How a Google Business Profile Supports SEO w/ Lydia Fine

podcast

Jul 4

Welcome to the entrepreneur’s guide to Google Business Profiles!

Raise your hand if you claimed your Google Business Profile, filled it out once, and never looked at it again. (Yeah… same.)

In this episode, I’m joined by Lydia Fine, a marketing strategist and photographer who gets it. We’re diving deep into why this free tool is wildly underrated—and how it’s becoming even more important with the rise of AI search!

If you’ve ever set it and forget it (🙋‍♀️ guilty), this is your sign to give it a second look. It’s not just another box to check—it’s your first impression on Google. And it’s time to make it count.

Topics covered in this podcast episode:

How to find your Google Business Profile (GBP)
What a Google Business Profile does to support SEO
Google Business Profile scams to be aware of
How your GBP helps you show up in AI overviews
What to know about 0 click searches & search intent
How to setup your Google Business Profile
What to continue to optimize on your Google Business Profile
Tips for local business owners and online entrepreneurs
What to know if you’re moving your business
The best way to collect reviews for your GBP
How to handle negative reviews with grace
How often to review your Google Business Profile
What to know if your GBP verification fails
The 3 things Google looks for in your GBP

Want to take action on these Google Business Profile best practices?

Perhaps with someone who can answer your questions?…

Lydia is joining us inside SEO & Grow for a guest expert session on this topic!

→ Explore the program here (doors close 7/11 & we start on 7/16!)

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Meet: Lydia Fine

Lydia Fine is a lifestyle photographer in North Liberty, Iowa, where she specializes in families, seniors, and newborns. She earned a marketing degree and an MBA from the University of Iowa, and uses her 22+ years of marketing experience to run her photo business while continuing to work her day job as a marketing strategist. Lydia teaches photographers how to uplevel their marketing, book more clients, and leverage systems and tech to spend less time on the backend of their business. She spends her scant free time playing pickleball, kickboxing, and doing jigsaw puzzles, and someday hopes to get the Wordle in a single try.

This episode of The Basic B podcast is brought to you in partnership w/ Leah Bryant Co.! Help me reach more service providers like you by following the show & leaving a rating or review on Apple & Spotify!

The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of The Basic B podcast follows

Brittany Herzberg:

Hello and welcome back to the Basic Bee podcast. I'm really excited today because I'm talking to my friend Lydia Fine, who actually joined me, I think for the SEO Voxer day when I had that last year and I was blabbing all about podcast SEO and she was sharing things, which is really helpful. I love having other people in the group who know things too, because I am not the end all, be all for things. But one topic that has come up a lot in my world since then has been Google, my business profile. Google Business Profile. And just like the benefit of, of using your Google business profile for SEO. So Lydia is joining me, but first I want you to meet Lydia. Lydia Fine is a lifestyle photographer in North Liberty, Iowa where she specializes in families, seniors and newborns. She earned a marketing degree and an MBA from the University of Iowa and uses her 22 plus years of marketing experience to run her photo business while continuing to work her day job as a marketing strategist. Lydia teaches photographers how to uplevel their marketing, book more clients, and leverage systems and tech to spend less time on the back end of their business. She spends her free time playing pickleball, kickboxing, and doing jigsaw puzzles and someday hopes to get the wordle in a single try. It's good to have you on.

Lydia Fine: Thank you. I dream big. That's what I do.

Brittany Herzberg: I love it. I hope you do that because I just want to be here to celebrate you when that happens.

Lydia Fine: Gosh, someday I am nowhere near. I will never give up though. Don't give up the wordle. It's going to happen.

Brittany Herzberg: All right, so you got all excited about this question, so I have to ask you the question before we get into the rest of the questions.

Lydia Fine: I'm here. I'm here. Yes. Let's go.

Brittany Herzberg: What do you feel is the most important for sales, storytelling, social proof, or SEO?

Lydia Fine: Okay, here is my big answer for this. Technically, all three are important, but there is an order to the three of these things. Without SEO, no one will ever find your website. Once they find your website, the other two become important. That's where the storytelling and the social proof become relevant. However, without SEO, the other two don't matter. So they're completely irrelevant without SEO. So to answer your question, while they all three have their place, the most important, the first focus has to be SEO.

