042: Boosting Local Visibility - AUDIT Google Business Profile with The Oxford Calligrapher

In this episode, Jules White provides a hands-on Google Business Profile audit session with Jane Morton Driscoll from The Oxford Calligrapher. Together, they explore strategies for optimising Google Business Profiles to attract the right audience, focusing on the corporate and wellness aspects of Jane’s calligraphy business. Jules offers practical steps to increase visibility and improve audience engagement on Google search, covering everything from selecting the right categories and services to leveraging images and customer reviews.

Key Takeaways:

1. Optimise Your Google Business Profile: Jules explains the importance of selecting the right primary and secondary categories for maximising local visibility.
2. Corporate Wellness Potential: Jane learnt how to utilise categories like 'Workplace Wellness' and specific services to reach corporate clients for workshops.
3. Enhance Engagement with Photos and Videos: Discover how regularly updating photos and adding short videos can improve engagement and trust.
4. Boost Reviews and Interaction: Get tips on gathering more reviews and utilising customer-generated content to strengthen your online presence.
5. Link Google Profile with Your Website: Jules discusses creating keyword-optimised links between your Google Profile and relevant website pages.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• The Oxford Calligrapher’s Website - Visit Jane’s website for more on her corporate calligraphy services and workshops.
• Free Pencil Calligraphy Sheet - Download this beginner-friendly guide available on Jane’s homepage to get started with pencil calligraphy.
• Book a Podcast Audit Episode with Jules - Want a profile or website audit? Visit Jules’ site for upcoming podcast audit dates.

Don’t miss this episode if you’re keen to improve your Google Business Profile and reach the right clients locally and online.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
• 0:40 Overview of Jane's Business and Goals
• 2:36 Current Corporate Services
• 3:49 Optimising Google Business Profile
• 4:37 Selecting and Adding Categories
• 9:35 Enhancing Profile with Photos and Videos
• 15:46 Gathering Reviews and Q&A
• 20:09 Final Tips and Conclusion

Transcript

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT - MAY CONTAIN ERRORS

Introduction and Guest Welcome

Jules White: Hi, today we're here doing an audit session. I'm here with Jane from the Oxford Calligrapher. And so, Jane, welcome to the show.

Jane Morton Driscoll: Hi

Jules White: I'm so glad to have you here.

Overview of Jane's Business and Goals

Jules White: You have such a beautiful website and we've been working together for a while on your SEO, but today we're going to have a chat about your Google business profile.

So I'm excited to do that. So you've got some great foundations there, and you've had your profile for a while, but there's definitely some room for improvement and some ways we can kind of optimise it. And your business is quite broad in the fact that you've got both local and online elements to your business.

We're going to talk about what you're doing in terms of working with businesses, but also you are selling to the general public. So you've got quite a broad scope of people that you can actually try and attract to your business. But I know that's something that's really important for you at the moment is developing your corporate workshop days.

So I would love to set a little goal about improving your Google business profile and how that could help you with that. So in relation to sort of local companies that you want to work with, if you could wave a magic wand and in six months time, it was all going amazing in relation to people finding you through Google, have you got an idea how that would look for you?

Jane Morton Driscoll: So I think what I would really, really like is for people to find me for the right reasons. Sometimes people fill out the form on my website, it'll come from Google to make the most random requests in terms of doing different calligraphy things. People who clearly haven't looked at my calligraphy style and then they want me to do something that's like, you know, like traditional calligraphy that I don't do.

And I, you know, I get quite a few requests for things that just do not fit with my business. So what I would really love if I could wave that magic wand would be for more people coming to me and seeking my services, and it be the services that I really want to be providing like the corporate workshops.

So having more of those things coming in and for me to be, you know, known in the area for that.

Jules White: Fantastic.

Yeah, that does sound good. Definitely, I think the goal is for the right people coming in at the right time and finding us for what we want them to really.

Current Corporate Services

Jules White: So tell me a little bit about the work that you're doing with corporates at the moment.

You've got kind of two sides of that as well, haven't you?

Jane Morton Driscoll: Yeah, so yeah, so there's two sides of it. There's one side which is offering calligraphy services for corporates, so working with businesses to provide, so for example, there's one business that has asked me to do a series of Christmas decorations for their clients.

