Your Google My Business Category is crucial for success in local SEO.
Choosing the best category for your business will set you up for success.
Let’s start with a quick overview of how you choose the best category for your Google My Business listing.
The Standard Process
- Start by thinking about your business. What do you actually do, sell, or offer to your customers? This is probably your primary category.
We’ll show you how to be sure your choice is the best one.
- Investigate your competitors. The top three results for your business category are already succeeding. Check out their categories to make sure you use the same.
- Select secondary categories that match your business activities. The full list of Google My Business Categories contains nearly 4000 Google My Business categories. You can select up to nine additional categories to add to your listing.
That’s the general process. We don’t want you to miss out on any search traffic. The rest of this article will help you choose the best categories using data and automation.
We’ll also introduce you to the GMB Crush Google My Business Audit Tool to help you make the best choices with the least amount of effort.
What are the Google My Business Categories?
The categories are a way to describe your business in the massive directory of Google My Business listings. They group your business with similar businesses and make it easier for customers to know what you do and how to find you.
Here are some examples of business categories:
- Accounting Software Company
- Children’s Furniture Store
- Lithuanian Restaurant
As you can see, the business categories are very specific. This helps to classify businesses and reduces competition for each category.
Click here for a complete list of the Google My Business categories.
How Do I Find Out My Business Category?
The long list of Google My Business categories is intimidating because it’s long.
To find your category, simply use ctrl+f (cmd+f for Mac users) to search the list. Once you’ve selected your primary category, think about related secondary categories you could add to your google my business listing.
Let’s use one of the categories we just found as an example.
A Lithuanian restaurant would start by searching the list for “restaurant.”
Here is what they find:
- Their exact business is a category: Lithuanian Restaurant.
- There are other categories they can add such as:
- Buffet Restaurant
- European Restaurant
- Family Restaurant
- Lunch Restaurant
- Restaurant
- They can choose their primary category, probably Lithuanian restaurant, and then add the rest as secondary categories.
These additional categories will bring more traffic to your GMB listing.
Can I Use Too Many Business Categories?
For a time, some people thought adding extra categories could dilute your listings in the search engines. This isn’t true.
Specific research about ‘category dilution’ shows a few key things:
- Changing your primary category has a big effect on your listing.
- Taking extra categories away will not harm your search engine position.
- Adding extra, relevant categories to your listing will not hurt your search rankings.
- Additional categories work in your favor because they bring extra traffic to your site.
If you want all the details, you can read the article from Sterlingsky.
We’ve just given you the headlines
How Do I Add GMB Categories to My Listing?
Here are 5 steps to setting your GMB category:
1. Sign in to Google to manage your Google My Business listing.
2. Choose the location you want to edit.
3. Click EDIT next to your Primary Category.
4. Select your new category.
5. Click “Apply.”
After you set your primary category, you can click “Add Another Category” to add secondary categories to your listing.
Keep in mind that you want the right categories. Simply filling out your list with a bunch of extra categories in addition to your primary categories won’t help you if they are not related to your business. In fact, this will hurt your local marketing.
How Do I Change My GMB Category?
Changing your GMB primary category or secondary categories is the same as adding a new one. Here are the five steps to edit your categories:
- Sign in to Google to manage your Google My Business listing.
2. Choose the location you want to edit.
3. Click EDIT next to your Primary Category.
4. Select your new category.
5. Click “Apply.”
We don’t recommend changing your primary category unless you’ve really made a mistake. Changing your main category will definitely affect your rankings in a big way. If you did it incorrectly and are repairing a problem, then it’s a good idea.
If you’re just trying to tweak things to get a bit of extra traffic, leave your main category alone.
Google My Business Domination
Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s get moving with the really good stuff.
Top Tips for Crushing the Competition with Google My Business
Winning the local marketing war is all about getting the right info out at the right time. Google My Business is a brilliant tool for simple, free advertising.
