How to Optimize Your Google My Business?
The top Google search by someone looking for a notary in any given city is “notary near me.” They may also type in search terms like “mobile notary,” “notary open now,” “notary + your city name,” and more. To better understand what your customer sees, you should do this with us right now. Pull out your phone, go to Google, and type in “Notary Near Me.” Usually, you will see one to three ads first. Google always saves the top few spots of search results for advertisers. You probably have noticed in the past that for anything you search on Google, the first couple of results are sponsored ads. Once again, we highly recommend that you run Google ads to show up in these top spots and immediately start getting phone calls. However, once again, we strongly urge against you trying to run ads on your own. Most of our clients who have tried it on their own blew through a lot of money getting no results, because they didn’t know what they were doing. If you try to open a Google Ads account, Google will force you to create what are called “Smart Campaigns.” This is a very misleading name. What it should be called is a “Simple Campaign.” It basically allows you to create a campaign in just a couple of minutes by answering just 5 or so questions. Boom, your campaign is up and running, and Google is able to start charging your card right away. When we create campaigns, we create them the manual way in what is called “Expert Mode.” When doing it this way there are more than 50 manual settings we can adjust in the creation of the ad campaign that get us much better results for the same amount of Ad Spend. If you are interested in inquiring about Google Ad services for your notary business, you can email us at info@notarypublicmarketing.com
Now directly underneath the sponsored Google Ad results, you will see a Google Maps diagram of your region. Under the Google Maps diagram, you will see the top 3 Google My Business Listings listed. These other notaries are your competition. In a medium-sized city, the top listings might have 50-100 reviews each, or more. In a big city, the top listings may easily have 150-300+ reviews. In a small city, they may only have 15-30 reviews. It all depends on your city, which is why it’s important to actually do this exercise and see your competition's stats. You also want to do a second search for the search term, “Notary + Your City.” Make sure to use the name of the big city you live by, not the little city name. For example, if you lived in Hollywood, California, you would search for “Notary Los Angeles.” The reason for the second search is that it will give you the ranking for all of the businesses in your bigger city area. If you just type in “notary near me,” you will get the ranking for businesses in your smaller part/side of the city.
Underneath the 3rd listing, you will see a button for “more businesses.” Click on that to expand the list, and scroll through to see all of the competition in the area. In a small rural town, you may only have 20 or so competitors. In a medium city, it might be 50-100 competitors. In a big city, it can easily be 100+ or 200+ competitors. Go ahead and write down how many reviews the top 5 to 10 listings have. This will give you an idea of what to shoot for. You’ll be able to set a goal for the number of reviews you need to accumulate, to break into the top 5 to 10 spots. Do this exercise for both the search terms “notary near me,” and “notary + your big city.”
Why is it important to get into the top 5 to 10 spots? You might be saying, well if there are 200 listings in my big city, isn’t it good enough to be #45? That technically puts you in the top 25% sure, but think about this. Pretend you are looking for a professional for some kind of a home service. Maybe you need roof repair, plumbing, or pest control. You go to Google and type in “roofer near me,” “plumber near me,” or “pest control near me.” Are you going to the third page of Google to find the business that you’re going to choose? No. You are very likely going to choose someone from the first page. Moreover, you’ll probably choose someone from the top 3-5 results. The people searching for a notary on Google, are going to do the same thing. This means that the 3-5 people at the top are getting all of the organic traffic. Even if you are in the #30 spot out of 200 businesses, you’re still going to be getting just as many calls as the guy in the #200 spot, which is zilch, zero. Until you can break into the first page, and moreso into the top 5-10 spots you will not get very many calls at all from your Google My Business Profile. But when you finally do, the difference is night and day. It’ll almost feel like you started getting a huge influx of phone calls overnight. Even though you were consistently collecting reviews for months without seeing much of a difference, all of a sudden one day, you’ll get a bunch of calls throughout the day. That’s how you’ll know you’ve finally made it.
Keep in mind that you will be able to break into the top 5 spots for the search term “notary near me,” much faster as you are only competing more so with the listings that are in your smaller neighborhood area. That should be your first goal. From there, your goal is to break into the top 5-10 spots for the search term “notary + your bigger city,” as you’ll be competing against all the listings in the entire city.