So things like that, so a larger scale instead of it being one ball for one person, it's more like 50 to 100 baubles that I can do over the Christmas period. So those kinds of things, and doing live calligraphy events, with businesses, so brand activation, that kind of idea.

And then the other side of it is doing wellbeing workshops with businesses, to help them to kind of go beyond just ticking the wellbeing box for their organisations. I've done a coaching qualification as well, and I'm running workshops that combine calligraphy and coaching to help people to really understand the connection between the mind and their body and some of the science behind why calligraphy is so relaxing and, and how to calm your nervous system.

So that's the other side.

Jules White: Fantastic.
That sounds amazing.

Optimising Google Business Profile

Jules White: Actually, I think something that there's definitely something that there's, there's not too much information on your profile at the moment on your Google business profile at the moment. So there's definitely some sort of room for improvement there, I think, really.

When I'm tending to work with clients on Google profiles, one of the first things I look at is what Categories they've selected for their profiles because that's one of the first things that help you to show up for particular searches. So one thing I should just mention now is the fact that we're talking about Google business profiles here, which is the way you show up on in the local map.

So for local businesses to connect with local customers and, , , it's a free tool that you can claim from Google and you can then optimise it to try and drive traffic through to your website really. So, if we're looking at the categories for your Google profile.

Selecting and Adding Categories

Jules White: You've got three selected at the moment.
So you've got calligraphy lesson, artist, and service establishment. And I think at the last time I checked it was up to 10 categories that you can have for your Google profile. And the primary category is the one that's going to drive the most amount of search. So that's the one that Google pays the most attention to.

So I'm just going to check the calligraphy, see if there are any other calligraphy categories, , before we look at what other categories you could also, select. This is a little tool that I use, it's called, GMB Everywhere, and this helps me to understand the potential other categories that could relate to your business basically. But I don't think there are any other categories that in terms of the calligraphy part, there's not, um, you know, calligrapher or anything like that.

Sometimes we do see that difference and it's worth then worth looking at how many searches they're getting each, each month. So if you were looking at artist versus art school, then the word artist is getting a lot more searches each month on Google than art school. So you would want to make artist, if that was appropriate for what you were doing, you'd want to make that your primary category, really.

So when you select certain categories, you then get related services that may appear within your profile. You have things that you can then select the different services that apply to those categories. And that's something that is sometimes it's a bit of a double edged sword with those.

Because sometimes Google will then insist on showing you the services that don't actually relate to what you do. So I had a thing where Google kept putting website hosting services on my, my profile. And I don't do website hosting services.

And there was other things as well that it would put on there. It's like, no, I don't do that. But it kept doing it because Google associates that with that particular category. And it is really just a case of going through and just keep telling it. No, no, no, don't do that.

And don't worry too much about it as well 'cause if it does it, then it's not the end of the world realistically. It's just, these are all things that Google then associates with your business. So these are the services that Google associates with calligraphy. So it's certainly worth going through. And if one of these applies to your business, then add that in.

And that can be really helpful, both like your online courses, as well as people looking for workshops. And that could apply to, if people are looking from a corporate point of view, then that could definitely, apply there as well.

So that's something you would do within the profile. You'd look at the categories and look at the services within those categories as well. So coming back to your profile again, one of the things that I did do is I looked at other businesses that offer workplace wellness.

That was the category that came up when I was looking. I think I just typed in workplace or corporate wellness or something along those lines.

Um, I had a little look before we hopped on this call and Workplace wellness is something that you, you could actually select that as a category, I think. I think because you're offering those kind of workshops, I think definitely adding that in as an additional category on your profile will be helpful, actually.

Not all of these categories are available in the UK as well. So it's worth going into your profile and seeing what ones are available. And the way that you can do that is when you go into your profile, you can actually start typing the words in the categories thing that and see if anything comes up.

There are also a couple of other tools that you can use to look at the categories that are available, like the GMB everywhere, Google Chrome plugin. That's quite a good one then to look at things that relate to what you do. And this little tool here on the side is just telling me how many, how many more people search for wellness programme versus health consultant, essentially.