Brittany Herzberg: I'm clapping. I love that.

Lydia Fine: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Brittany Herzberg: I'm so glad you wanted to. Okay, so Google business profile. Google my. What are they calling it these days?

Lydia Fine: These days it is Called a Google Business Profile. Used to be called a Google my Business. And it's probably gone through a couple of different iteration name changes, but the two most well known are Google My Business and Google Business Profile. You can still Google Google My Business and find it.

Brittany Herzberg: I love it. That was the next question is like how do you get to it? Because I always, whether it's Google Search Console, Google Analytics or Google Business Profile, I'm like googling the actual term to get to the page.

Lydia Fine: Same same. I actually still Google Quote Google my Business. That's what I do.

Brittany Herzberg: I love it so much. So what in the world does a Google Business Profile have to do with SEO? And should we like stop ignoring it?

Lydia Fine: Yes, we should stop ignoring it because the Google Business Profile is amazing. I describe it this way. Imagine you could talk to Google about your business in a language that Google understands. Instead of making Google go comb through your website and try to decipher what, what you do, where you are, who you serve, what you're good at. Imagine if you could tell Google these things in Google's very own language so that it doesn't have to go looking for the information. Instead you just basically silver platter spoon feed Google the information about your business in a language it wrote so it understands it really well. That's what your Google Business Profile is. It is essentially old school. You can tell I'm a Gen Xer, it's the yellow pages for your business, but it's free and you can have the best listing in the quote unquote digital yellow Pages for free. And I feel like I have to stop really quickly and mention this huge problem which is that there are all of these shifty companies out there calling business owners that have a Google Business Profile and telling you that you have to pay for something, whether it's some sort of enhanced service. Google Business Profiles are completely free. Always. Don't let anybody tell you you have to pay. So sorry for that little sidebar, but it bothers me so much when people try to take advantage of trusting business owners by telling them lies. And that's just like a really popular lie. So yes, it's your free Google listing in Google's Essential Business Yellow Pages, so to speak. And it's so amazing that you get to have a listing in this place where people go for information about businesses and you don't have to pay for it.

Brittany Herzberg: Yeah, no, I'm really glad you also mentioned like the sidebar thing because that's going way, way, way back to the beginning of the basic bee Podcast. There was an episode I did about all of those cold pitches that you'll get from, like, SEO agencies and companies and service providers, and they're like, your SEO's really messed up. Do you want some help? My favorite is when I get that, because I actually have it on my website, I'm like, yeah, sure. Please tell me things that I don't know. Yes, I'm listening. And you can't even spell my name right.

Lydia Fine: Right. My favorite is when they say, we're the company that manages your Google Business profile. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, you are. That is so weird. I manage my Google Business profile. They're like, no, we're the company who's in charge of checking it once a year to make sure it's up to date. I'm like, wow, that is so weird, because I'm the person in charge of checking it once a year to make sure it's up to date. That's around the time that they hang up on me. And it's probably kind of mean for me to do that, but I get so angry that they're trying to pull one over on me that I'm like, don't you even try? No, not to me. No, no, I know.

Brittany Herzberg: And especially if they call on the wrong day, it's like, yeah, you're definitely gonna get the spicy version of me. So let's just, like, cut the crap and just be done with this already. Thank you. No.

Lydia Fine: Yes.

Brittany Herzberg: That is so frustrating. Yeah, I'm totally with you.

Lydia Fine: Yeah.

Brittany Herzberg: Okay, so with Google Business Profile and with knowing that it's a free spot that we can plug all the things in, and I love knowing that it's in Google's, like, own language. I think that's a perfect way to summarize it into the perfect metaphor. What do you think is going to be the role of Google Business Profile as AI searches and, you know, all of that?

