#20 - Overlooked and Outranked: The GMB Mistakes That Kill Visibility

Local SEO isn’t dead—it’s evolving. In this episode of Over The Bull, Ken breaks down seven essential strategies to optimize your Google Business Profile (formerly GMB) and keep your business visible in a world increasingly shaped by AI search results.

You’ll learn:
•Why your business address still matters (even in 2025)
•The truth about NAP consistency and directory syndication
•How reviews, responses, and relevance drive local rankings
•Why keyword stuffing your business name is a fast track to suspension
•What Google really looks for when ranking service-area businesses

Backed by real data and official Google guidelines, this episode is packed with tactical advice—no fluff, no fear-based marketing.

If you’ve ever wondered why your business isn’t showing up in the map pack, this one’s for you.

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1.Google Business Profile Help – Local Search Ranking Factors
https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091

2.Google Business Profile Help – Business Name Guidelines
https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177

3.Google Business Profile Help – Service-Area Business Address Guidelines
https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038163

4.Semrush – How to Rank Higher on Google Maps
https://www.semrush.com/blog/google-my-business/

5.BrightLocal – How to Optimize Your Google Business Profile
https://www.brightlocal.com/learn/google-business-profile-optimization/

6.BrightLocal – Local Ranking Factors 2020 (still referenced today)
https://www.brightlocal.com/learn/key-ranking-factors-for-local-seo-2020/

7.LocalFalcon – What Impacts Your GBP Rankings
https://www.localfalcon.com/blog/what-information-impacts-your-google-business-profile-ranking

8.PriceWeber – Google Business Profile Ranking Success
https://priceweber.com/blog/google-business-profile-ranking-success/

9.IPPEI – 2024 Google Business Profile Ranking Factors
https://ippei.com/gmb-ranking-factors/

10.Reddit – GMB Address Visibility & Keyword-Stuffing Discussion
https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleMyBusiness/comments/19e48e3

11.Reddit – Service Area Business Advice & Local SEO Tips
https://www.reddit.com/r/digital_marketing/comments/19e45ug

Over The Bull is brought to you by IntegrisDesign.com. All rights reserved.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

You're listening to Over the Bull, where we cut through marketing noise. Here's your host, Ken Carroll.

