GMB Knowledge Panel: A free ingredient that most forget to oversee.

What is a local Knowledge Panel? In a nutshell, local Knowledge Panels are informative boxes that Google displays to its users for optimized local information such as hours, contact info, reviews, images and much more. We don’t have Google’s secret sauce; however, we can certainly agree that relevance, distance and prominence definitely play a big factor in one’s ranking in local search results.

Why is it important?

Back to the topic of marketing plans, we all know what it means to get those extra marketing dollars approved in our budgets. You want to be spending your dollars on getting assistance on more complex SEO efforts such as on-site SEO. When speaking about off-site SEO efforts, you want to make sure that the organic real-estate space that is representing your business is optimized and consistent to attract and convert prospective clients.  Alright, you might be telling yourself, I have already got check-marks next to all of the basic attributes on my Knowledge Panel, what’s next? Every industry can benefit from the wide variety of attributes on the Knowledge Panel, below are some of the key features:

GMB Profile Attributes

Your customers are having exploratory thoughts regarding what is available to them: Can they dine-in or does the famous pizza joint in the corner of their street offer curbside pickup? For those in the retail spectrum, your customers are not sure if they can pick up their online orders in store, why not indicate in-store pick up to make life easier? Adobe’s Digital Economy Index released in May communicates that e-commerce augmented by 49%, impacting retail, electronics, grocery purchases and more. The data comes from “trillions of transactions, tens of millions of products, and thousands of retailers”. More importantly, “Adobe also said that buy-online-pick-up-in-store (BOPIS) orders were up more than 200% year over year in April”. It is imperative that your GMB profile attributes reflect the business reality and services you are offering to your customers. Keep in mind, we are living through a pandemic, folks think twice about leaving their homes, so don’t miss out on communicating what you offer loud and clear.

Questions & Answers

Launched in 2017, Google permits any Google user to ask a question and any Google user to answer a question about any business, the back and forth exchange will be displayed on the Knowledge Panel. “Q&A allows Google to crowdsource information about local businesses that may not be available within the structured attributes of Google My Business, or which is not immediately obvious from a local business’s own website ».  SEO Experts often communicate “Q&A may be assisting Google as it builds out an inventory of Voice Search queries and answers via Google Assistant”.  Surprisingly, 91% of questions asked by potential customers are left unanswered, thus negatively representing your business and loyalty towards your prospective clients. During unprecedented times, your customers are relying on prompt replies to help them get to the next step of their customer journey.

More Features

Let’s take this to another level, a level that really matters.  Your customers can message you in real time for a quote, you will be notified either on your GMB app or receive an email notification. When your clients are at the point that they would like to receive a quote, they are 80% into their purchase, you do not want to lose them.  Potential customers can also be proactive in booking their appointment right on your Knowledge Panel, are you signed up to one of Google’s supported scheduling providers?

GMB Posts

Do you want to update your client about promotions, events or a product launch? GMB Post is an extremely effective way to do so. Engage with your audience by always staying top of mind but most importantly catch their attention with compelling content. To dig deeper, you can explore many more options with GMB Posts such as welcome offers, promotion codes and more. Here is everything you need to know. At the end of the day, your customer is one click closer to your website.

Why should you care?

You want to make sure your local listings provider goes above and beyond than simply updating the usual NAP. NAP consistency is an old norm, features and attributes are an expectation.

Learn how LOCALTRAC can help you managing your online reputation. To talk with an expert, click here.