Articles › Local SEO › How To Add Keywords To Google My Business For SEO (2024)
Updated — Written by Dalton Luka
Adding keywords and relevant product / service information to your Google Business Profile (also called Google My Business) is a key step to ensuring that potential customers can discover your profile when searching for terms related to your business.
Follow these steps to add keywords to your Google My Business listing:
- Relevant business categories
- Add keywords to your business description
- Leverage the products / services feature by adding keywords
- Create a free GMB site that contains keywords
- Publish posts with relevant keywords
- Include keywords in business attributes
1. Relevant business categories
One of the best ways to ensure your Google My Business listing (now called Google Business Profile) ranks for your target keywords is to optimize your Google business categories – this includes both primary and secondary business categories.
Here’s how:
- Head over to BrightLocal’s SERP Checker
- Enter your target keyword (or primary business category) and location
- Select the Google Search option to view Local 3-Pack results.
Following these steps will show the top ranking competitors for your target keyword and location…
In the example above, we know that in order to rank for the keyword personal injury attorneys, our primary Google My Business category needs to be personal injury attorney.
Pro Tip: You can repeat this step for each of your target keywords using this optimization checklist and audit template, which can help you document your findings and highlight additional SEO opportunities for your business.
To find other relevant categories, use this guide to find primary and secondary business categories of your competitors.
Note: Follow these steps to update or change your primary and secondary Google My Business categories.
2. Add keywords to your business description
For some, this can be controversial, but should be an obvious opportunity.
You can add keywords to your Google My Business description to showcase your business’s services and target service area. This won’t directly impact rankings, but customers who read it will be better informed about your business, its offerings, and service area if done correctly.
Pro Tip: You can also use this tactic on local citations and for linking building, which can impact rankings.
Following the same example, if we were to target personal injury attorneys in Phoenix, AZ, here’s what an optimized Google My Business description might look like…
Pro Tip: Most businesses (and SEO agencies) get this wrong. Use these Google My Business description examples to write an optimized description for customers and search engines.
3. Leverage the products / services feature by adding keywords
Google My Business makes it possible to add additional products / services that are relevant to your business’s categories. Since approximately spring / summer of 2023, adding keywords to the services section has been found to be correlated with rankings.
Add keywords to products / services on your Google My Business listing…
For example (see above), a legal service and keyword that’s relevant to most personal injury law firms is car accident lawyer.
This information can be added in the Services section within the Google Business Profile Manager.
Pro Tip: The Product section makes it possible to add backlinks from Google My Business to product / service pages on your website.
4. Create a free GMB site that contains keywords
Within the Google My Business Listing Dashboard, it’s possible to create a free website that can be used to add keywords in the text fields such as the headline and description.
There’s a built-in editor that makes adding content (and keywords) super easy and semi-automated.
Content such as services, reviews, and posts will be automatically added to the site if they already exist on your listing.
5. Publish posts with relevant keywords
Post justifications showcase snippets of content sourced from Google My Business posts. Adding keywords to Google My Business posts will increase the likelihood that you receive a local justification for your profile.
Create a posting strategy that includes keywords related to your business’s products or services, and include those target keyword(s) within the content of the post.
6. Include keywords in business attributes
Adding keywords to business attributes can be a great way to increase visibility for relevant searches. However, this is primarily applicable to restaurants and other businesses in the travel & tourism nice (such as hotels).
This is because Google displays relevant business attributes for local searches (see below).
Pro Tip: Follow this guide on how to add attributes in Google My Business for examples and SEO considerations to optimize attributes on your business profile.
Additional considerations
For service area and hybrid business profiles, you can add location-specific keywords that represent your target localities (see Google My Business service areas guide). Additionally, you can include keywords or partial matches to questions and answers on your profile.
No matter where you choose to add keywords, it’s important to follow Google’s Guidelines to avoid suspensions, quality issues, and to ultimately test what works for your business.
Happy SEO-ing 🙂
