Hey there.
Daniel from GrowYourMusicStudio.com, doing another live video with you today.
And today I want to talk to you a little bit about the number one free tool that I use
to get, in some cases, literally hundreds of people to my website each and every month.
So if you've read my blog for any period of time, you know that I've kind of grown quite
a following around the idea that using Adwords for a studio is really important.
And I've written articles about it, I've done videos about it and I think that's pretty
well-documented that Adwords is very important.
However, no matter how important and how useful Adwards has been to me, I will tell you that
on an ongoing basis, every single month I get more traffic to my teaching website, anywhere
from three times to five times the amount of traffic on my teaching website more than
I get from Adwords.
I get it from this tool right here and it is "Google My Business".
Google My Business, formerly called Google Local, is a free tool that you can use on
Google.com.
You just go to google.com/business and essentially what you do, when you set up a profile on
Google My Business, is you're essentially claiming the real estate on the map.
So when people type in, looking for specific categories of businesses, Google will display
the map listings above the organic listings.
Now, if you are joining me live, I can't see who's joined, so would love, if you just type
in your studio name and where you're coming from.
It's going to let me see who you are.
So would love if you would do that right now.
Anyway, here's why.
The reason you should use Google My Business, it's free traffic.
The theory that I have about getting more students is that the more people that come
to your website, if you have a good website, you will capture a certain number of those
people as students.
So what that means then is it's a numbers game.
You're literally just trying to get more people to come to your website.
That's what my business will do.
I think the number one thing that I hear people say about setting up a profile is they're
not sure, is it too hard, you know, what's going on with this particular tool?
Is it even useful for me?
And I will tell you unequivocally, yes it is, for the reasons I mentioned before, plus
the reason that having a My Business profile, which I'm going to talk about a little bit
more in a second, but having that My Business profile is actually one of the best things
you can do for local SEO on your website.
And I'm going to get into that in a little bit more.
So a couple thoughts, why to continue to use it.
Hey heather, glad to see you there.
Thanks so much for joining.
When you claim your listing, all you have to do is go to google.com/business, claim
your listing.
Some of the first things that you're going to do, beyond just claiming it, which most
businesses don't even do that, but some of the first things you want to do is make sure
your address is correct.
Put your business name on there and put whether you take credit cards or not, put your hours.
Make sure all the correct details are there.
Google actually checks what you put on that listing against other references all over
the Internet.
So if you have a Yelp profile, if you have put your information details, address on other
websites, Google will check against all of those things.
They have these little robots constantly running around the internet, checking all that stuff.
It'll check to make sure that they're same and if they are the same, that actually will
give you a little bit of a bump in the listings, in your website listings.
They will bump you up in the rankings on Google search.
Next thing you should do: Add five to ten images on your My Business listing.
So on your profile, it's just like a social media profile.
It's just like a Facebook profile.
You have all these options of things that you can do on there.
This is basically your business's presence on the web and since Google is the number
one search engine on the web, it is literally nuts not to have one.
So put five to ten images on there.
Find pictures of happy, smiling kids.
Load your profile up with those.
If you have a really great logo, put that on there.
Maybe take a few pictures of the inside of your studio.
Really take care with those photos to make sure that they're really nice and professional-looking.
Have great lighting.
Don't have the kid who was standing in front of a really messy bookshelf or you know, have
him stand in front of a blank wall just like this right here.
It'll just make those images pop.
And even when I look at other listings, when I look at listings of other businesses around
me, they don't have photos.
And the ones they do, it makes the business look undesirable.
I hate to say it, but it's just true.
It doesn't look all that good.
So really put some time in those photos.
It will create a disproportionate impact on the people who are looking at those profiles.
It'll make your studio stand out.
Next thing: Make sure someone hasn't claimed your profile already.
There are well-documented cases of people going around and looking at businesses in
local areas, claiming the listing improperly, either it being another business fraudulently
claiming to be you and having your website link direct to their website, or it'll be
some unscrupulous person from somewhere in the world who actually claims the listing
and puts an affiliate link to a product of theirs on your listing.
So make sure that it hasn't even been co-opted by some nefarious individual.
Next, couple more things here.
And this might be the biggest one of all.
And if you're watching right now, would love even for you to put in the comments below
right now.
If you do this or if you don't do this, write this in the comments below right now: Do you
get reviews for your website?
And if so, about how many reviews do you think you get per month on your website or on maybe
like a thumbtack listing?
Do you get reviews on Yelp?
Would love if you just write below right now if you do that.
Here's the reason why, and I'll explain a little bit more why the number is actually
important.
Getting reviews on your listing, actually, is one of the most important things you can
do for local SEO inside the search engine.
When Google is choosing how to rank your website inside their search engine, almost ten percent
- and this is a real number.
It's not a number.
The actual number is 8.3 percent, 8.3 percent of the decision as to whether you're going
to be on page one of Google, page two or page three, 8.3 percent of that decision is your
review profile.
The number one thing they look for is if you have Google reviews.
Okay?
And for those of you, a number of people just joined, and I'd love if you kind of checked
in and said, hey there.
Just put your studio name or where your studio is located.
Kind of helps me know who's here, who's not.
Anyway, and for those just joining, the thing that the tool that we're talking about is
a Google My Business profile.
So Google will look if you have Google reviews or not.
And if you have a lot of reviews, they will actually bump you above other businesses in
your area.
They will look to see if you have reviews on Thumbtack, if you have reviews on Yelp,
if you have reviews on Yext.
There's all these sites that they'll check.
And if you have a varied and active review profile, they will actually bump you up in
their map listings and they'll bump you up in just their Google search website listings.
