Why Google’s Q&A is Important to Businesses
If you haven’t opened up a GMB (Google My Business) or haven’t filled out it out entirely you’re missing out on the free features they have to offer and your missing out on potential business. Did you know that according to Newsweek Google now account for over 75 percent of all internet traffic and its up from 50% in 2014? That’s a huge piece of the internet market, so when you think when a customer or client searches for “the best restaurant in Seattle” to client will see the results with the companies Google reviews and additional links. So why is the Q&A (Questions and Answers), here are 8 reasons you want to utilize this feature and why it’s important to your business.
- Customer’s Decision: Comments can play on a consumer’s decision making process weather they want to use your services. This feature helps people understand what you specialize in, new procedures and offerings.
- Localguides & New Questions: When you have a list of Q&A’s, the newest questions appear first but questions from a LocalGuide will most always appear first. So, having fresh and local guide reviews helps and updating this feature is very important.
- Yes or No: Avoid answering simple yes or no questions, this is the perfect time to go into detail and explain further, to avoid confusion and a great way to promote your questions with additional information.
- Up-voting: By up-voting this, this will help impact the question so that it will be on the top of the questions list and show the questions you have the most to avoid customer service calls or confusion.
- Visibility: When a customer writes a question on your Q&A you can see the customers profile and past reviews. This is also important to see how they review other businesses and how active they are on Google.
- Connection & Integration: A great way to utilize and optimize your FAQ feature is to add a link to your website that connects directly to your Google My Business Q&A. This saves time for you web developer and takes them directly to your GMB.
- Ask Your Own Questions: Google encourages business owners to input common Q&A’s to your GMB help with your customer service, routinely asked questions, promotions & deals your offering and this will help your business stand out against your competition.
- Reporting: You can flag the answer on your Q&A. Once you hit the flag icon, you will then see various box options to explain why you think the answer should be flagged and removed.Sometimes this is needed when your competition or problem clients write hurtful questions or reviews.
Q&A feature is sure to undergo changes in the coming months and will be more used by customers in time. Remember, when you have your GMB filled out with Q&A’s make sure you keep on top of it. For example: 6% of users attempted to make an appointment and were often annoyed when no one responded. By engaging in your Q&A you will have the ability to help the customer choose to do business with you or with someone else. Finally, Google My Business is extremely important these days for business and by being active, utilizing the free services and using the GMB app with help you tremendously.
Carpe Diem~