Lydia Fine: Ho, ho, ho. I love this topic. I love it, love it, love it. So I did a little test recently where I went to Google and I said, who is the best photographer in North Liberty, Iowa? And that's where I live. So I just thought I'd try this out for my city. And this wasn't, like, me trying to do a flex, even though I did come up at the top of that list, which was awesome, but I just really, genuinely wanted to see what it would say. And so there was a little paragraph that said, photography is subjective, so best means something different to everybody. However, you might consider looking at Apollo And Ivy photography, they do this and they're known for this. And then they listed two other photographers. And underneath was a paragraph of detail text about each of the three photographers it had mentioned. And the paragraph about me specifically listed characteristics that were not verbatim on my website. Everything that it said about me, the AI overview said about me, came from my Google Business profile and from my reviews on my Google Business profile. So as people start ignoring anything below the AI overview, which this is just happening more and more, all of the research is showing that people are no longer scrolling down as far they're just looking at the AI overview and going with it. Your Google Business Profile is going to increase in importance because it is a huge part, not all, but it is a big part of getting you into that AI overview and feeding Google the details about your business that it wants. So when it does serve you up in an AI overview, it can give additional details to the searcher that will help them know if you're the right fit for them.

Brittany Herzberg: I love hearing that and I want to just add that what I'm seeing is like yes, since AI searches in the AI overviews have really gone on the rise and clicks have gone down. There's actually something, if you're listening to this, it's called zero click searches. So people are doing a search, they're getting the AI overview and they're not clicking on anyone's website however and but don't panic because what I'm seeing with my clients and with myself is that the ones who click over to your website are the ones who are like those warm to hot leads. They're sitting there with their credit card like ready to do a deal with someone. So don't panic because all that we are talking about today with optimizing your Google Business Profile is just going to be an additional help for you to get found, have a more robust profile when you are getting called out in the top in the AI overview.

Lydia Fine: Right.

Brittany Herzberg: And then it's going to get the right people there. I also love that the Google Business Profile is giving us a place where we can just keep our messaging and all of that stuff really streamlined and make sure that we are presenting something on Instagram and our website and the Google Business Profile that are the same and that are giving a cohesive feel and you're nodding.

Lydia Fine: So yes, yes, same work. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so the zero click searches, by and large these are happening more likely when someone is not doing a commercial intent search. Right. So like what are these little red bugs on my Windowsill. Actually, I googled that just a few minutes ago. I may or may not have clover mites. I didn't need to dig into what the heck a clover mite was. I just needed to know what the heck it was. That's a zero click search. However, if I'm saying who's the best photographer in my city and I get three photographers, I'm going to look at the descriptions the AI overview gives me and I'm probably going to go to that website and so this is the front door and your Google Business profile. Let's say the AI overview isn't something somebody pays attention to because it's not actually being served up in all searches. But if someone does not get the AI overview and instead they get the local pack, which is those top three or four Google Business profiles in your area for a localized search for a service provider. They can see right there, this is a front door. Like imagine a preview of your website before they get to your website. And we know that how much our websites are important for first impressions. Well, think of your Google Business profile as the first first impression because you get a chance to get in front of them with your beautiful visuals. And I'm thinking about photographers here because who I coach and your beautiful visuals and who you are, what you do, who you serve, what you're really good at as well as what your clients are saying about you. Your social proof is right there, front and center on your Google Business profile. Oh my gosh. Like what could be more valuable than this front front door that is working its butt off for you to get people to click through to your website where you can really sell them hard using all of your storytelling and social proof. Oh, it's so exciting. I am a massive nerd. I say that out loud and I realize as I say that you're in good company.

Brittany Herzberg: That's why we're here.

Lydia Fine: Okay, good.

Brittany Herzberg: All right. So I'm going to absolutely toss myself under the bus. I did do a good job with my Google Business Profile, but it's been a few years and things have changed. My messaging has updated. The types of clients that I'm serving have largely stayed the same. The offers have stayed the same and I've gotten really even more niche down with just SEO. Cause I was offering case studies. I still kind of do, but it's like hidden. But my main driver, my main focus is SEO. So we can totally use me as an example if you are up for talking through some things. And then I'm sure I will have other Questions that come up. But are you game for that?

