GBP Updates

This KB Entry has been superseded by the SEO for Salons Course

Google likes to see that a business is active and updating the Google Business Profile (as well as their website and social profiles) is a very good way to keep it fresh. There are five primary updates that you can do that with a GBP:

• An offer – one of the best kinds of updates to do at the moment is offers; they are helping well with rankings in 2023. The offer title and description should, as always, be written primarily for the customer but written with keywords and SEO in mind too. Like with any content, use keywords sparingly, work them naturally into the copy and don’t stuff. 
• An event – this is for a specific event that is being hosted by the salon. They work much like offer updates and the same guidelines apply in terms of keywords. Always write for the customer first.
• Special operating hours – as well as the standard operating hours, the GBP allows you to put in special hours for any up-coming holidays or other dates of your choosing (see this KB entry). Adding such hours is a freshness signal to Google.
• Photos – both offers and events allow you to include a photo which you should do. Ideally, use a photo that has been taken by somebody on the premises as it will be unique to that salon and will automatically be geo-tagged directly to them. In addition, you can simply upload a photo to the profile and this appears in the list of photos that viewers can browse through. I’ll do a separate guide on images for GBPs.
• An update post – this is rather like a blog post but is also good for covering news and goings on within the salon such as a new staff member. However, if there are no offers, events or anything newsworthy, you can use this kind of post to just create some content. Think of it just like a blog post you’d add to the website. 

For all updates, content should be unique. However you can use AI tools to repurpose content. For example if you have written a post for their blog on their website, you can use AI to rewrite it in a different way so that it is unique and then post that as your GBP update. When using any such tools, always read and edit it before publishing to make sure it doesn’t sound like it was written by a computer!