Now, we’re about to get into the actual tactics of breaking into the top 5-10 spots, because it isn’t purely about the number of reviews. There are actually a few different factors that go into it. It’s a combination of distance, reviews, web presence, profile activity, and more. We’ll break it down piece by piece, but first, just in case you haven’t actually started your Google My Business Page yet, let’s cover it real fast.
Here’s how to actually start your Google My Business Page. First, go to google.com/business or go to Google and search for “Google My Business.” Go ahead and click the blue button on the top right that says, “Start Now.” Here’s a very important note: If you are logged into multiple Gmail accounts at once, Google will automatically try and create your Google My Business Page under whatever Gmail is your primary account. Your primary Gmail account is determined by whichever Gmail you logged into first on the history of your device (computer, laptop, phone, or tablet.) Oftentimes, this will be your personal Gmail. If you have created a Gmail specifically for your notary business, you want to make sure to switch to that Gmail account, before you proceed with creating your Google My Business account. Click on your circular profile photo or profile initial in the top right corner, and switch to the email you want to use. If you use your personal email for everything, that’s fine too, but most notaries we’ve worked with have created a second Gmail just for their Notary Business. The reason why this is important is to prevent problems in the future by linking different Google services together. If you plan to take your marketing and online presence seriously, you very likely will use other Google services in the future. This can include Google Ads, Google Analytics for your website, Google Search Console to manage your web domain, and more. Oftentimes, all of these services must be linked to the same Gmail account in order to function properly. By double-checking that you are using the right email every time you sign up for one of these Google services, you will save yourself a lot of trouble down the road.
Once you’ve determined you’re proceeding with the correct Gmail account, go ahead and fill out the basic information they ask you. Remember, the more information you put in, the better results you will have. Rather than just writing a sentence or two to describe your business, write as much as you can. When it comes to business hours, my recommendation is to put hours from morning to night, for example, “7 am-11 pm.” Even if you wouldn’t actually go to a customer’s home at 9 pm, this helps your listing get shown to someone who is searching at 9 pm to call somebody and set up an appointment for the next day. Consider your Google business hours the hours you are willing to take phone calls. That means you’ll set them to start earlier than you’d actually take your first appointment and to end later than you’d actually take your last appointment. When it comes to services, list as many services as you can. Look at the profiles of other top-ranking competitors to give you some ideas as far as all the different services you can list. Many of your competitors will be listing a bunch of different document types rather than just listing “general notary work.” When it comes to address, you have the option of including an address or not. I generally recommend that you leave an address. This generally helps you show up more often compared to someone who doesn’t list their address. The only downside is that you may get people showing up to your house or apartment building without actually calling you in advance. The alternative is to list your service areas, but not include a singular address.
Once you’ve filled out the basic information they ask you, Google will send you a postcard to the address you provide them. They do this to make sure you are a real person, and not a person creating a bunch of fake listings. The postcard they send you will have a code on it comprised of random letters and/or numbers. This postcard can take a couple of days or weeks to arrive. Once it arrives, you must log back into your Google My Business Profile, where you left off. On the Home Screen, look for a little box that tells you you can enter your code. Enter your code to verify, and then you’re off to the races!
Now that your Google My Business listing is live and ready to go, let’s talk about the actual tactics that will help your listing pull ahead of the competition. The most important factor that determines your ranking is your reviews. Now if you just send a link to your group of friends and ask them all to leave you a review, Google has its ways of knowing that the reviews aren’t that legitimate. So let’s go over getting legitimate reviews. I’m about to make a few recommendations to you, but it’s up to you to APPLY them. I’ve worked with so many notaries where I literally give them the answer to how to grow their business into a successful one, and they just don’t apply the solutions. It’s not enough to just know the answer in your head, you have to execute. So let’s start with the first thing you must do:
Immediately Get a Bunch of Reviews from Previous Customers - Compile a list of all the customers you have worked with, as far back as you can go. That’s right, you guessed it, you are going to call them and ask them to leave you a review. The only excuse for not doing this is if you are a notary who literally started a week ago, and has yet to go to your first signing. If you are a notary of several years and have kept a detailed log of every appointment with name and phone number, you will have hundreds of people to call. But let’s be conservative and say you’ve only been doing one appointment a week since a year ago. Most of you will probably already be doing several appointments a week, but just for the sake of being ultra-conservative with our estimate, let’s say you’ve only been doing one per week. Multiply that by 52 weeks, and you should still have 52 people to reach out to! 52 reviews are usually more than enough to catapult you into the top 5-10 spots amongst your Google My Business competitors.
