Google My Business, sometimes shortened to GMB, is one of the most important local business citations you can build on the web. Learn more about why GMB matters for your business.

Google Prioritizes Itself

This may seem like common sense, but many online marketers forget that a Google My Business page will find its way to the top of Google results faster than your Yahoo or Bing business pages. Why? Google obviously has an incentive to send a search querier to your Google page first!

Google controls around 80% of the traffic on the Internet and puts a special emphasis on its own traffic, which is why you should create your Google My Business page before any others.

Google Will Help You Find a Niche

Many companies do not focus on the appropriate niche when it comes to search engine optimization. Google My Business can help to redirect the marketing efforts of such a company to enhance their results. During the process of Google page creation, a company will have to define itself by standards that Google has already vetted. Providing you have the ability to put the page in the right categories, that page will automatically index better, bringing more relevant traffic while reducing bounce rates and increasing search ranking.

Once you have created this niche within Google, you can use it everywhere else. All of the major search engines follow Google's lead, so you will also get appropriate indexing from Yahoo and Bing. It helps if you categorize your business correctly in the feeder directories that all of the major search engines use based upon your Google My Business page categorization.

Google Forces You to Market Your Business Properly

During the process of page creation, you will be prompted for all of the major factors that help a business pays to stand out on the Internet in general. You will be required to add a profile picture, and you will be prompted to make that picture as clear and present as possible. You will be prompted for a tagline, which coincides somewhat with the meta tags that you should be implementing across all of your business listings. You will also be forwarded into many industry relevant Google Plus business interest groups. In order to keep your page active, you must be involved in the social networking that takes place here, which is a good business activity overall. If nothing else, you will be able to monitor your competitors for entry points into the market!

Your Google My Business Page Can Be Your Social Hub

Companies that interlink their social media pages have better rankings. Search engines look at the aggregate of activity across social media pages before deciding on the final search ranking of a business brand. From your Google My Business page, you can connect all of your social media pages, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Yelp and Pinterest, as well as any others that you may have.