Tag: Google Business Profile

  • The 30-Minute Local SEO Audit for Texoma Business Owners

    The 30-Minute Local SEO Audit for Texoma Business Owners

    We get some version of this call a lot: an owner in Sherman or Denison is sure the website is broken because the phone went quiet. Usually it isn’t. Usually it’s three or four small, boring things. A business category picked in a hurry years ago. A phone number that doesn’t match across directories. A services page that never once says “Denison.” An owner can find every one of them with a local SEO audit that takes half an hour.

    No paid tools, no technical background. Grab your phone, open a notes app, and set a timer.

    Minutes 1 to 5: search like a customer

    Open a private browsing window on your phone and search the way a customer would: the service and the city, not your business name. “Roof repair Sherman TX.” “Dentist Denison.” “Emergency plumber near me.”

    Write down three things. Whether you show up in the map pack (the three businesses listed under the map). Where you land in the regular results below it. And who’s above you. That last one tells you what kind of fight you’re in. Losing to national chains with hundreds of reviews is a different problem from losing to a two-truck outfit out of Pottsboro.

    Look at the very top of the page, too. On a lot of searches Google now shows an AI Overview before anything else. Note whether it names you, and which businesses it does name. If it names competitors and never you, that’s a gap worth knowing about, and it’s the one our AI search optimization work goes after.

    Repeat all of this for your three highest-margin services. Owners tend to check the service they’re proudest of, and it’s rarely the one paying the bills.

    Minutes 5 to 12: the Google Business Profile fields nobody fills in

    Open your Google Business Profile and look at it the way a stranger would.

    • Primary category. Is it the most specific option that’s accurate? “Roofing contractor” beats “Contractor.” Whitespark’s 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey put the primary category first on its list of factors for map rankings, so don’t guess on this one.
    • Additional categories. Most businesses use one or none. Add each one that honestly describes work you do, and nothing you don’t.
    • Services. Every service you offer should be listed, with a real description.
    • Photos. When did you last add one? If it’s been months, customers can tell.
    • Hours, holiday hours included. If Google isn’t sure you’re open on a holiday it may warn searchers that your hours might differ, and some of them will just call somebody else.

    While you’re in there, open the performance section and find the list of searches that showed your business. Those are the words people actually typed. There’s often a service on that list you don’t have a page for. We go through every field in more detail in how to optimize your Google Business Profile in 2026.

    Row of rural mailboxes along a farm road on an overcast day, one crooked and out of line, with a thin red line of light broken above it

    Minutes 12 to 18: check your name, address and phone everywhere

    Search your business name in quotes and click through the first ten or so results that aren’t your own site. Yelp, Facebook, Apple Maps, Bing Places, the BBB, the chamber directory, and whatever directories exist for your trade.

    You’re hunting for mismatches. An old suite number. The phone number from before you switched carriers. “LLC” on some listings and not others. A Sherman address two years after you moved to Denison.

    Google uses these listings to cross-check who and where you are. When they disagree, it trusts your information less, and AI tools pulling from the same directories get confused the same way. The work is dull. It’s also often one of the best-returning fixes on this whole list. Start with the listings customers actually use (Facebook, Apple Maps, Bing, Yelp) and work down from there.

    Minutes 18 to 23: reviews, and read the dates

    Everybody checks their star rating. Almost nobody checks when the reviews came in.

    A business with 140 reviews and nothing newer than March looks worse to a customer than one with 45 reviews and six from the past month. Google cares about this too: recency of reviews lands in the top dozen map-ranking factors in the same Whitespark survey. Count how many reviews you’ve gotten in the last 90 days, then do the same for the top competitor you wrote down in minute three.

    Then check whether you’ve replied to them. Unanswered reviews, especially bad ones, are the cheapest problem on this list and one of the first things a customer reads when choosing between you and the shop up the road.

    Minutes 23 to 28: what your website says about where you are

    Pull up your own site on your phone and go down this list:

    • Does the title in the browser tab name a service and a city? “Home” is a wasted title.
    • Does each major service have its own page, or is everything crammed onto one Services page? A page ranks for what it’s about, and a page about everything is about nothing in particular.
    • Are your address and phone number in the footer as real text, not part of an image?
    • Does the phone number dial when you tap it?
    • How long does the homepage take to load on cell data, away from the office wifi? If you’re drumming your fingers, so is everyone else.
    • Does the site mention every town you actually serve? If you work in Denison and only Sherman appears anywhere, read why you rank in Sherman but not Denison.

    Minutes 28 to 30: rank the fixes

    You now have a list. Don’t try to do all of it this week. Work it in this order:

    1. Anything factually wrong: phone, address, hours. These cost you customers today.
    2. Empty Google Business Profile fields. Free, fast, and the categories matter most.
    3. Review recency. Start asking every satisfied customer, this week.
    4. Directory mismatches. Tedious, but the fixes add up.
    5. Website structure and speed. The biggest lift and the slowest payoff. Still worth doing.

    What a 30-minute local SEO audit won’t catch

    Half an hour won’t turn up technical problems like broken schema markup or pages Google never indexed. It won’t show you a competitor quietly collecting links from every chamber, church and youth league in Grayson County. It can’t tell you whether the traffic you do get turns into calls. And it won’t show you the searches in Van Alstyne, Whitesboro and Pottsboro where you never appear at all. That deeper layer is where a real SEO engagement starts.