Now when we make this recommendation to notaries, more often than not they’ll find some kind of excuse to not do it, or they’ll find a way to interpret our recommendation in a way that makes it so they can execute it at a much lower level. They’ll usually say, “Well, I had a really good connection with a lady I met on an appointment last week, and there’s a man who I got along with really well two weeks ago, I’ll try calling them. As their coach, we have to give them tough love and say, “Hey, I know that you’ve been on a lot more than just two appointments in the last two weeks. Even the people that seemed cold or unapproachable, you have to call them! What’s the worst that can happen? They say no. You hang up and move on to the next. There’s literally no negative outcome to making the phone call. But on the upside, you’ll get a ton of reviews which you desperately need.” Now some of you may be asking, is it necessary to call people who I worked with months ago, or even a year ago? None of this is necessary. You can sit back, twiddle your thumbs, and hope that appointments fall from the sky into your lap, but you’re going to end up having to go back to your old job, saying that being a Notary doesn’t work, when you know damn well it works, because you’ve seen the small percentage of them out there that do extremely well, making 6 figures. It just didn’t work for you, because you weren’t willing to overcome your fear of picking up the phone and asking for a review. We’re not telling you to walk into a cage with a tiger for Pete’s sake, we’re telling you to call someone who you’ve already met face to face, ask for a review, and potentially be told no.
Now that we’ve gotten that little, stern pep-talk out of the way, let’s talk about what you will actually say on the phone when you make these phone calls. It can go something like this, obviously, you’ll change the specifics of the story based on how the appointment actually went down:
“Hi, Mrs. Johnson? Hey! It’s me, Kim, the notary. I came over to your house a couple of months ago to notarize that Power of Attorney for you guys. (Wait for response) I hate to bother you, but real quick I wanted to ask you a favor. I recently opened up a Google My Business profile so that I can collect reviews and grow my business. I would really appreciate it if you can help me out and leave me a review, it would mean so much to me, it only takes a minute, would you be able to do that for me? (Wait for response) Great! Thank you so much. I’ll also give you a $30 discount next time you need a notary, as a thank you. So anyways, it’s super simple to do, only takes a minute, can I walk you through it real fast? (Wait for response) Great! Okay, open up Google on your phone. Now, type in “BUSINESS NAME (As it appears on your GMB listing) + CITY NAME.” Did my Google My Business listing pop up? Great! Click on the Reviews tab. Now you should see 5 blank stars, click on however many stars you want to give me. Okay, that’ll take you to a comment box. Write a couple of sentences for me. Fantastic. Click Submit. And you’re all done! Thank you so much! Don’t forget that I have you down for a $30 discount next time you need me. Thank you so much, Mrs. Johnson! See you next time, take care.”
And that’s how you do it. There were a couple of things happening there that we’d like to explain. The first thing is that your client can leave you a review from either a computer or a phone. If you call them, and they happen to be away from their computer, you can tell them that it’s no problem, they can do it from their phone. The great thing about leaving a review on Google is that most people are already logged into their Gmail accounts on their phones and computer. Unlike a platform like Yelp, where they may not have an account yet, virtually everyone has a Gmail account, and most people are already logged in. This makes it super easy for them to leave a review within one minute. There is no need for them to create a whole new account.
Now notice how we are walking them through leaving the review on the phone. The simple fact of the matter is, people are forgetful, and even if they do promise to leave you a review, the majority will forget to do so. This is why you must walk them through leaving a review, as opposed to telling them that you will email or text them a link after you guys get off the phone. Once again, this brings me back to the theme of being scared to make phone calls and ask for a review. A lot of times when we recommend this strategy to notaries, they say, “Well, I just feel more comfortable sending a link via email or text.” They’ll make the phone calls, send the links, and tell me a couple of weeks later that it didn’t work, and that people just don’t want to leave reviews. We’ll tell them, “Well, did you walk them through it on the phone? Or did you just send the link?” And of course, the low results will be because they just sent the link after the call instead of walking them through it on the phone (which literally takes one extra minute.) Once again, we can give you the answer to growing your notary business and making more money, but it’s up to YOU to APPLY it.