So a strategy that I use is about three customers of mine a month - Hey Pat, thanks for writing
in there.
I will go to between two to four customers of mine per month and ask them to write a
review for me on Google Review.
That's the first thing I do.
Then maybe six months or a year later, I will go back to those same people and ask them
to leave me one on thumbtack or I'll ask them to go leave me one on a different site.
I have a number of different sites that I do that.
Google checks those things.
It is so crucially important.
Another reason why: social proof.
I look at other studios that are around me and, when I pull up map listings, and if I
were on my computer, I'd just show you this, but there are a number of other piano studios
around me.
There is only one other studio out of maybe a dozen listed that has reviews.
So just put yourself in the mind of a parent.
If a parent is looking for piano lessons, Google prioritizes those map listings, especially
on mobile.
They put them above their, the organic search results for websites.
So if you can't rank in organic search results, if you have a Google My Business listing,
they'll actually rank you above, you know, in some case, Lessons.com, Thumbtack.com.
Those people pay thousands and tens of thousands of dollars a month for SEO work from professional
design agencies.
And Google's like, "Sorry about you.
Wer'e going to bump up our map listings above that."
And it's free to get one of those map listings.
Anyway, as a parent is looking at those map listings, if they see that you have reviews
and five other studios don't, who do you think they're going to click first?
So there's that.
I'm going to go a little bit deeper into something I said earlier.
I mentioned having pictures.
If you can put a little bit of time or extra care into your pictures.
That is huge.
Make a collage.
I mean, there's so many apps on smartphones that can make collages.
Very simple.
Just get pictures of your recital.
You know, pictures of the group, pictures of kids playing, pictures of kids posing in
front of the piano.
Make a collage of that.
You're probably already doing that for your Facebook profile.
Go and upload it on Google My Business.
It's only going to make your business stand out even more there.
You can do social check-ins on Google My Business.
Now, this is something that is probably a little bit more advanced.
You know, most people don't have a Google Plus profile.
But for those that do, you can incentivize having people check in.
Again, Google looks at that as a signal and they're going to prioritize you, if people
are doing that.
Something else you can do, another advanced strategy and we're almost done here.
Another advanced strategy you can do is: you actually have the option to create a description.
And something I do is I will go through and occasionally edit that description on my My
Business profile.
The more attention and time you pay to it, Google sees that.
If you're logging in once a month and changing things, checking things, adding photos, Google
will again bump you up in their map listings.
I'm basically at the top all the time in my local area.
I'm getting 150 to 200 people coming to my website a month because of that organic listing.
That's insane.
The amount of people that or the amount of money I would have to spend on Adwords to
get 150 to 200 people coming to my website, it's probably close to a thousand dollars
a month and this is a hundred percent free.
It's unbelievable.
But anyway, in that description I will come in there and I will, I'll change it up.
I'll create a long description.
I'll put really emotional, colorful language.
I might tell a little story of a student that is in my studio.
I'll definitely put a story like that on the photos, as I was mentioning earlier.
So you could do something like that.
And then as I mentioned, just go in there and update it regularly.
So for right now, one of the updates that I did for this month is putting in holiday
hours.
My holiday hours are exactly the same as the hours that I have the rest of the year, but
people don't know that.
And again, you go in there and you make an update and Google will prioritize you in those
rankings.
So anyway, I'm going to summarize what I've said here today.
Google My Business.
Do it.
I'm getting, in my suburb, 100, 150, 200 people a month seeing that listing, coming to my
website.
And the number of people that I get who've come from that listing, and I can see this
all in my Google Analytics profile, about 3% of those folks, about 3% of those people
that have come from that My Business listing are signing up.
Sorry, not signing up, but reaching out to me and asking for lessons.
Even in the last week, I don't know the exact number, but between seven and nine people
in the last two weeks have contacted me for lessons for January.
And as I go back and I look at my traffic profile, I see a lot of these are coming from
my organic.
So that's the first thing.
Again, summarizing: Google uses this to know who is the most important business in an area.
So you don't want to go like this.
You want to make sure that all your data is up to date.
You want to get in there and regularly add new photos.
Regularly add new descriptions.
Want to make sure that no one's getting in there and fraudulently changing some of the
information on there.
But again, very powerful tool for the amount of traffic that I'm getting from it.
To get that traffic from somewhere else would cost quite a bit of money.
Anyway, that is where I'm going to end today.
Just going to say something.
It's Tuesday.
There's going to be three more live broadcasts this week.
Going to be doing them somewhere between 11:00 AM and 1:00 PM throughout the rest of this
week and throughout the rest of December.
And would love to get your feedback.
If you have any questions, put them in the comments below.
I'll follow up with this over the next couple of days, weeks, months.
If you see this, you know, sometime in the future, go and ask a question.
I get notified.
I'll be happy to answer it.
And if there's a topic that you'd like me to discuss in a future, live broadcast, would
be more than happy to do that.
Leave that question in the comments below.
Just put on there: "Hey, could you talk about this, you know, tomorrow or sometime next
week?"
And again, if you're watching this a couple months from now and you have a question, go
ahead and leave it at the bottom of this video, I will answer it.
Have a good day.
I'm signing off now.
Good luck.
Go right now.
If you don't have a Google My Business listing, it's google.com/business.
Go there right now.
Claim your listing.
It takes like 15-20 minutes to set up.
You will start getting more traffic to your teaching website, to your teaching profile.
No matter what.
No matter if you have a site hosted on Wordpress or Squarespace, Wix, Music Teacher's Helper,
doesn't matter where.
You just put it in the web address, you start getting free traffic.
You start getting more students.
It's that simple.
Have a great day.
Talk to you soon.
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