    What it will do is keep you from paying anyone to fix things you could have handled yourself on a Tuesday morning. Run it again every quarter. The second time takes about fifteen minutes.

  • Google Business Profile Optimization in 2026: What Changed

    Google Business Profile Optimization in 2026: What Changed

    Google Business Profile optimization used to be a one-afternoon job. Fill in the fields, upload a logo, move on. The profile does more work in 2026, and Google reads it differently. The old Q&A section is gone, and Google has started answering questions about businesses with AI that draws on your profile and your reviews. A thin profile gets you thin answers.

    For a business in Sherman, Denison or anywhere else in Texoma, the profile is often the first thing a customer sees, before they ever reach your website. Here’s what to get right this year.

    Fill in everything, then check it every quarter

    Most owners stop at name, address and phone. Finish the rest:

    • Your real business name, exactly as it’s on your truck and your sign. Stuffing it with “Best Plumber Sherman TX” breaks Google’s guidelines and can get the profile suspended.
    • Service areas by city. List the towns you actually drive to, not “North Texas.” Showing up in a second town takes more than a checkbox, though, which is why you might rank in Sherman but not Denison.
    • Hours, plus special hours for holidays and weather closures.
    • A phone number a person answers, matching the one on your website.
    • A website link to the right page. If you have a page for each service or city, use it.
    • The description. You get 750 characters. Say what you do, where and for whom, in plain words.
    • Services and attributes. Add each service with a short description, and check every attribute that’s true.

    Then put a reminder on your calendar to look at it every three months. Hours drift. Numbers change. The public can suggest edits to your listing, and now and then a wrong one sticks.

    Choose categories like a customer would

    Your primary category matters more than anything else you pick. Use the plainest term Google offers for what you are: “Plumber,” “Roofing contractor,” “Hair salon.” Picking something broad to seem bigger usually backfires.

    Secondary categories are for your other real lines of work. A lawn care company that also does landscaping and irrigation should add both. If you’d turn the job down, leave the category off.

    One quick check: search your main service in Google Maps and open the top three results. The primary category shows under each business name, and you might spot a better fit than the one you chose.

    Photos and video on a schedule

    Photos are some of the most-viewed parts of a profile, and a stale set makes people wonder if you’re still open. Upload real work every week or two. The job, the crew, the truck, and the building from the street so people recognize it when they pull in.

    Short video works here too. A 20-second clip of a finished job next to your reviews says more than a logo. Phone footage is fine. Blurry isn’t, so shoot three and keep the best one.

    Hand holding a phone at a dental office front desk with five small red stars of light hovering above it.

    Reviews carry more weight every year

    BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey found that 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses and 74% look for reviews from the last three months. Recency counts. Fifty reviews from 2021 don’t tell anyone how you’re doing now.

    Ask every happy customer, in person or by text, using the direct review link from your profile. Don’t pay for reviews or trade discounts for them. Google’s policies prohibit it, and the reviews can be removed.

    Then answer every one. The same survey found 89% of consumers expect owners to respond, and half said they’re unlikely to use a business that replies with generic templates. Use the customer’s name and mention the job. For a bad review, stay calm, keep it short and offer to talk by phone.

    It adds up faster than owners expect. Cole’s Pest Control in Bossier City, a client of ours, went from 32 to 45 Google reviews between late May and July 2026, every one of them five stars. We wrote more about building that habit in why online reviews are the new word of mouth.

    Google Business Profile optimization for AI answers

    This is the part that changed. Google began phasing out the public Q&A section on Business Profiles in 2025 and is moving toward AI answers inside Maps, built from your profile details, posts, photos and what reviewers wrote.

    So the questions you used to answer in Q&A need a new home. Put them in your service descriptions, your business description, your posts and an FAQ page on your website. If someone asks Maps whether you work Saturdays or come out to Whitesboro, the answer has to exist somewhere Google can read it.

    Reviews feed this too. “They fixed our tankless water heater in Denison the same afternoon” tells the AI, and the next customer, what you did, where and how fast. You can’t write reviews for people. You can ask them to mention what the job was.

    The same groundwork helps ChatGPT, Gemini and Google’s AI Overviews describe you correctly: the same name, address and phone everywhere, a clear list of services and towns, and a website that says the same thing your profile does. Our AI search optimization work starts there.

    Posts are useful, not magic

    Don’t expect profile posts to move your rankings much by themselves. They do give people something current to look at, and they give Google more words about what you do. A seasonal offer, a new service, a photo of a job finished this week. Once a week is plenty. Once a month beats nothing.

    Read your performance numbers monthly

    The Performance section in your profile dashboard shows calls, website clicks, direction requests and the searches people used to find you. Look at it once a month, like a diagnosis.

    Lots of views and few calls usually means your photos, rating or reviews aren’t convincing people. Lots of website clicks and few calls points at the website. And if nearly every search term is your business name, you’re only being found by people who already know you.

    That last one is common, and fixable. Our Google Business Profile management covers the weekly work: photos, posts, review replies and the monthly numbers.