There are just two things left to talk about regarding that sample phone call. We recommend giving some kind of credit, around $30 for two reasons. The first is that it’s extra motivation for them to leave the review. The second is that it’ll get them to start using your service again. Maybe they’ve already needed a notary again since the last time you served them. But because they didn’t have any particular incentive to call you, they just found another random person that they found on Google or Yelp. The $30 discount is big and attractive enough that they’ll remember to call you specifically, the next time they need a notary. From there, you should offer a regular discount of $10-$20 every time they need you in the future so that you make a regular customer out of them. Regular customers are the best. It’s much cheaper to keep a customer than it is to win a new one, so consider the $10-$20 discount money you would have spent anyway on marketing to find a new customer. And of course, that money is being deducted from your travel fee.
The final bullet point regarding that sample phone call paragraph is about how to direct them to find your Google My Business Listing. Usually, it’s enough to just tell them to Google the name of your business, if it’s a fairly specific name. For example, We have a Google Ads Management customer in Orange County, California whose business name is OC Notary Express. If you type that into Google, her Google My Business listing pops up right away, because Google identifies it easily. On the other hand, we have a different Google Ads Management customer in Orlando, Florida whose business name is Orlando Mobile Notarys. She also had us create her website for her, www.orlandomobilenotarys.com, which you’ll see indeed uses that name as her domain. However, the name is too generic in terms of making it an easy-to-search Google My Business Listing. If someone were to type in Orlando Mobile Notarys into Google, they would just get a big list of all the notaries in Orlando. Therefore, her Google My Business Listing name is under Kelly Millett Mobile Notary. If someone types in Kelly Millet Mobile Notary into Google, her Google My Business listing will definitely show up as the first result.
Now, there are some business names that are borderline in the middle and can go either way. That’s why it’s important to do a Google search of your Google My Business name to see if Google can easily identify it. We’ll give you another example. We have a Google Ads Management customer in Corona, California whose business name is called IE Notary Express. IE is short for Inland Empire which is how locals describe that region of California. However, if you type in IE Notary Express into Google, it won’t bring up her Google My Business page. Instead, it’ll ask you if you meant to type in “IS Notary Express.” Google thinks you’re making a typo and instead shows you results for “is notary express.” What she has to do to have customers find her page is she tells them to search for “IE Notary Express Corona.” Then her Google My Business profile pops up right away. This is why you will have noticed in the script that we wrote “BUSINESS NAME + CITY NAME.” Having the person who you’re calling type in not only your business name as it appears on your Google My Business Listing, but also the name of the city you’re in, will make it so that they find your Google My Business Listing instead of someone else who has a similar name. But don’t forget, do this Google search on your own to make sure that your GMB listing pops up. Just in case, have a spouse/friend/family member do it from their phone as well to double-check. Sometimes it’ll show up for you because you’re already logged into the GMB listing, but it may not show up from a different device. You also want to try it from both a cell phone as well as a computer, because the Google My Business Listing will show up a little differently depending on the type of device. On a cell phone, the place to leave a review is a tab that says Reviews. On a computer, it’s a button that says “Leave a Review.” Familiarize yourself with both views so you are prepared. The only other reason why it might now show up is that your Google My Business Listing is literally brand new. Give it a few days after you plug in that verification code for it to show up. If it’s still not showing up, you can share the link of your Google My Business listing directly via text to the person you’re on the phone with. However, once again, the review seems more authentic to the Google algorithm if the person finds the listing on their own as opposed to clicking on a link you’ve sent from your cell phone or email, so we recommend that they search it up on their end rather than you sending the link.
In review, the first solution to making your Google My Business listing easily searchable is changing the GMB name to include your personal name. However, If you don’t want to go with that recommendation, the other way to make it easily findable is to tell them to search for your business name + the city.