SPEAKER_01: 0:09

Let's talk about your Google business profile on this episode of Over the Bull. Do you ever have a hard time getting the words out? You know, I've restarted this podcast episode, gosh, I think three times. You know, sometimes things just don't roll off the tongue naturally, and I got a little bit of a cough today. So if you hear me pause, please forgive me. I'll try to keep everything as cohesive as possible. But I want to talk to you about this Google business thing. Now, the reason I'm doing it is for a lot of reasons. One is there's so much confusion. Number two, there are attempts to game Google business. just like people try to game SEO or Google Ads or whatever may have you, for a short-term gain but a long-term failure. You know, gaming the system is not like you found a cheat code in a video game. Gaming the system in this world means that you could get suspended. And you don't want to be suspended. And believe it or not, I've run across a lot of Google business profiles over the years that were suspended because of poor practices. And what's more scary about these practices is in a lot of cases, they were told to do this by people that claim to be professionals. Now, it's either that they're trying to game the system because they think they found something really neat and they're trying to look like they know more than they do, or they simply are ignorant. I don't know any other way to put it. So you want to avoid both those ditches and you want to stay in the middle of the road. And that's what this podcast is dedicated to today. Now, as we talk about this, one thing I do want to share with you is that I'm using quotes from other resources. And I've been doing that because here's kind of the thing. What I'm seeing is the confusion and the bait and switch and all these things. concepts that are going across and it's confusing the average business owner. They don't know who to trust. You know, you may listen to this and go talk to your person who's in charge of your Google business and they may say, I've got that under control. And here's why. And this is why you want to do it. And what I'm trying to do is get beyond that and give you accurate quotes so that as you do things with your Google business and your other, um, Things that you're going to come out on top. Now, it's my contention that credibility is going to be the new currency for businesses. And if you're doing things that don't contribute to the overall credibility of your company, and you're just doing things like running ads to really low-ranking pages, or your Google Ads guy is, feels good today, it's going to feel bad long-term, Gaming Google business feels good today, be bad long term. Search engine optimization, hiring a person that uses things like private blog networks can get you into some big trouble. Just like if someone were to perform a raid and you're innocently walking by, you can get swept up in the raid, regardless if you're a good, you know, an innocent bystander or not. And the point is, you don't want to end up in those situations. You want to be Clean and credible. All right, so let's talk about a couple of points here when it comes to Google business. And here's a big one. So let's talk about proximity and ranking. So remember these three things, relevance, distance, and prominence. So local results are based primarily on relevance, distance, and prominence. Our algorithms might decide that a business that's further away is more likely to have what you're looking for. Now, this is from the Search Engine Journal summarizing Google's own guidance. Okay, so the idea is when we look at it, people will often ask, well, does it matter if I put my real address on there or can I put my service area? And does that make a big difference? Should I do it? Should I not do it? And then the opinions just come roaring. So here's kind of the deal with this. When you think of search engines like Google, we often think they're a lot smarter than we give them credit for. Now, don't get me wrong. I mean, the technology is insane today. But also, these are not sentient beings. These are not conscious beings who understand things, and they need signals. And so if you can publish your address, that gives like a really good indicator of where you are in relation to the person searching versus a service area that could be bigger. Pretty much it's that simple. So if you can put your address on there, you absolutely should do it because remember what Google is trying to do is give the most relevant search results and proximity could be one of those indicators, right? So if proximity is it and you can do it, then by all means, you should do it. Now, the idea is do you hang your hat on it? Do you like, you know, kick and scream and fight till the end? Probably not, but it's a good indicator and it does help Google out. So do it. I know it's crazy, but it's pretty much that easy. Number two, complete and accurate Google business profile information. helps Google understand relevance. So remember we had this one point with relevance. So let's go ahead and look at a few quotes here. And basically let's sub-categorize the quote by going complete and verify your business profile to rank better locally. So let's read a couple of quotes here. This is from Google Business Profile Help. So probably a pretty good resource. Local results favor the most relevant results for each search. See, it's the same thing it's always been. Google's got a product, and what they're trying to do is give a good product. To maximize how often your customers see your business in local search results, complete the following task in your business profile. Enter complete data, verify your locations, et cetera, et cetera. And... I'll have links so you can keep reading, but I'll summarize here in a minute. The next one's from SEMrush, or S-E-M-rush, however you want to pronounce it. Google ranks business profiles with complete and accurate information higher in the local search results. This includes verified business address, hours, category, and attributes. Your profile, and this is another resource, this is Bright Local, how to optimize your Google business profile. Your profile is more likely to show up in local results when all sections are filled out, including business descriptions, service area, hours, and photos. Okay, so these are some heavy hitters