If you haven’t been exposed to the virtual tours of Google Places, you’re missing out! This new functionality in Google gives you the ability to view, virtually visit, or even spy on a business you might be interested in visiting. This neat functionality has businesses going up in cheers as they can now use their visual senses to help customers feel right at home prior to visiting. Just think about it, if you’re thinking of going to a local Omaha massage salon but you’re feeling a little nervous because it’s your first time at their location, you can now visit via the Google Virtual Tour. You can walk the halls of the location and help put those anxious feelings to rest, increasing your confidence about picking up the phone and booking an appointment. The biggest advantage of the Google Virtual Tour is your customers can check out everything you have to offer before they even decide to get in their car.
At Big Red SEO, we recently decided to jump on the virtual tour bandwagon by inviting Joe Diril, one of only TWO Google qualified photographers located in Nebraska to visit our office. With his amazing talent, Joe photographed the inside and outside of our location. Personally, we think it looks awesome, however, we might be a bit biased! Feel free to take a peek and judge for yourself!
There are several benefits of having a Google Virtual Tour completed, especially for search engines like Google. With the ability for someone to tour your offices with a simple click of a mouse, the Google Virtual Tour will in fact help your conversions increase– in addition to leading you to the top of Google Places. Remember, Google loves when you take advantage of their newest features and functionalities!
Below our team of SEO experts put together a few basic questions small and medium Omaha businesses have asked regarding the Google Virtual Tours. Feel free to take a look below, if you have any additional questions, you’re welcome to call us at (402) 522-6468.
Where are the Google Photos Shown?
Google-verse is Google’s map version of the world. You have the ability to zoom in on certain focus points, such as bird’s eye city views, streets, neighborhoods, and businesses all around the globe. As an SEO expert in Omaha, we realize that virtual tours are still fairly new. Several Omaha companies have heard of this enhanced feature ability, while others have not. The great news is that the tour is attached to your Google+ account (you must have an account to participate), and it’s displayed directly through Google Maps.
Google will take care of linking your tour to your business by verifying your location through the Google Certified Photographer. In your Google Places there are links on the Google Business Photos that let you “See Inside” and “See Outside” the business, and you can even embed the tour on your own website! At Big Red SEO, we’re extremely thrilled about this as now you have extra room for photos.
Why Should Your Business Use This?
We’ll tell you why! What if a potential customer is looking for a restaurant with just the right feel for a special occasion, like an engagement or anniversary? At Big Red SEO, we know these are important events and the best way to make them special is knowing it’s the right location! Instead of getting in their car and driving all around town, they can now sit in their favorite chair at home and click through tours until they find the perfect place. On the other hand–without a Google Virtual Tour, if they pick a place without going there first or seeing pictures, despite how rave the reviews are, it might not be what they expected, resulting in an unhappy experience.
As with anything else, our team of local search engine optimization experts in Omaha want to remind you how important it is to maintain your pictures and tour once you have them published. Our recommendation is updating your photos at minimum every three months. If your office goes through a dramatic change, or you move, you’ll need to remove your old pictures and replace them with new ones to ensure that your customers experience the new office correctly.
The Virtual Tour Helps SEO
Our Omaha SEO experts have seen indicators that having pictures to accompany your Google Places listing, along with a virtual tour, can boost your rankings. Search engines reward businesses that continually update their Google Places, Yelp, YP, Yahoo!, and Bing listings–whether it be with pictures, content, or other information. When listings are consistent and include pictures, videos, and reviews, search engines reward you and those listings will climb to the top of the search results page, above the others that aren’t as complete or consistent.
Note: Getlisted.org is a good source to find out where your business has a missing or inconsistent listing.
Contact Big Red SEO Today at (402) 522-6468!
Here at Big Red SEO, a local SEO company in Omaha, we’re all about doing the little things that’ll get you noticed by the top search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. If you have any questions about your directory listings or virtual tour, contact us through our form on our website or call us at (402) 522-6468. We’d be happy to get you started in the right direction.