So it's worth thinking about that, thinking a little bit creatively, looking at what competitors have on their categories as well, and then adding in realistically any that could apply to you.

So that's one of the big things that you could do is go through those categories and add those in. So when I looked at the category time finder, wellness programme was one that I thought that could certainly apply to what you're doing with the corporate workshops.

And then within wellness programme, you could add the services in of all these ones that they have like stress management, workshops, corporate wellness programmes, mindfulness workshops, those kind of things.

By adding that into your profile, you're more likely then to show up for those things on Google search.

There's so much there that people just don't realise that this is all there in the background. And if you've got services that relate to that. This is all how you can then get up those Google rankings.

And the good thing with your Google profile is that it does help you to hop up those rankings a bit more because your website itself may not be showing up for stress management workshops.

But if you can get your Google profile to show up locally, then that will be showing in the map essentially, or in a knowledge panel on the side. And that can, that can be really, really powerful. And also the work you do now shows up straight away on your Google profile as well. So I definitely think that go through and make sure you've got the categories, add them, add whatever ones you can in.

And if I just close this for now.

Enhancing Profile with Photos and Videos

Jules White: When I come into your profile, you've only got a few photos in there.

So that's definitely again, something where you can add in some more photos, making sure that you have up to date photos in there as well. And if you're wanting the corporate things that you're doing, if that's something that's a real focus over the next few months, then I would get some photos of you doing some corporate work in there if you can.

You can kind of stage it a little bit so that it's maybe a picture of you, it's the back of the audience and people can see you, within something that looks like a work environment. Adding those kind of photos can be really helpful.

Also, when you're in your corporate workshops, if it is appropriate and you can, then getting the people that are actually the participants in the workshop to share photos as well is something that can be really, really helpful.

If you you can get your customers to share stuff on your Google profile, Google treats that as a, as very, very trustworthy and it's very sort of a really good signal about your business basically.

Jane Morton Driscoll: So somebody gave me a review at the weekend and they put a picture on when they did the review. Is it that kind of thing?

Jules White: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that is really, really helpful. If you get more of that on your profile, then that's really helpful. And you can't always control how it shows these pictures.

So whenever I'm working with somebody through their profile, I would always make sure that you've got your logo in there as well. And you can actually mark that as your logo. I don't think you've got, it doesn't look like.

Yeah. So I would do that. I would definitely upload your logo and you can actually mark that as your logo in your Google profile.

And you can also set a cover photo here as well. So I've done this for a few clients where we've actually created a cover photo that then Google will show that as the primary photo. It doesn't always, and especially if you've got videos in your profile, it's likely to show those first, to be honest with you.

So one thing you could do, we've talked before about all of your videos, you said you've got a ton of content around you actually doing calligraphy. If you can have a couple of those videos on your profile, that's also really helpful. Google loves video, so that might then also help you to show up locally as well.

They do need to be short videos, so think of like, some of the stuff that you're, if you share it on Instagram, those kind of reel type videos, add those into your Google profile as well, and that can be really helpful. Think in terms of other things that you could do here, adding videos, I think is probably one of the biggest things.

And you could even create a little, almost like a promo video that starts with the picture of your logo or what you would do is the cover photo. And then it's literally 10 seconds of you showing, showing how you help people or even you work. You can think about how you could apply that with corporate stuff really, and you could almost do like a little promo video and add that in.

How's that sound?

Jane Morton Driscoll: Yeah, no, that sounds like a great idea. I just like the idea of it being better than it is at the moment. And I kind of, I'm starting to understand that idea.

I always describe SEO like juice and losing your SEO juice and then getting your SEO juice back and anything I can do that's, to be honest, it's not that difficult.

You know, like the things that I can just do that will make a big difference. I think that's, it's like the quick wins, isn't it?

Jules White: Yeah, definitely. And I'm all about the quick wins and Google profiles are definitely a way that you can get those quick wins, really.

And I would say even just thinking about what you've already got, thinking about what videos you're already using, as I say, the reels, even if you did nothing more than any reels that you put on Instagram that are of you doing calligraphy, you add those to your Google profile as well.

That would make a difference. It definitely would help in terms of actually helping Google to see that the profile is more active and that you're getting sort of more interaction there and then the written stuff.