here. So what are they saying? Fill out your profile to the best of your ability and complete as possible. Believe it or not, when you take some Google Ads classes, one of the things that they tell you to do is fill out everything. And the reason they tell you to is there's a lot of things you can fill out. It's not just ad copy, but you can put in things like, you know, links that are relevant, you know, site links, things like that. And what it does is basically takes up more real estate. And so in this case, filling out and having all your information, you're taking up all the real estate, you're giving Google more to look at, more to assess, and frankly, look more serious about your business than just popping on a little bit of basic information. And so what they're saying is be diligent, fill everything out. Now, when you do fill it out, You can go through and in your description, you can put in your services. You could put in categories. You could put different things in there. But don't keyword stuff things. Use natural. So keyword stuffing would be like that integrous design. We have web design. That is web design. And we also offer web design. You know, you don't want to be crazy with it because a lot of people also think the more they use a keyword, the better they will rank. This is actually not true. If you use different tools on the internet, what you're going to find is you can actually use your keywords too much in places like blog articles and things like that. And it looks too saturated or it looks like you're trying to spam the content and it can actually hurt you. And so you want to use tools to look at things like keyword density. But in this context, you simply just want to make sure that as you're filling out your profile. You're doing it in a natural way and filling it out to the best of your ability. So let's look at number three here. This is called NAP consistency across citations builds local visibility. That's a mouthful, huh? NAP consistency across citations builds local visibility. So first, what is this crazy acronym NAP? Seems like we live in a world of NAP, right? Like Google Business Profile is what, GBP, and Google My Business, GMB. And again, if you want to be old school, you can still get away with calling it GMB, but the technical term is Google Business Profile these days. And yes, I will say GMB or Google My Business Profile. frankly, because I'm just a creature of habit, but I try to change that. So NAP is name, address, and phone number. Name, address, phone number. And name, A address, P phone number. So it's pretty much that simple. And then it says across citations builds local visibility. So the idea is you want to have your information as consistent as possible and broadcast across relevant sites places on the internet that will help your overall NAP consistency, N-A-P consistency. Now, if we look at Reddit Insight on local directory strategy, one of the quotes says, NAP, name, address, and phone in parentheses, info across all citation platforms. Consistency is key. Google values this. So, for example, at Integris Design, we have a partnership where We can broadcast your information consistently across 60 citation platforms. And not only that, but you can manage your profile. You can update your hours of operation. You can manage your reviews. You can check where you're ranked at locally. You can also do a lot of other things within our platform, like even set up automations. And so there's a lot of good tools out there that do that, and some of them I'm referring to. in these articles, I think. But the idea is if you're just popping into Google Business and you're just changing your information there and you're not doing well, probably because you don't have proper citations. Now, I have seen a lot of agencies who are just basically optimizing the Google Business profile. I mean, like physically just that one profile. And they're not broadcasting it across the spectrum. And so, by the way, I think if you go to scan.integristdesign.com, I'm pretty sure we've got a tool there, scan.integristdesign.com, and you can actually check how well you're being broadcast if you're interested. But basically what happens with your NAP score is they're not broadcasting it and they're just managing it strictly from inside Google. And the reason some of these companies do it is because they're ignorant, but then other reasons they do it is because You have to invest in a platform that will help you do this. And if they don't invest in a platform that kind of helps get over the goal, it's cheaper for them just to say they did it by just going into your Google business profile and changing a few things around, which will not get you over the goal. Citation volume and quality matters. Okay, but in parentheses, let's see. Now let's go to Wikipedia here. I know some of you have probably different opinions about Wiki, but let's just check it out. Actually, this is from, no, hold on a minute. This is actually from Reddit. So Reddit local SEO advice. Citations are a key factor in local search rankings. The more consistent and the more accurate citations, the more likely to show up in local search results. So if you got all those reviews, You got everything going. You probably are missing some citations or you have very inconsistent citations. Another thing is the tool that we use will also bring up duplicate citations. And being able to identify those quickly and being able to suppress those is also something that would be helpful. Good for your business. So you want to make sure that you don't have duplicates across the bandwidth. And you can imagine what it'd be like just trying to manage 60 citations manually. It'd be crazy. And so having a tool to help you with that's good. Wikipedia kind of says similar things. I'm just going to kind of skip that one. I know some of you probably have different opinions about the world of Wikipedia. Number five, reviews and responses drive prominence and trust. So here we go. We'll pull Wikipedia in here. We don't let them not be part of the fun today. More reviews and positive ratings can improve your business's local ranking. And that is from apparently indicating Google Prominence Signal. I don't know if that's the actual title of the section or not, but that's what I have in my notes. And Search Engine Journal, let's see what they said. And