Lydia Fine: I am game for that, yes. Okay, give me all the questions. I will do everything I can to help out. Where do I start? Where do you start? Okay. The answer to this depends on the type of business that you are. But if I had to give somebody the quick hits of where to start with your Google business profile, the first place I would say is make sure your basics, your company details are correct. That's going to be your name, your address and your phone number. And P.S. google has this thing it cares about called name, address and phone number consistency. It loves to see the same business name. I mean, exactly. That means down to the ampersand instead of the word. And everywhere that you are listed on the web, in all the directories that you're in, all over your website, the footer name, address and phone number need to be consistent. So make sure you've got that buttoned up first and foremost. Your business hours, having that filled in on your Google business profile, that's another great place to start all those basics. But then once you get the basics taken care of, the services section is super important. So the services, it's this massive list. Don't just like grab one thing and stop. If you really start looking through there, you can find tons of variations of the service that you provide. Because Google looks at what search behavior, the keywords, key phrases people are using typing into Google search. And it uses that to develop this list of services. And it's saying, oh, lots of people are searching for get found on search engines or get found on Google. Maybe we should put this as a service category like helping businesses get found on Google. I'm using that as an example. I'm not even sure it exists.

Brittany Herzberg: I will find out for you.

Lydia Fine: Yes, on the photography side of things, there's so many variations of family photographer, child photographer, small group photographer, parent and child photographer. All of these things exist. So you want to go through that giant list of services and find all the ones that apply to you. Google allows you to write a short description of how you provide that service. It might feel like a bit of a stretch, but the more detail you put in there, the more Google is going to be able to match your profile up with search behavior. So services, super key section to go for. If you have a visual service like I do, adding new photos and continuing to add updated photos, taking the old ones off. You can't control the photos that your clients add through reviews, but you can control the ones that you add, including your cover photo. So make sure you're keeping that refreshed. Often you can even add a video. Like I believe it's, it's at least 30 seconds. It might be up to a minute. It can be a short introduction to yourself. Like behind the scenes video is so super eye catching in the list of Google business profiles. So take advantage of your photo section and then the reviews. Like, reviews are my favorite topic ever. Because if you are not working to get Google reviews on your Google business profile, you should be because those things are golden for a very long list of reasons. I'm going to stop and take a breath there and let you talk. But if you want to talk more about reviews, I am here for it.

Brittany Herzberg: Yeah. So fun fact, for about the last six months I have had a, an email in my, it's like in my drafts ready to send out to my list, my entire email list of like, if I have helped you in any way, shape or form, please kindly write a review here. But do you have like good tips for that? Because I'm, I'm being a little tongue in cheek there. But I do see that like if I click on edit my profile and I go to reviews, I can see like get more reviews and if I click that, that's where I get the link in case anyone's listening. But like I would love any best practices best tips, hot tips for how you successfully get those right.

Lydia Fine: So here's one thing to know. Sending an email to your entire client list asking for reviews all at once is actually a massive red flag for Google. They hate it.

Brittany Herzberg: Interesting. I'm so glad I never sent that.

Lydia Fine: I am too. They good job. Your instincts were right on. They want to see a slow and steady drip of reviews that's a sign of the authenticity of those reviews. Because if you do send one big giant blast out to your entire client list asking for reviews and you get 40 reviews in a day and you haven't had one in six months, there's a very good chance that Google could do one of any number of things. Suspend your profile, pull all of those reviews off and not display any of them and leave them in this weird little review purgatory that sometimes happens. There's any number of things, but none of them result in goodness.

Brittany Herzberg: I felt bad.

Lydia Fine: Yes, they're all bad. So you want to start with the most recent few clients, send them that email and then just get a few and then make it part of your typical workflow. I have an automation in Honeybook that when I mark a project as completed three days later it sends out a request for a review. So that's a great way to do it. Just make it part of your system. Honestly, I think for photographers who are all inclusive, sending out the gallery delivery email, here's your beautiful photos. Yeah, this would be an amazing time to go leave me a review because this helps my small business so much. And while we're on the topic of the best ways to go about getting reviews, I do have a freebie and I'll give you the link to put to the show Notes. Yeah, it's called How I get Clients with Google Reviews. And it includes when to ask, how to ask, including the exact email text that I use to both ask for the review and to follow up when they don't leave a review. This is hard. We're asking people to do a thing that is writing. Like we're basically saying, hey, please go write an essay for me.

Brittany Herzberg: Right?

