Google My Business (GMB) is an awesome tool that can be used to raise your local SEO, visibility, and reach. The best thing is it is completely free to use. It offers so much potential for business owners (especially local businesspeople), as you can fully post every detail in your Google My Business listing.

You can add, edit, and even delete your listings. It is surely one of the first steps to getting listed on Google search, Google Maps, and local business recommendations.

GMB accounts are created and verified by Google to help you better organize and share quality information about your business. When your account is verified, you can add your business name, location, contact number, category, products, services, photos of your office or store, and posts. This guide will explore GMB posts and discuss the proper image size to create.

What Are Google Business Posts

‘Posts’ is a feature provided for Google my business listing owners that allow them to add rich posts to their account, which can be used for product promotions or information to potential customers. You can create posts to announce a new product launch, any ongoing offer or discount, or to inform about any upcoming event. A GMB post stays on your listing for 7 days and then expires.

Using the posts feature continuously can positively impact your click-through rate. They act as mini-display advertisements that you don’t have to pay for. Your Google my business post can also get featured on Google Search’s knowledge panel if it matches the user’s search queries. Google my business posts are not limited to adding only text. You can add high-quality photos to improve how the entire posts look on the screens of searchers’ devices.

The best part of uploading a Google my business post is that you can add a call to action and allow people to click on the button and take a specific action. There are five calls to action that you can use: Sign up, Call now, Book, Get an offer, and Learn more.

How do Google My Business Posts Improve SEO?

Not directly. You will not see directly visible changes in your rankings, but there will be a significant increase in your click-through rates. They will increase your website visits and push potential customers to take action. When a user is looking for a service, your Google my business posts and other organic listings will appear. It is very beneficial to post on GMB as they hardly take up 5-10 minutes in create and bring more customers and help you get more leads with Google my business. 

Google my business posts also create a rich snippet in the Local-3 pack. Thus, you need to write SEO-Friendly Text along with your published post. Google pulls text from your posts and uses them as rich snippets in the local pack. 

Types of Google  Business Posts

At present, Google my business offers you to create 5 types of posts.

• What’s new: Enables you to give continuous and fresh updates related to your business.  The recommended Google  Business post image size is 480 X 270 (minimum resolution). Try to maintain an aspect ratio of 4:3. Otherwise, Google will revise it and not appear properly in search results.
• Events: Let you make announcements regarding any upcoming events. Not constrained to the 7 day limit, they stay until the event date.  Event posts allow you to write a title that basically describes the name of your event. In these kinds of posts, you can add a photo, video, event title, start and end date, event details, and a call to action button. The Google my business event image size is also recommended to be of 480 X 270.
• Offers: Allows you to inform people of any ongoing discounts or offers on your products/services. Just like event posts, you can add an expiry date for your offer. In the advanced options, you can add offer details, coupon code, a redemption link to claim the offer, and the terms and conditions associated with the offer. These posts have the potential to increase your website visits, link clicks, as well as purchases.   
• Products: Enables you to showcase your products along with their price and a buy now button which takes users directly to the cart. The recommended Google my Business product image size is the same as event posts. If you are a service business, think about how you might “productize your service.
• COVID-19: Allows you to inform users about any changes in your business due to covid-19. Google recently launched this category as almost every business operates differently because of the pandemic. The covid-19 posts stay live for an additional 7 days, i.e. a total of 14 days. However, these posts don’t perform very well. Add only a ‘Status update’ (description) and a call to action button here. My recommendation is to stay away from these completely.

You must pay attention to your Google my business Post image size and make it correct so it appears as planned on the post and its thumbnail. If you end up uploading a Google my business photo size that is very wide, then the application will mostly crop up some of the image detail to fit it into the frame and thumbnail. This can be worked with for generic images, but if the image text includes something important, you would want it to be there on the thumbnail and the Google My Business posts.

Default Size – 720 x 540 pixels

Maximum Size – 2120 x 1192 pixels

Minimum Size – 480 x 270 pixels

What Types of Photos Can You Upload on GMB?

There are mainly three types of photos that you can create a Google post with.

• Google Business profile photos – These will represent you and help your customers recognize your business on Google.

The best Google profile image size would be 250 × 250 pixels.

• Google Business cover photos – You can display your page’s personality through your GMB cover photo. When you add a cover photo, the application automatically sets it as your listing’s preferred photo.

The best Google Business cover photo size is 1080 x 608 pixels.

• Additional Google Business photos – You can always add additional photos to highlight various features of your business that customers might consider while buying. And the Google business post image size should be optimized when you post.

Best Practices For Google Business Posts

• Unlike social media platforms, my business posts on Google must be promotional. Don’t post the same kind of posts that you upload on social sites. Don’t promote your blogs by providing links as a call to action.
• People making Google searches are looking for solutions to their queries. Thus, you should focus on promoting your products and offering discounts that make your listing stand out.
• Capitalize the first few lines of the post title to catch people's attention. Write a compelling copy and put the right call to action button.
• Even though you are allowed to write 300 words, stick with 80-100 words. The number of characters displayed can vary depending on the device that people are searching on.
• Make it a practice to include important keywords and messages at the beginning of your post description.
• Be sure that the landing page (CTA link)  you send visitors to, matches the content of the Google my business post and meets the users’ expectations.
• Whatever you include in the description, make it conversational and use a natural tone.
• Avoid using a lot of text in images you use in posts.

Now that you know how beneficial Google business posts can be, you are probably thinking of how often you should post. The ideal post-expiration period is 7 days, so you should post at least once a week. No maximum or minimum number is recommended. Just don’t stuff a lot of posts on your Google my business profile simultaneously or leave it unattended for a longer duration.