2. Collect a Review In Person at Every Appointment - Now, we move on to the second tactic around strengthening your Google My Business profile, and it still relates to gaining reviews. From now on, at every single appointment you go on, you must ask for a review at the end of the appointment. This includes not just general notary, but if you over other related services like loan signings, apostille, fingerprinting, etc., make sure you ask for a review every chance you get. Once again, just like with the phone calls, you want to walk them through leaving a review while you are there in person. If you leave, and send them the review link later, there’s probably an 80%-90% chance they won’t leave the review. Once again, people are forgetful, stuff comes up, they put it on the back burner until it gets forgotten forever. That’s why you want to ask for it in person at the conclusion of your appointment. The way you ask is very similar to the phone call sample script, with just a few minor differences. You want to ask for the review at the end of the appointment, it can go something like this:
“Alrighty, Mrs. Johnson, that wraps up our appointment. How would you like to pay? Cash? Fantastic. Now before you pay me, I want to ask you a quick favor. I recently opened up a Google My Business profile so that I can collect reviews and grow my business. I would really appreciate it if you can help me out and leave me a review, it would mean so much to me, and it only takes a minute, would you be able to do that for me? I’ll give you $5 off the appointment as well. Great! Thank you so much. It’s super simple to do, and only takes a minute, can I walk you through it real fast? Great! Okay, open up Google on your phone. Now, type in “BUSINESS NAME (As it appears on your GMB listing) + CITY NAME.” There’s my listing, Great! Click on the Reviews tab. Now see those 5 blank stars, click on however many stars you want to give me. Okay, that’ll take you to a comment box. Write a couple of sentences for me. Fantastic. Click Submit. And you’re all done! Thank you so much! Let me knock $5 off your payment today, your new total is…”
When you’re asking for the review in person you don’t have to offer such a high discount. Most people will do it for free anyways, out of gratitude that you were able to come through for them. They’re already feeling that gratitude because the appointment literally just happened. But just as an added bonus, you can add an extra $5-$10 discount. In the example of the phone call, we recommended offering a $20-$30 discount on a future appointment. This is to actually incentivize them to remember to call you on an appointment that hasn’t happened yet. In the case of offering a discount on an appointment you just completed, there’s no need to convince them to call you, they literally just called you. The appointment is completed. Don’t give up all your profit. $5-$10 is enough to incentivize them to leave a one-minute review if they’re about to pull the money out of their pocket anyways. Remember to collect a review on every appointment, even if it comes from a different lead source. Whether the customer originally found you on Yelp or through a referral, always get that review for your Google My Business Profile.
3. Reply to Every Review - Now that you have become a review-collecting machine, let’s talk about the next thing that will increase the ranking of your Google My Business Profile, replying to reviews. Every time someone leaves you a review, you want to reply to them saying thank you. You also want to leave a few details about the appointment itself, so that way every response isn’t the same generic 1 sentence thank you. Obviously, you want to leave out sensitive information about the client’s personal matters, but anything you can include aside from that to personalize your response, do so. If you already have reviews from years past on your existing Google My Business review, go ahead and reply to those now as well.
4. Actively Post on Your Profile Every Single Day - Now aside from collecting reviews, the next thing we’re about to tell you is going to help your Google My Business listing boost ahead of competitors that have more reviews than you. We want you to go back to your phone and search for “notary + your city” one more time. What you’ll notice is that some Google My Business listings that have fewer reviews will be ahead of Google My Business listings that have more reviews. For example, the first-place notary might have 350 reviews, the second-place notary might have 200 reviews, the third-place notary might have only 50 reviews, the fourth-place notary might have 150 reviews, and the fifth-place notary might have 100 reviews. The question is, how did a profile with only 50 reviews beat out the profiles that had 150 reviews and 100 reviews? The answer is usually that their profile is more active.