Lydia Fine: Because a lot of people really just writing is effort for a lot of us. So we have to understand kind of what we're asking and we have to make a case. And I also believe in requesting or rather setting the stage for review very early in the working relationship with a client. So at the session before we leave, I am letting my client know, hey, when I deliver your gallery, there will also be a link to leave me a Google review and I also include a link to leave a Yelp review because diversifying where your reviews come from is a good idea. But I let them know how much it supports my small business and they hired me because they like me and they want me to succeed. So set the stage early. And so when you do ask for that review and when you follow up, it's not coming out of the blue. They understand why you're asking.

Brittany Herzberg: That's such a good point. And I do have a workflow that colleague James made for me and so I can shove that right in there. I love that idea. This brings me to another question that I had swirling around in my brain though. You mentioned that we can go back and add things like for example, photos and that can even be for service providers. I mean, I've added photos to my profile. I again, it was been a hot minute, but it's in there. So I think I did a mixture of like my logo pictures of me, some of like my branding photos, even some of my digital product photos. I think I had some stuff in there. So how often would be like a good frequency, a good pace for adding pictures? And I mean I know that you're a photographer and you're helping photographers. But are there any other types of photos that I am maybe not thinking about that we could add in as service providers who maybe aren't, you know, visual forward.

Lydia Fine: Right, that's tricky. That's absolutely tricky. But I think you're on the right track with branding photos. Things that give people a glimpse into you, you know who they get when they work with you. Face forward, they're hiring you as a person, so you're selling yourself as a brand. So anything that you can do that would share some of your brand personality, which are branding photos, probably do that. That's a great idea. I recommend refreshing, not like clearing the slate, but at least adding a couple and maybe taking a couple off about three times a year. Again, just this shows Google that you're an active business owner, you're engaged, and these are signals that Google uses to determine whether or not to serve your Google Business Profile up in the search results when somebody's searching for your service. And there are a couple of different criteria that it uses to decide who gets to be served up. And so just having some photos doesn't mean you're going to get served up. It is a combination of the distance, how far you are from the person who's searching. And again, I'm talking mostly about local search here for people who are serving in a local area nationwide SEO with your Google Business Profile, that's not really a thing, right? Somebody in Portland, Oregon is not going to show up as a Google Business Profile when someone searches in Portland, Maine. That's not going to happen. And this is an important point. Even if you serve the entire United States with your service, do not put the entire United States as your service area in your Google Business profile because you're basically like spreading all of your spreading it so thin you'll never show up. So stick with your local area just around where you're physically located and your website SEO is going to handle the rest of the lift in the rest of the country or wherever anybody's searching for you. But your Google Business Profile is really a local SEO related tool.

Brittany Herzberg: I like that you mentioned that because at the time I remember distinctly where I was and what Airbnb I was in and where I was staying because my boyfriend and I have been bouncing around from Airbnb to Airbnb for the last like four years. And so at the time I was like, I have no idea what state I'm going to end up in. And I did choose to make it just the whole United States. So that is probably thing number one that I'm going to go back in and change. But this brings me to another question and maybe you have an answer, maybe not. So I did have a massage practice. I closed it down in North Carolina. I opened one in Vermont, went back to North Carolina, long story. But if someone's moving and let's say it's a massage practice or a copywriting practice or a photography practice, do you have any like best practices for doing something like that?

Lydia Fine: Yes. So there's a long list of the specific steps you need to take if you're moving your business and the order you need to do them in. But what I can tell you is the very last thing that should change is your Google Business profile. With regard to, let's say you're picking up from North Carolina and moving to Vermont. Get your website updated. Update your listing on as many online business directories as you can. Get out there with your new name, address and phone number before you change your Google Business profile. Because if it starts seeing these discrepancies with the information that it's able to find on the web, on your website and in your profile, it's immediately going to throw up a red flag and it's going to cause problems. It might force you to re verify your profile, which is, it's getting better. But the process of re verifying can be a huge headache. So we don't want to go there. If you can avoid reverifying, you really want to just stay in Google's good graces. So the order that you do things in really does matter. But I know if you are opening a new location, there's a different set of steps in a different order. You would do that in like an additional location. But if you're just picking up and moving, you want to update all the rest of your assets before your Google business profile.

