Google My Business Optimization | Attributes

Attributes are a way to showcase appealing elements of your small business’ customer experience

Optimizing your small business’ Attributes on Google My Business offers the opportunity to appeal to customers with unique or niche-specific qualities of your customer experience. Click the image to jump to search/local’s home page, where you can message us for specific information about optimizing your business’ GMB listing.

Local SEO is about making your small business stand out in ways that customers care about, and Google My Business’ Attributes are an effective way to market what’s unique or special about the customer experience with your business.

For how to get started with Google My Business, click the article below.

Digital marketing for small-business: where do I start?

Attributes are the term that Google has assigned to a mixed bag of characteristics that help searchers understand more about the quality or nature of your business, and whether the customer experience is one they’d want to have.

This screencap is from search/local’s Google My Business dashboard. This is how you will check to see what attributes you can add to your business’ listing.

Do you offer free WiFi to your clients? Does your restaurant or coffee shop offer outdoor seating? Are you a woman at the head of a small-business? If so, be sure to select and add these Attributes to your business listing: there are numerous search users out there who are actively looking to patronize women-led businesses, and your small business can benefit from owning that and letting Google broadcast it to searchers. Ditto if you’re an Armed Forces veteran at the head of your business.

Click the images above to jump to search/local’s home page, where you can contact us for more specific information about optimizing your business’ Google My Business listings for local search.

One notable subset of the Attributes is Accessibility Attributes: i.e. how easy is your business to get to for users in wheelchairs? Unisex restrooms are also an Attribute, because many searchers prefer a single-unit, locked, unisex restroom to the old-school ‘Men’s’ and ‘Women’s’ restroom pens, which can be a source of stress and discomfort for many customers.

The trick is that some Attributes are directly editable, whereas some are generated from Google users answering questions about your business after visiting. Here’s Google’s official documentation describing Attributes:

Certain factual attributes (e.g. outdoor seating, women-led) are directly editable by you. Subjective attributes (e.g. whether your business is popular with locals) rely on the opinions of Google users who’ve visited your business.

Your business category determines the attributes available for your listing. For example, you might see attributes for acceptable payment types, accessibility options, or whether the business is LGBTQ-friendly. When you edit your business information in Google My Business, you’re shown what attributes your business can enable.

Google is always updating and refining every aspect of its Google My Business functionality, so it’s a good idea to check in on your dashboard regularly. I check mine multiple times a day, because I’m constantly adding Posts and Photos and other content that helps searchers decide whether search/local HTX is the right choice for their small business.

Google hopes to be the definitive place to find information about local businesses, and they crave content and information. That’s why they provide Google My Business free — by offering such a powerful digital marketing platform entirely for free, they benefit more from the updated business information business owners are incentivized to give it than it would from charging any amount for the service.

All you — as a small business owner or marketer — have to do is stay up to date with the information it requires, which means checking in periodically (I recommend every day) and doing some housekeeping and optimization.

If you have questions about how to optimize your small business for local search, click the image above to visit search/local, where you can send us a message or make an appointment to discuss how Local SEO can benefit your company.