content system and that is baked into the main rankings. That means if you're putting out generic mass produced content, you're, you're going to get hit hard and your rankings will suffer as a result now, to clarify, Google's not saying you cannot use AI. You can use AI to draft things. Absolutely. I mean, we did that in my agency and we're a marketing agency, and I still am getting my own new business from Grok and from Google, Gemini, whatever, you know. So it's not wrong to use AI to draft things, it's not wrong to use AI to research things. But unless you're giving it an outline to follow and then editing it yourself as a human, it's going to be content that lacks information gain. It will just be a random soup of whatever ChatGPT can pull up from the Internet. Because AI just uses other people's ideas, other people's content to smush and mix and mash and shape it into whatever you told it to make. Which means that there's no new ideas under the sun. But you are unique. And you as a human, your experience is unique. So as long as you are giving your AI drafted content human oversight, you can avoid a lot of those penalties. You'll need to make sure, however, that not only does your website have human oversight in regard to the text, but also photos of your projects, case studies, testimonials, and then of course, practical design advice that comes from your experience. And. And content that's genuinely helpful or educational or inspiring, you know, that's especially good on blog post content. So all of that to say, if your website rankings were bouncing around or changing a lot in late March or early April, this is probably why, maybe you weren't tracking your rankings during this time and you were oblivious to all of this. And that's totally fine too. But just FYI, the bottom line is you need to make sure that your marketing content is people first. That actually helps your ideal client, because there are no magical shortcuts. And if you relied too heavily on AI content in the past, this is your sign to go delete all of it. Start fresh with genuine, real content that makes sense for the services you provide and the clients that you offer those services to. All right, Another quick little housekeeping detail is that Google did a quick spam cleanup right before they did that big update, and it only took about 20 hours, but they specifically went after anything that included spammy tactics, manipulative links, low quality content generated by AI, like AI pages that were just made for ranking purposes, and then of course, anything else that violates the policies. So it was a spring cleaning. That way the core update could run more effectively. With that being said, the core update didn't just impact regular Internet content, but also Google Business Listings so now let's get into why and how you can maximize your Google business listing the right way. So the local business listings that were most impacted by the core update were those that were guilty of keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is when you put different keywords in too many places and it doesn't read well anymore. And for example, some businesses were putting keywords in the name section of their business. So instead of just saying okie dokie tile installers, it was okie dokie tile best installer in New York. You know, like just trying to cram words in there to hopefully rank for something. And that was a terrible idea. Same could be true if you're trying to keyword stuff the body content of your profile. So let's get into how to set the profile up the right way or audit one that you already have existing. The first step is to claim your page. If you don't have one yet, verify it. You're going to get a card in the mail most likely and choose the right business type. And this is where most of us struggle choosing the right business type. For purely service area businesses, you'll need to choose the hide your address option. And you can only have one profile per business. If you choose the wrong business type when you're setting up your profile, it can be really hard to fix that later on and you may have to just delete it and then start a new profile altogether. But that brings up other issues as well. So make sure that your business type is for service area based businesses only. If you do not want your address private present. Otherwise Google will insist you give an address and then you'll be stuck. And then you won't be able to publish your Google business profile because then you'll be doxing yourself. The next thing is to set up accurate service areas so you can add up to 20 specific areas. So they could be cities, counties, zip codes or neighborhoods. But there is no longer a broad radius option anymore. Something to keep in mind. Google wants you to be specific and they want to know that you took time to set up your Google business listing in a way that was thoughtful and intentional. That makes sense. You need to keep your overall surface area realistic, which is normally like a two hour radius from your location. Overly broad areas will dilute your relevance and can hurt the ranking of your business profile. So be specific and accurate and just list where you actually operate. Don't list the areas that you hope to operate in someday, especially if they're like three hours away. You also need to be Very careful in which categories you select. Choose the narrowest, most accurate primary category. So if you were a plumber, you would choose plumber instead of home services. Or you would say H Vac contractor, overheating and cooling. With designers, I don't think you have a lot of wiggle room there. Just don't choose home services, do design or interior design. Same with organizers. Choose what makes the most sense, the most accurate, and then add a relevant secondary category, or up to nine of them. Because having that accurate primary and then the relevant secondary is a good strong ranking signal. And if you're not sure which categories you should list as your secondary options, you can look at your competitors