Brittany Herzberg: That is really good to know. I really appreciate that. My dad has a window replacement company and he did have to. I don't even know what happened. I don't even know if he knows what happened. But they did have to re verify the Google business listing and it was a giant headache and a pain in the tush all wrapped in one. So yeah, it's much better. Lydia's advice.

Lydia Fine: Just recently they added the ability where they actually tell you why your verification has failed. If it fails, it'll tell you why they just added that. Isn't that ridiculous? Up to now it's been a guessing game.

Brittany Herzberg: It really has. And I do remember that being just like a sticking point A frustration point for me. And I was like, I don't want to deal with that. And so I know that that was part of just like the friction that I had there with it where I was like, I don't, like, you seem complicated. I don't want to deal with.

Lydia Fine: You can be. And so I started to mention the three things that Google looks for, Distance being one of them.

Brittany Herzberg: Right.

Lydia Fine: And I got off onto the topic of service areas, which is important. The second one is going to be relevance, and that's how closely your profile matches the keywords and the phrases that were searched for the searcher's intent, and it's matched to your profile. That's why I mentioned the services section, because that's where the relevance is going to come in. Nobody's website is going to have every single term that somebody could possibly search for. And if they do, it's probably keyword stuffed. And Google's going to get angry about that too, as you know. So relevance to the searcher's intent is the next criteria. And then the third one is called prominence. And that's how trustworthy Google sees your business and how well known you appear online. And they use lots of different markers to determine your prominence, including your website SEO. That's probably the biggest one, because if you've optimized the rest of your website SEO, it's going to boost your prominence score in Google's eyes. And there's no such thing as like an actual prominent score. Like it's a black box, right?

Brittany Herzberg: Yeah.

Lydia Fine: But the number and quality of your reviews, the recency of your reviews is increasingly important, whether or not they came in one big burst or they come like little, little, little bit. And then the number of backlinks that you have and especially the reputation of the sites that are backlinking to you and just your overall consistency with your information across the web. So distance, relevance, and prominence are the three big things that Google's going to look for to decide if your Google business profile should be served up as part of the local pack at the top of a search. And basically what's in the local pack is essentially what's in the AI overview.

Brittany Herzberg: Yeah.

Lydia Fine: So it's all kind of the same set of rules.

Brittany Herzberg: That is so interesting. I'm just like looking at everything, clicking around. I'm like, what else do I have?

Lydia Fine: What else is here?

Brittany Herzberg: Right. I love it.

Lydia Fine: Okay.

Brittany Herzberg: Okay. So we've talked about getting reviews frequency, like how often we need to be getting them, that it's not a good idea to get Them all in one fell swoop, which I love that you shared that.

Lydia Fine: What about.

Brittany Herzberg: Because I think this came up with Michelle White's conversation where we were talking about basically like etiquette in the digital age. And one of our things that we love doing is going and looking at like, for lack of a better term, like nasty replies to reviews. So how could we maybe like, handle reviews with grace?

Lydia Fine: Yes. I love this because I don't think I realized how important your reply. First of all, Google loves for you to reply to every single review. Okay? Every single one, positive and negative. However, beyond just making the Google gods happy, there are so many reasons to reply to reviews because how you reply to reviews is public facing customer service. So imagine all the customer service that you give your clients on the back end. This is happening through personal emails. Imagine suddenly somebody takes one of your email strings back and forth and puts it up on a billboard. For every potential client to now see. Your ability to provide good customer service has just been publicized. That's what a reply to a review becomes is public customer service. This is your opportunity to show your potential clients how you react to negative feedback. I'll tell you a fun story. I was vacationing in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee with my family, looking for activities before we got there. And I found this one really fun activity. It looked amazing. And I went to the Google business profile and started looking at the reviews and I noticed very quickly that there was a trend. I did check back recently. It looks like whoever was doing the replying to the business reviews has changed. So this has gotten way better. But there was somebody who every time there was a negative review would come back and be like, well, I'm sorry your kids didn't like it. Maybe your kids are weenies. Like they were insulting people's children on the review reply.

Brittany Herzberg: That is not a thing you want to do. No.