respond to reviews, positive and negative, is a direct recommendation from the Search Engine Journal trying to profile activity and trust. So here's kind of a thing, guys. I know you're going to get that review, and it's going to just send you over the top. Okay, but remember, you're not writing a review to that person. You're writing a review to your next customer. and they want to see how you handle both the good and the bad. And so I know you love your business, and I know you probably try to do a good job, and it's probably infuriating when it happens, but you want to be able to handle it in a way that's respectful, and you want to be able to do a good job of it. So make sure that as you're writing the negative reviews, don't ignore them, but make sure that you do address it, and then make sure that you remain positive and remain sure that you remain objective during it, and don't put a lot of, like, negative emotion into it, right as though it's your writing to the next customer. All right, so let's talk about regular posts and content updates, signal activity. Ensure your– oh, they call it GMB here, guys. So if you're calling it GMB, feel good here. This is from Reddit Best Practices Summary. Ensure your GMB profile is as complete as possible. Keeping up with post photos, QA, and review responses. Keeping up with post. Did you know that you can post stuff to Google Business and that you should do that regularly, just like you would with other social media-like platforms? Well, you can. You can actually do posting to there as well. At Integrus, one thing that we often do is we actually have a white glove service, and we have one that encourages our customers where they can participate. We even have our own social posting portal where they can post all their social media profiles, plus they can post to Google Business at the same time. So what you want to do is basically what it's saying is stay active. Show that you're alive and show your business is flourishing. Show that you care what's on your Google business profile. And if you have someone posting for you and they're not posting to your Google business, you probably want to ask why they're not doing that. Okay, so this is kind of a couple big ones. And one of them, number eight, I'm actually going to step on a crazy limb and Do it without any kind of citations. So no net on the last one, guys. So number seven, avoid keyword stuffing your business name. Now, here's the quote. This, again, is from Reddit FAQ, and this is on GMB Naming. So Google my business naming. If your local business is already named New York Plumbing, that's fine. But you shouldn't list your name as Joe's Plumbing in New York just to rank for local keywords. So here's the question of the day. Is the name of your business your true name of your business? Or did you slap some keywords in there too? Or did you take some really bad advice and let your marketing guy put some keywords in the title? Now, here's the thing. Gaming that, it does help sometimes. But also, that can get you suspended. Yep, that can get you suspended and you don't want to go down that road. So the idea is that's really bad advice. Remember, you're trying to be consistent. You want your name of your business to be consistent across the entire bandwidth. You don't want to be different just on Google business. What are you telling Google about the name of your company when you do those things? Are you confusing Google even? I mean, the idea that, and I remember years ago, running across the situation. And I got approached by all my clients, and they were telling me how brilliant this person's research was, who ran Google Ads, that you should game the system by putting keywords in the title. And this guy even went as far as saying, get a DBA with the keyword. I wish I was making this up. But he even said, go get another DBA so you could use it. Just crazy stuff. And the idea is you really want to be consistent. You want to be consistent across your entire bandwidth. And just play by the rules. And if someone's telling you something that seems a little bit fishy, odds are it is fishy. So avoid that, please. Please, please, please don't do that because you don't want to get suspended. Now, let's talk about number eight. This is mine, and I honestly don't have a citation for this, so take it or leave it. I'll tell you what my personal experience has brought me to understand. For some reason, certain marketing people build these low-ranking, scrape-style websites they're running Google Ads to. I know, you've heard me harp on this for weeks. But the thing is, is they run these, And then what they do for some reason is they put that low-ranking website as the web address in the Google Business Profile section. Now, this is not good, guys, because all you're doing is just causing confusion. Now, I have been trying to figure out, because I don't game the system. I mean, I'm a pretty straight-laced guy when it comes to it. I'd rather run things straight-laced than try to build it up ethically. But my guess is the reason they do this is because they're trying to pad their stats. You know, throwing the ball in the flats is how I often refer to it back in the old school football. You know, get the completion stat up a little bit. Now, I don't know if that's why they're doing it or not. There may be some super advanced, really awesome reason they're doing this. I can't find it. And so if you can find it, I'd love to hear more about it. But I do know that you should be linking to your primary business site because you want to be consistent. Remember, your name, address, your phone, your business, everything should be consistent. You should be driving that traffic to your main website because you're trying to increase the credibility of your main website. And so those are the big eight that you should be really thinking about as you're doing your Google business. And, you know, I'll tell you one that's really tough for me. And I never have a good answer for this. So you put a keyword in the name of your business. And the question is, when do you pull it? When do you take it out? You know, if you want to play by the rules and you weren't playing by the rules, how do you do it and when do you do it? And that's kind of a subjective, you know, argument. I mean, because... you change the name of your business, you're probably