Recent research shows that 90% of real estate agents don’t have a Google business profile. If you’re a part of the statistics, you might not know what it is and how it can benefit your business. 

In this episode of The Real Estate Sales Podcast, host Jimmy Burgress speaks with Karina Caraballo, a tech specialist in the real estate industry, on building a Google business profile. Learn how to optimize your Google My Business profile and different strategies to help boost your clientele.

Google My Business Profile: What Is It?

• It’s a free business profile to help business owners or real estate agents showcase their services and products.
• You already know Google is the number one search engine. This makes it even more essential for you to utilize its products to help potential customers find your business online.

Optimizing Google My Business Profiles for Real Estate Agents

• Jimmy recommends including the name of the real estate agent and the company they work for in the Google My Business profile to establish credibility and Google juice.
• Karina advises using the primary category of real estate agents and choosing relevant secondary categories to improve search visibility.
• Jimmy suggests including a website URL in the profile to provide a direct way for users to contact the agent and verify their authenticity. He emphasizes the importance of capturing leads through a clear call-to-action on the website, such as a link to a specific page or a form to fill out.
• Karina notes that 98% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses and that review quantity and quality are critical factors in search rankings.
• Jimmy suggests gathering reviews on Google by asking satisfied customers to leave reviews on the business's Google My Business profile.

Leveraging and Managing Google Reviews

• Jimmy suggests asking past clients for Google reviews by making it easy for them, such as sending a link and offering a reward. He also discusses reviews with other service providers to increase visibility and credibility.
• Next, Jimmy emphasizes the importance of responding to good and bad reviews to show engagement and build credibility. He shares an example of turning a bad review into an opportunity by asking for additional feedback and offering a solution.
• Jimmy suggests setting business hours to be readily available, such as 8 am-8 pm, to show professionalism and avoid killing potential deals.
• Karina recommends using Calendly or Google to book appointments online and including contact information on the website for those who prefer to schedule appointments offline.

Specific Tips to Help You Build Your Google Business Profile

• Karina suggests choosing the most important text for Google My Business Profile and utilizing chat GBT.
• Jimmy advises including years of business experience and business attributes, such as women-owned or veteran-owned, to improve search visibility.
• Utilize a mix of lifestyle, community, and listing photos to show consistency and add variety to your profile.
• Utilize your existing content on your Google Business Profile by adding one post per week, or even better, one post per day to keep your profile active and engaging.
• Get Google verified to present yourself professionally and increase credibility with potential clients.

Building a business profile is a challenging task, but luckily, for real estate agents, Jimmy is here to offer advice. Listen to this week’s episode of the TRES podcast to hear Jimmy and Karina’s conversation on optimizing your Google My Business profile. Tune in now to start leveraging a free Google tool to boost your real estate business.

“Google allows you to kind of connect with people in a different way. So if you want to choose if your business is women-owned veteran-owned, that kind of thing, you have the option to turn those on and not ca