Lydia Fine: Chill, children. This woman would be like, my child cried. I wish somebody had told me it would be da, da, da da. And the guy that was doing the replying was so bad and based solely on how he replied to those reviews, I nixed that activity from our possibilities list like all at once. And I believe it. I'm like, nope, that is not going to happen because I have no, no interest in doing business with that person. So if you do, and I have a reel on my Instagram about specifically how to reply to negative reviews and there's like a step by step off the top of my head right now, I'm going to fail to recall all of the order of the details, but I can give you a link directly to that reel if you want to share it.

Brittany Herzberg: Yes, please.

Lydia Fine: I also have one about how to reply to positive reviews because sometimes that's where we really get tongue tied is we're like, uh, thanks, appreciate ya. You know, Ted Lasso style. But no, there's an actual way. Starting with negative reviews, you have to make sure people know they're, they've been heard right. First and foremost, you have to acknowledge their feelings. And oh, I also Recommend Step number one when you get a negative review is walk away. 24 to 48 hours minimum. Walk away. And then when you have calmed and you've become centered in Zen, then you sit down to compose your reply. And the last place you want to get in a back and forth battle is in a Google review reply. So ew, no, your job there is to defuse the situation and invite that person to connect with you offline or you tell them that you're going to connect with them. If you know who they are, you know how to contact them. Then you say, I'm going to be reaching out to you to talk about a way that we can make this right. Right. That is not the place to be. Like, well, I'm sorry because you never answered your emails. You know, I. None of that. Never ever. Because this is your public facing customer service. And I think we, sometimes we forget that that's exactly what that is. We're putting up a billboard about how we treat our clients when we reply to negative reviews. Now we also put up a little bit of a billboard when we respond to positive reviews. And that's your opportunity to extract something from the review that you want to be known for. Something that is an important part of your client experience. You know, I'm so pleased and that your daughter felt like her senior photos were, were so her because I work really hard to make sure that my senior sessions are personal and individualized to your senior's likes and hobbies and interests. So it's amazing to me that she appreciated that. Like, look at that. I just turned that review into a commercial for me, right?

Brittany Herzberg: Yeah, exactly.

Lydia Fine: By pulling out the important stuff. So responding to reviews, first of all, Google loves it, but it's just customer service.

Brittany Herzberg: I love this. This was so helpful. I feel like I had some good tasks that I can now take to my Google business profile and start acting on. Is there any like final words for someone who's either ignored their Google business profile, they haven't started it, They've just also felt confused and Overwhelmed by it. What would you say to that person?

Lydia Fine: Well, if you haven't yet, go claim your Google business profile. And you need to. At the very least, if this really does intimidate the heck out of you and you don't want to spend a lot of time getting it up to date and maintaining it, look at it. Like, set a reminder on your calendar to look at it once a month. Because Google allows randos off the Internet to make suggestions to change your Google business profile. Not that long ago, Google contacted me with an email. Hey, we updated your business name because somebody made a suggestion and we think this looks good. We've changed your name from Apollo and Ivy Photography to Apollo and Ivy. Nope, sorry, Google. Incorrect reject. So the funny thing is that Google doesn't always run this by you. Sometimes it just makes the change. And last year, a bunch of high school and middle schoolers discovered that they could make suggestions to their school name. And for a very short period of time, all over the United States, there was suddenly a mass of Haktuah middle schools and Hoktua high schools. I am not kidding you. I know you're not. It was so funny. And then Google had to be like, oh, no. And the school. So much of them didn't even know this was a thing they needed to care about, so they didn't notice. And the kids are getting a kick out of sharing anyway. Hawk to a high school and hawk to a middle school. Thank goodness it's not a thing. But people can make suggestions to your business address, to your business name, to the services you provide. So please, if nothing else, check it occasionally just to be sure that you are still the business you think you are. Oh, my gosh.

Brittany Herzberg: You actually bring up another question that I forgot to ask about. But someone works from home, hypothetically, they don't want to put their home address as their work address. Yeah, you got all excited. Mm.

Lydia Fine: Yes. I love this question because I presented to a room full of photographers a couple of months ago, and that was the big thing. I don't have a studio. What do I do? And I don't have a studio either. I mean, as you can see, I am coming to you live from my closet.