going to trigger a re-verification at the very least. And you may even cause Google to look at it harder, right? And so the idea is, well, when do you do it and how do you do it? And the problem is, is because you got it tangled up by taking bad advice, you have to untangle it. And there's really not a best practice for, as far as I've been able to find, about how to correct poor practices or non-recommended methodologies. And so I struggle with that. I struggle with when to trigger it. I do not prepare the client for the worst when we do it. And sometimes you just kind of let it sit there and go about its merry way until you rip the Band-Aid off. So hopefully that helps you out a little bit when it comes to Google business and what you should do and what you should not do. Just having someone who sells you Google Optimization as a one-time service. You know what? There's something else I want to talk to you about. The category of your business. You probably want to note this a little bit. But there are some plug-ins. Like with Google Chrome, for example. Let me see if I can find the name of this tool. I cannot think of the name of this tool. I think it's called... I can't think, I can't see it. But basically, if you go to Google Chrome, you can find certain tools. And what these tools do is it'll show you the primary and secondary categories of competitors. And so what you can do is when you install it, it'll show you what primary and secondary categories your competitors are choosing. And then what you can do is you kind of follow suit. And that'll clue you in to picking the best categories for your Google business profile. So you want your primary to be your primary and your secondary to be your secondary, obviously. And looking at what your competitors are doing will give you a leg up. And so I don't know why I didn't bring that up earlier. It's not even in my notes, but I do know that that's something that can really help you out in understanding where you should play at. And also, if you download that tool, that's bugging me here for a second. I'm actually going to pause this and find the name of the tool. All right. I am back after a brief pause, and that is called GMB Spy. So Google My Business Spy, GMB Spy. And it'll basically put a little icon up in your Chrome browser, and then you can kind of go through and just see what categories your competitors are choosing. And that can help you out significantly in optimizing your business profile. So I apologize for that. I Sometimes, you know, you get these notes and you get the game plan together. And anyway, it can really kind of, sometimes you miss some of the stuff, miss the forest for the trees, so to speak. So in conclusion, hopefully this will help you out, you know, optimize your Google business profile, get everything moving where it needs to go, and help you avoid a a lot of the common pitfalls, and a lot of the bad advice is floating around about Google business. The other thing is there is a thing in human nature where we always want to be smarter or better than everybody else. And we always want to look for that person that maybe has that magic bullet or that certain thing that's missing that's just going to propel business or help it out. And the idea of knowing that secret or being a part of that secret is something that is so enticing. You know, it's kind of hard to avoid. And if someone's gaming your system already and you're experiencing success, you know, you can have this idea that it's going to go on forever. Now, the secret to online success, believe it or not, is pretty simple. And that is follow the rules that these big tech companies laid out. Don't try to trick them. Don't try to fool them. Work by the rules, work hard and try to build your company up. Um, If you do it that way, you're going to succeed better long term. Your credibility is going to increase. Things are going to start working out just by following best practices. And so when someone gives a recommendation, like they give something counterintuitive to what I'm telling you, you want to avoid it. I mean, these people– and I'm not a real big Reddit person, but this is good stuff from Reddit. But they're saying this because– It's the best way to do it. And so avoid the whole gaming the system process. Avoid the urge to it. And I know it's going to be bad, okay? Rip the Band-Aid off and quit using the Google Ads guy who's sending things to those little scrape web pages that they're building. Get away from that, okay? Just like you want to get away from anyone who's doing cold email marketing because by blasting people that have not subscribed to your business information. So many games that are being played. And the thing is that your credibility of your business is important. And you don't want to be known as the spammy guy. And you certainly don't want to build a Google business profile up and then have it ripped away from you because it's been deemed as not following the right protocols. No matter what it feels like today, you want to get away from it. And I'm running into businesses that are really struggling with the idea that they've got to bite the bullet, that they've got to do it. And as the owner of a business and as someone who cares and really tries to do things to the best of my ability, that is good for the customer long term. It really bothers me when I run across people who struggle financially. with making these decisions. So here's the other problem with this. Let me talk about this for a second because I've run across this. So let me ramble for a minute. So the other thing that you run into is, let's say, for example, you have someone who's doing your SEO or doing your paid ads or doing your GMB or whatever, and then you start to have someone else untangle it. And then what you see is the performance has gone down. Your visibility decreases. Your Google ads aren't performing as well. You're not converting. You know, the waves are getting high and you're getting nervous. And the tendency would be to think that the previous guy knew more than your current guy. Now, that couldn't be further from the truth. The problem is that your previous guy was gaming the system. Your new guy is trying to help you out ethically, but you're struggling as a business to stay afloat, right? Because you've got to make money at the same time. And so juggling that as the