So the written words that you put through your profile are then the things that are more likely to make you to show up for search terms, really.

So when you look at your, your profile and you have the, you have the option to add services, you can add categories as well and you can add products. So it kind of treats it as services and products. It's worth adding both.

And it's worth almost adding what you do to both of those things. So if you were thinking about a corporate wellness workshop, you could add that as a service that you provide and you can have a short description about that, but you can also add that in as a product, which will then make it show in your profile a little bit further down.

Let me share my own profile.

You can see here, because I've added my services as products, you can see that they actually show up here within, with that extra little bit here. So you could definitely do that.

You could do that with both your online stuff, your corporate, all, basically anything we offer. There might be corporate packages I could add in there.

Yeah, corporate packages, and then you could have categories here as well of corporate. Either corporate calligraphy or whether you then categorise that into corporate wellness. And actually, probably both because you because they are quite different. What you're doing working with the corporates, they're both quite different in terms of the category that they could fall under.

So, yeah, I would definitely do that here because that's it's all about building out your profile and just getting the best results you can from it really.

And then adding posts to your profile as well. Let's come back over to your profile.

So you, I think you had, let's have a little look and see. You have one from, the workshop that you did at Fern Cotton's Happier. Happy place. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Happy place. Happy hour. So adding things like that as well, again, even if you were only taking your your best performing posts from social media for that week and adding that into your Google profile it will be helpful really.

So thinking about that and how you can add in from posts, you can add events as well. So I know you do run local, open to the general public calligraphy workshops as well sometimes.

Those kind of things, you can add them in there as events as well. And then if you think about what keywords you want to add into the description of those, that is also helpful for them showing up for those as well.

Gathering Reviews and Q&A

Jules White: So, reviews is the other thing as well that I would suggest trying to gather some more reviews. So at the moment, you've got nine reviews. I know it hasn't been a necessarily a focus to get reviews through your profile, but if you can do that, if you can have more than 10 reviews on your profile, that is really helpful.

It's something apparently about once you get to 10 reviews that Google likes, but the more reviews that you have, the better really. So I would definitely be making sure if you're running a workshop, have a little QR code there. During the workshop, the people, if you're enjoying it, visit my Google business profile and leave me a review if you can.

Jane Morton Driscoll: It's so hard to get because they have to be logged in. That's the only thing that I found it really challenging to just get people, just make sure that you do the review, but we're getting there. But also it's my responsibility to then carry on doing follow up on that and

Jules White: Yeah, I mean all you can do is ask. You can't control whether people do that. Most people have got YouTube and channels now and or not YouTube channels, most people haven't got that!

Most people have got YouTube accounts so if they're logged into YouTube then they would be able to be logged into Google to and to leave a review realistically.

Yes. It's one of those things that I think it, the more you, the more you ask, then hopefully the more people you do get coming through and doing that. So, and I think, I think, yeah, it's, it's something that once you get reviewed, it's definitely worth taking screenshots of those as well, because we are a little bit beholden to  Google with our profiles.

It's not something that we own. And it's, so that's why I always say, you know, focus on creating content for our own podcast and our own websites first, and then think about these other platforms as, as sort of a, as supplementary to that really because Google sometimes can get a bit snippy about profiles and especially if you get a flood of reviews all coming in at once and that's unusual for your business then sometimes you can actually, Google can suspend your profile and you can get issues with that.

So that's why it's good to be asking often. And asking all the time, really, because then that way you hopefully get that steady stream of reviews coming through your profile.

But it's always good whenever you get any, any reviews coming in, take a picture of them so that if anything does ever happen and your reviews get taken away, you've got evidence that they were there and that makes it sometimes easier to then try and get them back again.

It's worth having a look through all of the settings in your profile as well, because often there are settings in there that you go through and you think, oh actually, yeah, I can add that in. So things like identified as women owned, that's really good. It's those, those kind of things, it is all helpful to add those in.

In terms of opening hours, it's up to you whether you have those on there. If people don't come and visit you, the one thing you could do is you could add online appointments only.