for ideas. They may not know what they're doing either, so take that with a grain of salt. And then your profile itself needs to be completely filled out with all core information, or as they like to say, nap name, address and phone. You'll need to also include your website link, your hours, including any holiday hours. And you'll need to write a business description of up to 750 characters. That includes who you serve, what you offer and how you're different. And you don't have to necessarily say this is how we're different. You can say our specialty is blah blah blah and we focus on serving those who and then list the pain points. Doing that will allow you to naturally use keywords, which is great as well because it's going to read nicely too. The next thing you'll need to do is add detailed services and or products, so you can list all of your services with descriptions, with prices if applicable, and that will also naturally bring in keywords. So if you offer design consultation or moving services or custom drapery design or whatever it is, and you can use Google suggested services, plus you can add custom ones and that section will help match specific search intent and again impacts your rankings. The next thing you need to be aware of is high quality photos and videos matter. It doesn't really matter whether you have 10 images or 50 images, as long as you have good quality images. Ideally, you want to have at least 10 images. And you'll need to have your logo, a cover photo, a team photo photo of yourself if you're a solopreneur before and after, if you've got vehicles that are wrapped, if you've got some action shots from customer projects or client projects, you know, with their permission. And you can also geotag those photos when possible so that Google understands, yeah, you're really serving people in the areas that you say you serve them. And if you can post new photos weekly, that will help your profile get more attention. Now if you don't have enough photos to do that weekly, you can also post updates. So a blog post or you can alternate photo blog post, photo blog post and Google Business now lets you schedule them in advance. So I just did that for my business last week. I scheduled out all my Google business posts because that's nice, I like that a lot. And then you need to prioritize reviews and engagement. And what that means is remember that people in the top positions in Google have usually over a hundred reviews. And it can be hard to get there, especially if you want to make sure they're all four or five stars. But it's helpful to ask consistently ask your favorite clients, ask your great clients for reviews and then respond to every review right away way even if it wasn't five stars. And I'll get into what do you do if they gave you a one star review later. But it is very helpful to make sure that you as a business owner are acknowledging every time someone writes a review. Now additional best practices would be consistency. Make sure the info on your website, social profiles and any other directories match what you're putting on your Google Business profile. Don't have different phone numbers everywhere or different social handles or only some social handles here but not over there. Like just make it all consistent and then track the insights so you can monitor view searches, the actions people take, whether they're trying to call you, asking for directions, clicking on your website in your Google Business page dashboard. And that is helpful information. And then of course avoid any violations like you know, no fake reviews. We all know that one. Don't keyword stuff your names, don't use an address that's really just a virtual office or you know, don't include misleading service areas. Those are all just the basic, basic things. Mind your P's and Q's. And then what I would suggest you do if you're, if you haven't touched your business page in a while is start with a full audit, complete anything that needs to be completed and you should make some posts, some updates, some photos because you could start to generate more traffic to your site within days of doing that. Now for complex setups you could use Google My Business Everywhere, which is a Chrome extension and that will help you research your competitors. So that's something I haven't tried yet. But yeah, it's Google My Business Everywhere Chrome extension. All right, so let's deal with the hot and sticky questions. Google insists that I Add and verify a physical address, but I don't have a public location. How do I fix this? This is very common. If you work out of your home like I do, we don't really want to put our address out there. But Google will sometimes flag categories as requiring a location that customers can visit. So depending on how you've categorized your business profile, that might be why it is demanding for you to provide an address. So here's a quick fix. Make sure you're choosing the right primary category again, the most accurate one for your business. You could use interior designer or Interior design Studio. Avoid categories like home renovation, contractor or furniture store because that would trigger the storefront address requirement. And then of course toggle the switch to hide the address and then go to your Google Business Profile. Click Edit Profile and go to Location and then select Edit next to the business location and turn off. Show business address to customers and then save. If it won't let you save that, first delete the address completely and add your service areas so that it can understand you are a service area business. Now you have to make sure it is set up as a Service area business or an SAB. You can add up to 20 specific service areas, cities, county, zip codes. Avoid using a broad radius. Again, Google only needs an address for verification and the address will stay hidden if you choose to hide it. So that's important to know. Just because they're asking you for an address doesn't mean they're going to publicize it. Now, if Google Business still won't let you hide your home