Brittany Herzberg: I love it. I feel for it.

Lydia Fine: Yeah, there's actually this amazing thing when you're creating your Google business profile where it asks you your address, and that's where you are located, where you get your mail, and. And then it says, do you want to show this to clients? Do you want to show this to customers? You just toggle that puppy off, off. And then nobody's knocking on your door at 11pm and my son is answering the door naked and being like, hey, my mom's not here. That doesn't happen. So toggle that off and instead Google will show your service area and that's the like list of cities, zip codes, metro areas that you chose when you set up your service area that you serve. So for me I just have kind of a radius around my city. So no home based businesses. Totally. Okay. There are certain types of businesses that are not eligible for Google business profiles though and you want to make sure that you are not one of those. So do a little bit of research first. Or when you do try to create a Google business profile, you'll immediately get rejected. But I have a service that I go and provide to my clients outside of the walls of my business. So I'm eligible as a service area provider for a Google Business profile. So it works out well.

Brittany Herzberg: That is good to know. I'm so glad I remember to ask that because I didn't know about the silly button. Good question. That's amazing. Before I get into like the whole like where could we find you? Is this something that you help people who maybe are not photographers with or only photographers?

Lydia Fine: So right now I do what I call Google Business profile audits for photographers, basically letting them know where they can improve their Google business profile. I've helped a couple of people try to get re verified when they're having trouble understanding why and things like that. So I do offer a service of helping photographers optimize their Google business profiles. Right now I have not extended that outside of the photographer realm because I have this like day job that I still do time. That's a whole thing, right?

Brittany Herzberg: It really is.

Lydia Fine: And so until I have a little bit more time I haven't really extended outside photographers but oh good.

Brittany Herzberg: Yeah, I'll make sure that there's the link for photographers because I know that I have a good amount that listen to the show. So I'll make sure that that's linked below. Then what else? You mentioned the reviews guide which I'm super excited about. I'll grab the real reviews responses, situations for myself and others. But what else? Where, where do you hang out? Where can we come find you?

Lydia Fine: So you can find me on Instagram. Uh, I'm under Lydia Underscore, Apollo and Ivy, Apollo and A N D I V all spelled out there and I post Google Business profile tips, business tips, SEO tips, marketing tips, CRMs. I am all things marketing systems nerd as we talked about. I love to talk about the business side of photography. In fact, I think, don't tell my clients, but I kind of love that part more than the taking photos part. I think of myself as a business nerd first and an artist like, a distant second. So I coach other photographers on how to clean up the business side of their business. So many photographers are amazing, phenomenal artists who feel like they're terrible at the business part. So I help them feel a little more confident in that regard and then, you know, up their professionalism, raise their prices, book their calendars, full get found on Google, all the things, it's really fun. So I love helping other photographers to get to a place where they can be a little bit more comfortable and relaxed and not stress so much about, you know, what money's gonna come in. Because, I mean, I'm with you. I love SEO. It's my favorite thing ever. You do the work and you do some, like, upkeep, but then for the most part, you just wait. People just find you. And even when you're like, okay, I can't take any more work, please stop finding me, they just keep coming.

Brittany Herzberg: They just keep coming.

Lydia Fine: They just keep coming.

Brittany Herzberg: But what about me? But how about me? I love this. I'm so grateful that you were able to come on and shed a whole bunch of light on the whole Google business profile listing, because that is definitely something I've gotten a lot of questions about and I obviously, since I've kind of ignored it, said it and forgot it for real, didn't feel super confident in. So thank you so much. This has been so informative.

Lydia Fine: I'm happy to help. I love this topic. I'll talk about it all day long.

Brittany Herzberg: Well, if you are listening and you have any additional questions, of course, feel free to reach out to Lydia. But if you send me enough questions or even click that text situation in the show notes to respond and you send in a question and just say that it's about Google business profiles, maybe we'll be able to have Lydia back on.

Lydia Fine: Oh, gosh, that would be amazing. Just an excuse to hang out with you would work for me.

Brittany Herzberg: I'm here for it. Well, thank you for joining us and for those of you listening, I will catch you next time.

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