We’ve got three strategies you can employ to win the local SEO fight.
Check Out Their Categories
First, check out the categories your competition is listing themselves under. We’re going to show you an automatic way to do this in just a moment. You can find this manually by doing a simple search of your competitors and then checking out the source code for the search results page.
Here’s a simple guide to the manual process.
Even better, there is a tool for checking out your competitors. GMB Crush can help you reverse engineer your competitors’ success.
Discover Their Keywords
Google’s algorithm is incredibly advanced, but it still relies on words. Keywords are the words and phrases in your posts that Google uses to match searchers to businesses.
Understanding the right keywords to use is a big part of the local SEO game.
You can manually check out your competitors to see the keywords they are using. Capture a few of their posts and look for trending phrases and repeated words. Then try to use these in your own posts.
Even better, use GMB Crush to reverse engineer the competition. GMB Crush can analyze loads of posts in seconds to help you pick the best keywords for every one of your upcoming posts.
Beat Them at the Publishing Game
One way to match and beat your competitors is to keep track of their GMB posts. When they post info about a special offer or a new product, make a note of it. Over time, you’ll see how often they post. Then your job is to post more often without spamming your customers.
Does that sound like too much work?
Use GMB Crush to automate this process. Just enter your primary category and secondary categories and GMB Crush will get all the data for you. We’ll show you the best posting frequency to rank above the competition.
How to Make GMB Domination Easier
Do you have a few hours to spend every week managing your local SEO?
No? Few people do.
Instead, use GMB Crush to dominate the search results locally. This powerful tool automates the data-gathering process to make your life easier. Here are some benefits you get by using GMB Crush:
- Save time by using an automated search and analysis tool. You only need to fill in a few categories. The tool does the rest of the analysis.
- Make better choices with more data. GMB Crush will bring you the right data to help you make smart choices. Plan your publishing to be the best without guessing or doing too much.
- Get more leads, sales, and revenue. As you use GMB Crush and move to the top of the local rankings, your business will thrive.
These are three key benefits of using GMB Crush.
Let’s cover how these work quickly.
Use GMB Crush to Reverse Engineer the Competition’s Success.
We’ve already mentioned the reverse engineering aspect of GMB Crush. Your competitor’s info is all in the public domain. All you need to do is look up what the 3 top businesses are doing and then do it better. GMB Crush brings you the right info so you can start dominating the rankings.
A simple example of this is post frequency. GMB Crush might show you the top 3 sites average two new posts each month. Your mission is to post three times per month. Advertise a new product, publicize a deal, or ask for feedback.
Get the word out a little more often and you are showing Google that your business is active.
Use GMB Crush to Read Google’s Mind and Algorithm
SEO experts and businesses sometimes think of Google as an enemy to be tricked and a system to be beaten. Instead, you can use GMB to peek inside of Google’s mind and understand its algorithm.
For example, if you can see the top 3 spots in your categories are posting two times per month, then you can experiment with making a post every week for a month or two. If you jump up to #1, then you know Google thinks more frequent posts are better for your customers.
Another example is the use of specific keywords. Once you see the keywords Google is connecting to your content and customers, you can use this info to make your posts (and website!) even more relevant to people looking for what you are offering.
Get Started with GMB Crush Today
With GMB Crush, you can quickly identify what is working for the top three Google My Business listings, collect more insights and strategize to win.
Download the GMB Crush free app and start optimizing your Google My Business listings to maximize your presence and gain more clicks, quickly and effectively.
Generate more engagement signals to Google and gain a competitive edge over the top three rankers.
Okay, guys, that’s all for now. If you want to know more, you can use the audit data from our free Chrome extension. Just click on the banner below to connect with us.
Join the GMB Crush world to reverse engineer your GMB competitor’s SEO Strategy and gain the upper hand.
GMB Crush: Local 3-Pack Domination Made Easy!
SEO Lover, my motto is Action Over Words.