So if people need to book a discovery call with you, and that's kind of the first way that people can work with you, then I maybe would add that in just to make sure. I mean, you don't have your phone number in there. So, but yeah, I would just maybe add that in just for clarity, really. I mean, you don't have your a pin in the map anyway, so even if people know you're open, they can't then come and find, find your house, and come and knock on your door.

Which is unlikely,

Jane Morton Driscoll: Demand calligraphy.

Jules White: Yeah, absolutely, demand calligraphy, yeah!

So yeah, that's, that's something I would just suggest. Go through, make sure that everything is, you can fill it, easily is done. Make sure you've got the app on your phone as well, because that does make it easier to go through and do those things.

And then, one other thing you could do is add in some Q&As. So definitely with the corporate stuff, if you can add in some Q&As that people, that may be things that people would type into Google that would then lead them to the corporate workshops. Then that can be helpful as well.

It's not so much of a ranking signal as it used to be with Google profiles, but I definitely think it's helpful.

It just all helps to build out your profile and make it sort of more complete, really.

Jane Morton Driscoll: Yeah.

Jules White: And you can actually use AI to really help with that as well. So you can describe your business, describe your business profile, describe what you're trying to achieve with that in a chat, GPT chat, and then ask it to generate some relevant Q and A's to add into your Google profile.

And you as the business owner can both add the questions and answer the questions as well. So. How does that feel in terms of a to do list?

Final Tips and Conclusion

Jane Morton Driscoll: I mean it's quite an epic to do list but it's also I feel, I feel like these, this is like a I mean, I don't know how long I should be spending on this.
Maybe you can guide me on that, but I feel like it's not days and days of work. It's, it's just a little bit of dedicated time to jazz it up a bit when I've got a minute.

Absolutely.

Jules White: And I think the big thing is even if you did nothing else, but I, 'cause I know you are spending some time creating content for social media, even if you did nothing else, but just took a little bit of that time and used that on your Google profile, then that would make a difference.

I think, I think the big things that are going to make the difference is getting those other categories on there that are relevant to the to the corporate work that you're doing and adding that in to both the both the services and as a product in there.

That's the things that are probably going to make the biggest difference in terms of you actually showing up in those searches that you want to be showing up for locally.

And then tying that back to your website and making sure that that's actually so if you're if you're creating a product on your website. Profile about one of your services make sure that links back to that relevant page on your website there as well.

Jane Morton Driscoll: So making sure there's a link on the website.

Jules White: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, definitely and you and because it is a local business as well. You can think about how can you get the local? Local towns and things into those places on your website as well.

So can you get a you do something around corporate wellness, Oxford or something along those lines that and have that as a page on your website that relates to then those posts on, on the Google profile as well.

Jane Morton Driscoll: Yeah, I could do that.

Jules White: Yeah, absolutely. We, I mean, we can dive in this, into this further when we're working together, we can dive into this further anyway, but it gives you a few things to, to a few suggestions of the ways that you can optimise your profile, but yeah, I think that'd be amazing.

And I think the biggest thing as well is adding in pictures and some videos because you've got so many, so much amazing content, then having that there will be really helpful as well.

Jane Morton Driscoll: Oh, that's brilliant. Yeah, no, thank you. I really appreciate that.

Jules White: No, you're welcome. And as I say, you make these changes today and people can be finding that content tomorrow as well, which is what I do love about the Google profiles really.

So I would love you to take a minute now just to shout out your brand and your website, so where people can find out more about what you do, all the different ways that you use calligraphy to help people relax and to enjoy this amazing craft.

Jane Morton Driscoll: So my website is theoxfordcalligrapher.co.uk I've got a lovely online course that people can access instantly to help them to relax.

I've also got a free pencil calligraphy sheet that you can get if you look at my homepage. There's a, there's a button on there to get that if you want to have a go before spending any money on it.

So you can just just pencils and paper. Yeah.

Jules White: Brilliant. Thank you so much, Jane, for being a guest. If anyone else would like to come on an audit episode, we can dive into your Google business profile, your website, or your podcast SEO.

But so you can head to thewebsitesuccesshub.com for the next available dates and we'll get you over on the show. 

And I'm sure you're with me wishing Jane all the best for their corporate workshops. 

So go and check out her stuff and I hope you've enjoyed this episode and I'll see you soon. 

Bye.