So go ahead and look at the existing Google My Business listings for other notaries in your cities. Now look for a listing that doesn’t have that many reviews compared to the others, but still ranks toward the top, ahead of other profiles that have more reviews. Once you’re in there, go to the tab called “updates.” Here, you’ll probably see that they are posting every day or several times a week about different notary-related things. They might be talking about certain documents, they might be giving advice, or they might simply be giving notice about a change in hours during the holiday season. It doesn’t matter so much what you post, it matters more that you’re posting every day and have an “active profile.” Go ahead and look at the other profiles that are doing it well to draw some inspiration, and then get on to creating your first post. It doesn’t have to be long, short is fine, the point is that you do it every day. You can create new updates on your Google My Business page by logging in and going to the vertical menu on the left-hand side. Click on the menu item, “posts” and create a post there.
5. Have a Web Presence on as Many Other Platforms as you can - Once again, we’re going to have you do an exercise with me. Open up your phone again and search for “notary + your bigger city” one more time. Click on one of the top results and you’ll land on their “Overview” tab. Scroll down past their description and you’ll get to a section called “Web Results.” There you will see that Google provides links to your business’s other web pages. Go ahead and scope out this “Web results” section for a few different top-ranked Google My Business Profiles. You’ll see a variety of websites that Google might link to. Google might link to the actual website of the business itself. It might link to a business’s Yelp page or Facebook page. It might link to Online Notary Profiles like Notarize.com or SnapDocs. It might link to a LinkedIn profile or a Better Business Bureau Profile. It may link to a Signing Service Profile. Make a list of all the different places where Google links to your top-ranking competitors. The more profiles you have across the web, the more Google gives you points for overall web presence. So get yourself a profile on LinkedIn, on BBB, on notary specific websites, and so on. Make sure that they all use the same business name, and that they all have your personal name on there as well. That way Google’s algorithm can find all of these different profiles and know that they’re yours. Even if you have no intention to maintain that LinkedIn page, BBB page, or notary-specific profile, just the fact that it exists will help you appeal to Google’s algorithm.
6. Regularly Add New Photos - You’ll notice that there’s also a photos tab on your Google My Business Profile. You want to start by adding a few photos of yourself. These can be professional shots, or they can be action shots of you at a signing. Use what you have. You don’t have to hire a photographer to take a whole new headshot just for your Google My Business page. From there, add any images of badges you have from being part of the National Notary Association, other groups, or other certifications from courses you have completed. From there, if you have some type of digital flier or business card, add that photo as well. When you are initially uploading photos, you will be asked to select a cover photo. We recommend you use the most professional-looking headshot of you. For an extra touch, add your logo into a corner of that photo. This is easily done through an easy-to-use photo editing app, we recommend using Canva.com.
Now when it comes to regularly adding new photos to your profile, we recommend asking clients if you can snap a selfie with them after the appointment. If they were a friendly customer and you guys got along, this will be easier to do. What we recommend is having them take a selfie of the two of you on their phone. From there, when you are walking them through leaving a review for you, there is an option to upload a photo to their review. They can upload that selfie of you guys smiling after the appointment, and write you a review that goes with that photo. It’s more powerful when they are uploading the photo vs you uploading the photo. But of course, if they’re having some sort of technical issue with their phone, you go ahead and take the phone and upload it later on after the appointment. Of course, this may not be appropriate depending on the situation. If there’s a grave reason behind the appointment, you probably don’t want to do this. Use your discretion.
7. Enable Messaging - Once you’ve created your profile, download the Google My Business app to your phone. From the app, you are able to enable messaging. While most customers will want to call you, a few may prefer to send a message. You just have to enable this feature first, before they can do that. Make sure you turn on notifications to your phone for the app as well.
So there you have it, those are the top tactics you should use to boost your Google My Business profile ranking. When in doubt, take a look at the profiles of your competitors who rank at the top. Study what they are doing, and replicate it in your own way. The most important thing is to become a review-collecting machine and be very active on your Google My Business profile.
By this point, in this blog, you have learned a lot of background information regarding why it’s best to invest your time into winning the Google game because it brings you the best return on your investment in terms of time and money (if you are choosing a platform to do paid advertising on.) We started with the absolute most important thing. This blog is not ordered like one of those lists that work their way backward and tell you the most important thing at the end. For the most part, we are ordering these top ways from most important to least important.
Now that we’ve covered the organic way of winning the Google game, let’s cover the paid way of winning the Google game, Google Ads.