address, you could try one of these solutions. You can delete or recreate the profile. Start fresh, select no when asked if customers can visit your location, you could contact Google Business Profile support through the app or the dashboard and clearly state this is a service area interior design firm with no public client facing location. You. Now that said, people have not had the best luck with contacting support through for Google Business. So take that with a grain of salt, but check your profile for conflicting signals. Like if your website is showing a business address but you don't have that address anymore, make sure that's removed everywhere. Otherwise it could cause some confliction and you will still be required to share your address on your Google Business listing. Potentially. All right, the next hot and sticky question that we get with this is how do I handle bad or untrue Google reviews? And if you've held off on getting a Google Business Business listing because you're scared of the crazy people out there, I get it. Trust me, there are crazy people in this world who will write a bad review even if you did everything right as a business, and even if they were the problem, because if they were the problem when you were working together, why wouldn't they just continue to be the problem? Right? To make matters more dramatic, some strangers will give your business a low rating even if they've never worked with you. And who knows why they do that? I don't know. It's ridiculous. But as a business owner, you are not without recourse in any of these situations. So here's what you can do. If a client leaves a poor review that is accurate, always respond with a concise, pointed summary of what happened and explain how you made every attempt to serve the client and resolve the issue and extend an offer to have them contact you to resolve it further. But if a client leaves a review that is untrue or slanderous, reply professionally, promptly and calmly and concisely state the untrue nature of the review, ask them to contact you directly for resolution, and then immediately report the review to Google. Google will review it and if they say nope, that has to stay up, you can appeal it once. So bear that in mind. In extreme situations, you can also ask a lawyer to send that person a cease and desist letter, which is often enough pressure for them to remove the review on their own. But you know, people don't like having to go that route, obviously. Now if a stranger leaves a review, and of course it would always be a negative review because why not always respond simply with we've never worked with you and this review is needless slander against our brand. Please remove this review and then report the review to Google. For policy violations such as fake content, I believe that's maybe an option. You can select and then track that request and escalate the report if necessary, using the Google Business Review Management Tool. Google that Google Business Review Management Tool. Like I said, if Google denies your request, you can still appeal their decision once. All right, so let's power up your Google Business listing with some of these pro tips that you may not know about. Number one, because hiding your address might slow, slightly lower your visibility in the map pack, compensate it by using great project photos, regular postings, strong reviews, and detailed service descriptions. Number two aim for 100% profile strength. Google will show you your profile strength in the dashboard. Fill out every available field, including the attributes you know. Is your business woman owned? Do you use sustainable materials, virtual consults, available business hours and accessibility options? Number three Proactively add and answer common questions in the designated Q and A section. Don't wait for other users to add their own questions organically because they likely won't. Well managed Q and A will help improve relevance and it will help Google's AI Overview understand your business better. That's great. Enable Google messages and set up quick reply templates like thanks for reaching out. What type of project are you planning? Because fast response times like under an hour, boost engagement and rankings. You should also add scheduling links. So if you're using calendly or acuity, make sure you put your scheduling link in the designated area for that. And then again, make sure you're checking the Insights tab on a routine basis to figure out which search terms bring people to you, where your viewers are located, and what actions they take. You know, calling you, sending a message, clicking on your website that will help you use this vastly valuable free resource that we have called Google Business Listings. Now, if you need more than just an audit of your Google Business listing, if you need some consultation around it, if you need to audit or consult on your marketing or digital presence in general, whether it's your SEO, your aio, your website, whatever, you know you can do that, right? I offer full no cost marketing audits and you can head over to Kate the socialite.com to book that you can. You'll always find my scheduling link in the footer of my website. So go to katethesocialite.com and scroll all the way down to book a full no cost marketing audit. All right guys, that was a lot. But this type of homework is good. It's not hard, you know, it's really not hard to do and it is incredibly helpful. We've got to help our business out in any way we can without having to spend a dime and I love that. So my only advice to you is to keep your message clear in your business profile and to keep it simple. Because if you try to get too creative and add flower language and try to stuff some more keywords in there, it will not help you. It will hurt you. So keep your message clear and keep your marketing simple. All right guys, that is what I have for you this week. Thank you so much for watching and listening. And if you haven't yet, please rate and review the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening.