What is Google Business Profile Q&A?
The Google Business Profile Q&A feature allows searchers to interact with the business owner and to help out other searchers by questioning or answering any information about a business’ place, business or landmark via its Google Business Profile.
To check the reliability of the answers in this section, the “Upvote” feature was created – this allows searchers to show others that an answer was the most helpful or most valid.
Why was Google Business Profile Q&A Launched?
The Google Business Profile Q&A is to help searchers find answers about a business’ information that is not available on a business’ website. This is to help them learn more about the business through the owner or other searchers’ perspectives.
What Does it Look Like?
The Google Business Profile Q&A can be seen in the middle portion of a business profile (just below the business address and working hours)
When you click on “See all questions” you will be redirected to the Q&A section wherein you can either answer a question, like a question or an answer, or ask a question.
How Does it Work?
The questions asked under Google Business Profile Q&A can be about anything, but it mainly focuses on the products and services offered by a business.
The questions can be asked and answered by anyone all over the world.
The Q&A’s appear publicly on your Google Business Profile and, if the search is close, it might show up in the search results too.
For example, if someone is searching for a product such as a gold necklace with white diamonds at a jewelry shop in your area, a local jeweler who has answered a question about this might have a greater chance of showing up in the results section vs the one who has not.
Essentially, having a seeded Q&A section can help your business rank higher and appear in more search results.
How to Prepare in Seeding your Q&A
The Q&A section is an underutilized feature of the Google Business Profile (GBP). Most people will leave a review but only a few will ask questions. A lot of people don’t even know if the Q&A section exists or are only made aware of it when a business owner takes the time to ask and answer their frequently asked questions.
Typically, searchers would want an immediate answer to go search for it on Google and if they can’t find what they’re looking for in reviews, then they explore the business’s social media account. That’s why it’s important to get “ahead of the curve” and fill out this Q&A section preemptively.
Consequently, the Q&A section is a hidden gold mine for a business to rank higher in search results and properly “seeding” your Q&A section is the best solution to curate this section of your online presence.
Here are the steps that you need to take in order to properly seed your Q&A:
- Create a list of FAQs that you constantly hear from clients, whether that’s general industry questions or inquiries about a specific product/service
- Write down a detailed answer (or at least some kind of reasonable response) to each question
For example, if you own a Kimono online shop, here are some sample FAQs that you can create:
1. What is the Fastest Way to Reach you?
Answer: We are the quickest to reply on Instagram, our handle is [instagram username]. Message us to know more about the latest print and custom orders or email us at [business email]
2. What Forms of Payment do you Accept?
Answer: We accept bank transfers or Paypal. You can also purchase directly on our website and pay via Visa and MasterCard.
3. Do you Deliver Worldwide?
Answer: We currently deliver locally in Florida, but if you are from a different state or country we can ship it to you as well via [mailing company]
4. Can I Edit/Cancel my Order?
Answer: Head over to our website and click on “Shipping and returns” for specific details.
Note: Only those orders made within one (48) hour are guaranteed for cancellation. Those orders beyond this time may have a necessary cancellation fee, to cover the expense.
We will send you a confirmation letter via e-mail 48 hours after your cancellation.
5. Do you have a Live Store?
Yes. Please visit our live store at [place your store address here]
In writing your FAQ’s, it would be best to curate all the questions that you receive first, and then write down all the answers.
Adding Questions to Your Profile
To fully illustrate how to properly utilize the FAQ section in Google Business Profile, we have created a tutorial for how to add questions and answers to your profile. When adding a question to your GBP profile, it would be best if you use your personal Google account.
The steps you should take are:
- Log in to your personal Google account
- Search for your business
- Click the “Ask a question” button on the GBP profile
- Copy the question from your FAQ sheet to your Q&A section
- Repeat for all the questions.
In answering the questions, just go to your Q&A section and answer all the questions that you have placed using the answers that you have crafted in your FAQ.
Benefits of Seeding Q&A
We have discussed one benefit of seeding your Q&A which is ranking higher in search results, but do you know that there are more benefits than that? Some additional benefits are:
- Time Efficiency
As a business owner, manager, or employee, you know how you have to answer the same question over and over again? Customers may ask the questions slightly differently, depending on the situation, but often you will hear the same five questions at least twenty times. Setting up a Q&A allows you to have more time for the productive things that will really matter (and affect your bottom dollar).
- Seamless User Experience
As a customer, you may look for answers to questions everywhere, like on a brand’s website, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google Business Profile or in others’ reviews. So, the best part of having a GBP Q&A is that your customer won’t have to do a deep dive on your entire online presence, providing them with a better user experience.
- Stimulate & Control Interaction
Customers love it when a brand is human. Interaction with a business gives customers more connection. So, by seeding your Q&A, you are encouraging your customers to ask more questions that in return will create more opportunities for you to connect more to your audience. It also creates an interaction that you are in control of. Rather than a customer having to search through 3 years’ worth of reviews to find the answers they’re looking for, you can control the conversation and give them the exact info they need.
As you also could also see from our sample questions and answers, FAQs are helpful to customers, but they are also another form of advertisement for a business. Sometimes, you can highlight certain social media accounts or products that you launched that you would like your customers to “check out” that they otherwise may not have known about.
Conclusion
We’ve outlined how to curate your Q&A section, but if it still seems like way too much work for you to do on your own, Promoticon would be happy to do the “heavy-lifting.” Or, if you have additional questions about how to setup your GBP’s Q&A section, Promoticon is here to help you every step of the way!
Feel free to email us at info@promoticon.co or drop us a DM on our Instagram page.
Happy Googling!