owner of a business and figuring out the best time to do it can be a struggle. And that's a challenge for you as a business. But the worst thing you could do is go back to the guy that's caused the problems to begin with. And that's tough because you may even have a good relationship with those people. But they're hurting you, even though it feels good, right? They're enabling you. So the best thing to do is follow best practices and build everything the right way. So if you go back to the last episode, you're going to see where I talk about landing pages and bait and switch, for example. There's a lot of these little things that are going on. So you'll be careful to do that. Okay, that's the end of my ramble. I've decided to stop it right there. I know you probably enjoy hearing me ramble, but that's pretty much all you're getting today. I don't want to spoil you. I'm trying to think if there's anything I want to share with you from our agency perspective over the last week, see if anything of interest has come up. I think one of the big things that I would suggest based upon the last week So here's what I know about a lot of small businesses. Typically, small businesses are started by someone who does something really well. And they do a bang-up job of it. And as they do it, then they start to grow and add people and do things. And then competitors start coming in. And when competitors come in, then, you know, they muddy the waters in terms of your advantage and the quality of your service. And so the idea is to understand different things about your business that are good and bad. And one of those tools that have been traditionally very good is something called a SWOT analysis. S-W-O-T, SWOT. And that stands for your strengths, your weaknesses, your opportunities, and your threats. Now, the idea is you want to understand what makes you better as a company and what makes you stand out as a company. And you want to understand where your weaknesses are at and where the threats are coming from. You don't want to close your eyes to this. And so going through a SWOT analysis can help you better understand your market position. And then what you can do is start to work that into your paid ads, your overall marketing approach, and then you can start testing it using A-B techniques. Basically, you present different messages and different kind of campaigns, and then you find which ones basically resonate and convert better than others. And so the idea is that I have seen a situation where Businesses, sometimes they tend to think that they got to be the lowest price or they have to do certain things in order to sell their product and be competitive. But the idea of that really isn't that good. I mean, I had a guy one time, he told me, he said, there's always somebody out there willing to charge less money to go out of business quicker than you. And so the idea is to create a valuable service and then make sure that you put that in your messaging, but then also test it before you go whole hog with it. And then once you do that, then you understand more about your business. And you should do that periodically because your competition will change. And so you want to understand as much as you can so that you can remain on top You can change as time changes and you can evolve with everything else. So I think the advice of the day is I've seen a couple of cases where some good businesses haven't gone through that SWOT analysis. And we actually, when we take on a new client, we actually incorporate kind of a SWOT analysis along the path, you know, like, you know, just looking at different things, looking at competitive research in addition to it and things like that, and then start testing the messaging out. So if you haven't gone through that and you're a small business and you're probably really good at what you do, I recommend that you get out and you look at your SWOT analysis and then make adjustments. Work with your people to try to figure out the best way to do things. Okay, that should be it for this episode of Over the Bull. I do hope this helps you out, and I do hope that you experience great success. You know, I am so grateful to God to give me the opportunity to be able to talk to people like you and be able to offer advice to you. You know, as a Christian company, you know, Jesus is my Savior, and His guidance in Everything that I do is so important to me. And one thing I would suggest to you as an owner of a business is I have seen some people that have a lot of money. I mean, a lot of money. And I've also, in my life, I've experienced a lot of things. And the one thing that means so much to me is once a month, My family gets together, my kids and my grandkids, and we sit around, we eat, we talk, we enjoy life together. And sometimes in business, it can be all-consuming. And before you know it, your life is over. And you've planted seeds in places you really shouldn't, and you've avoided things that you really should have paid attention to. Now, I know in my life, as I built our business and tried to work on it to the best of my ability, there were times where I've neglected the things that were more important. And luckily, I have a beautiful, loving family and kids and grandbabies and all those things who've stuck with me over the years and have supported me. And I'm lucky enough to have a family business, you know, where we literally are family. Just one big family, even the people in our blood, if we still think of them as family. And so as you go through life, I'd love it, you know, just try to keep focus on those things. Try to look at your family because when all is said and done– The money is going to go away. The stuff you built is going to go away. You're going to go away. I'm going to go away. And what's going to be left is the legacy that we left on those that love us. And we've been able to impress upon them the things that are important in this world. That's part of what my faith brings me. And so I just pray that– You find that peace and you find that happiness and you find that balance in your life. Okay, until the next Over the Bowl podcast, I wish you guys the absolute best. God bless.

SPEAKER_00: 37:13

Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bowl, brought to you by Integris Design, a full-service design and marketing agency out of Asheville, North Carolina. Until next time.